Fashion Futures Job Roles

A trend forecaster is someone who predicts upcoming trends in the fashion industry, whether that is a colour palette, print, style, design technique, or new business opportunity. Trend forecasting isn’t just a guessing game. Forecasters consider a range of factors — everything from pop culture and what people are wearing on the street to the wider social, political, and environmental landscape — in order to make educated assessments about what will be relevant to the fashion industry in the future.

Fashion brands, textile manufacturers, retailers and advertising agencies are among those that work with trend forecasters to make short-term decisions and long-term strategies so that their businesses can remain relevant and profitable for years to come.

Unlike a fashion designer who creates whole garments, a textile designer is only focused on creating the fabrics and materials used to make clothing. Textile designers are super creative and get to experiment with different techniques to fulfil a brief that their client (a brand) has set for them. Textile designers have a broad knowledge of materials and their applications, as well as all the things you can do with those fabrics, from printing to embroidery, knitting, weaving and more.

A fashion stylist is someone who puts together outfits for fashion shoots, catwalk shows, celebrities, influencers, retail displays, and more. But it’s not just as simple as pairing accessories and clothing. Stylists work across editorial, commercial and personal clients, collaborating with magazines, designers, retailers, and photographers to discuss inspiration, create concepts and goals, and organise shoots to bring these to life.

A pattern cutter is someone who takes a design from a 2D image or drawing and transforms it into a garment. A pattern cutter has a very technical role that requires specific expertise. For example, a pattern cutter needs to understand how certain cuts will fit different body shapes in different ways and understand how certain materials and styles sit on the body. They create the pattern that can then be shared with manufacturers to make the garment on a larger scale.

Working in fashion public relations (PR) is a popular career path for many aspiring fashion professionals. Essentially, a fashion PR is responsible for helping to promote a brand or company in order to sell its products. They might work for a PR agency that has a range of clients, or for an in-house PR team at a brand. Fashion PRs communicate with journalists and influencers to spread awareness of a brand in order to help generate attention through events, media (traditional media like newspapers and magazines and social media) and press days.

Making clothing is a fundamental part of fashion manufacturing. The role of a sewing machinist is to use machinery to create a part of whole garment. This highly-skilled profession might work in-house or at home for a particular brand, or work in a factory that produces clothing for several brands.

A fashion photographer’s role isn’t just to take beautiful photos — there’s a lot more to the job than meets the eye. From scouting for shoot locations to creative direction, a fashion photographer has a lot to prepare before they step behind the camera. Fashion photographers are often self-employed, so they’ll take on work with clients (a brand, publication, or event) on a project basis.

Behind the glossy pages of your favourite fashion magazine is a huge team of people who make it all happen. At the centre are fashion journalists, who write about the industry for newspapers, magazines, and online publications. Many fashion journalists choose a “beat” which is a sector of fashion that they’re a subject matter expert in. For example, they might cover sustainability, business, luxury, emerging designers, or streetwear. Fashion journalists can work in-house for a specific publication or be self-employed and write for several publications at once.

Because the fashion media we consume has largely moved from print to digital, it’s common for fashion journalists to write for online publications more than print publications. Fashion journalism is a highly competitive but exciting and rewarding career path.

Got a passion for videography? Maybe working in fashion film is for you. Being a fashion filmmaker exposes you to a wide variety of exciting opportunities.

You might create advertising campaigns for fashion brands, film catwalk shows at fashion week and other fashion events, produce fashion documentaries or come up with your own concepts to put together creative fictional films.

A fashion designer creates clothing, but there’s much more to this job than the ability to sew. Fashion designers also have to be able to analyse trends and create clothing that people want to buy. A fashion designer could be self-employed or work for a brand, where they’ll be tasked with executing that brand’s style identity each season. They might work for a luxury brand, a contemporary brand, or a high street brand.

Fashion marketing is all about promoting a brand or retailer in order to raise awareness and sell products. This can be done through a number of different channels, like social media marketing, newsletters, working with influencers, billboards, content marketing, and more.

Any time you see an advert for a fashion brand, that’s marketing in action. The marketing team for a company also tracks trends and consumer behaviour to analyse and optimize their sales techniques as well as inform business decisions.

Picky about the materials you like to wear and the cut of your clothes? Maybe a career in fabric and garment technology is for you. These roles are concerned with the materials used to make our clothing and the way they are produced. A fabric technologist will ensure that they best materials are sourced for each garment, that they’re dyed, embroidered, and printed correctly, and that the material quality is up to scratch.

A garment technologist’s role is to oversee the production of clothing, liaising between the brand and the manufacturer to ensure the final product reflects the original design and is completed to a high standard. Working between the design and production teams, these roles are very important for fashion brands.

As a fashion event producer, you could be involved in putting on a fashion show or fashion week event, product launches, award ceremonies, and much more. It can be a high-adrenaline, fast-paced career where you’ll be collaborating with many different people to ensure that the event comes together on time and on budget.

Working in the world of editorial means getting to run the behind-the-scenes of a publication, like a magazine, newspaper, or online platform.

Working as an editor is a fast-paced, dynamic role where you’ll be ensuring that content is commissioned, written, and published on time.

If a fashion company was a person, branding would be their wardrobe. A career in branding is all about the visual identity of a brand. This is a big-picture role where you ensure that every touch point a brand has to their customers, like shops, social media, all marketing and events is consistent and communicates your intended message.

Fashion branding covers everything from your logo and fonts to brand colours, store layouts, campaign imagery and more. Working in fashion branding means being able to distil your brand into a few key words and then communicate this in everything you produce.

An art director is the person in charge of how a brand, agency, magazine or other publication communicates its visual identity. Unlike a creative director, whose role is to come up with big-picture ideas, art directors deal with the small details of transforming a concept into a physical product.

They manage a team of creatives, including graphic designers, illustrators, and photographers, and have the final say over campaign imagery, cover design, copy, and page layouts. It’s a highly creative role but it also involves many administrative and managerial tasks to communicate the creative vision of the company while balancing budgets and deadlines.