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FASHION

• Fashion Design Career: Getting Started
• Fashion Journalism: Write Your Own Career Path
• Fashion Marketing: The Trendsetting Business
• Fashion Merchandising: A Career in the Fashion Business
• Fashion Retail Management: Career Training in the Business
• Fashion Visual Merchandising: Career Training for the Style Business
• The Four Hottest Fashion Jobs and the Career Training Information You Need to Get Them

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New York Fashion Schools: Couture Is Just the Beginning

Ask any fashion design insider and she'll tell you: Paris, Milan, and New York are the three most important cities in the world for fashion. In fall and spring of each year, fashion designers, buyers, merchandisers, and managers from around the globe make the pilgrimage to New York City (NYC) to see the classic and avant-garde, sleek and ostentatious designer collections for the upcoming season.

The New York Times counted 257 shows in New York during Fashion Week (which actually lasts around a month) in September, 2007. Many shows are held in the famous tents in Bryant Park, but others are spread out across the city, at art galleries, showrooms, and even nightclubs. Fashion Week is a heady time, filled with runway shows during the day and parties in the evening. Established designers cement their legacies and recent design school grads get the chance to put their burgeoning talents on display for tastemakers.

Even when the Fashion Week hubbub dies down, New York remains a commanding center of fashion and style in the United States. Some of the country's best fashion design schools are located in NYC, and many designers have built their company headquarters and flagship stores there.

New York City Fashion Design: From Couture to Ready-to-Wear

New York City's rise to fashion prominence began near the end of the 19th century, as new technologies increased the speed at which clothing could be produced. New York was a main center of this new manufacturing. According to New York's Lower East Side Tenement Museum, by 1910, 40% of men's clothes and 70% of women's clothes were made in New York City.

Early in New York's history, there were many custom dressmakers producing couture garments for their (mostly wealthy) clients. Styles changed, though, and the less-tailored clothing of the 1920s and '30s did not require precise fits. Most Americans opted for ready-to-wear instead. The demand for ready-to-wear clothing produced in New York continued through the middle of the 1900s. In 1950, one in 10 people in New York City worked in the garment industry. Many of the high-fashion houses in New York City continue to work with local garment producers because they can offer high quality and fast turnaround times.

New York Fashion: Fast Facts

According to the New York Times, New York City has the greatest concentration of fashion designers in the smallest area of the United States.

• Space on the Promenade, in one of Bryant Park's mid-sized white tents, rented for $36,000 per show in 2007
• Fashion and lifestyle publications headquartered in New York City include Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Women's Wear Daily, Lucky, GQ, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, and Vanity Fair
• Contestants on the popular television show "Project Runway" work on their designs at Parsons, the New School for Design in New York City
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that around two-thirds of fashion designers work in either New York or California

Top NYC Fashion Careers:

New York fashion designers bring creative minds and technical skills to their work, which includes designing clothes, shoes, or accessories. Fashion designers face tough competition. Accredited fashion design programs can help young designers to gain a foothold in the industry.

Fashion merchandisers are the businesspeople of the fashion industry, but that doesn't mean they're fashion philistines. They need impeccable taste, a passion for fashion, and a nose for the latest trends. Career training for fashion merchandisers consists of both fashion and business classes.

Fashion retail managers oversee the operations of small NYC boutiques, specialty stores, and department stores. Their responsibilities are wide-ranging, from selecting fashion lines for their stores to tracking sales figures and managing a staff of salespeople.

The Five Hottest New York Designers

The up-and-coming, the powerhouses, and everyone in between.

• Vera Wang started her career as a designer creating wedding gowns, but now her NYC fashion empire has expanded to ready-to-wear and lifestyle goods
• Zac Posen is rapidly transitioning from wunderkind to seasoned designer, thanks to his feminine, figure-hugging dresses favored by the stars
• Michael Kors. Well-known for his biting wit as a judge on "Project Runway," Kors's classic, all-American styles are much beloved
• Marc Jacobs designs luxury handbags and clothing for Louis Vuitton as well as two lines of his own--Marc Jacobs and Marc by Marc Jacobs
• Tracy Reese recently celebrated her label's tenth anniversary, producing feminine, bohemian clothing

Inspiration for New York fashion school students is plentiful. It is no wonder that so many aspiring designers begin their career training in NYC.