The First Steps of Fashion Design: From Concept to Illustration

Creating rapid fashion illustrations is one of the most important skills needed for a fashion designer to convey the themes, shapes, and textures of their garments in the most efficient way possible. When building an entire collection time is often of the essence, so it is essential to accurately represent your ideas on paper - beautifully - without wasting any effort.

We started Bellavance after graduating from Parsons School of Design and we have been fortunate enough to have our brand featured in top editorial outlets like Style.com and retail shops like Opening Ceremony. Long before our pieces are featured on pages or shelves, however, they start out as concepts through sketch and illustration.

What You'll Learn in This Class:

Fashion illustration is something we at Bellavance use constantly in order to display our design concepts and communicate with our team and manufacturers. We are often in situations where we need to churn out these hand drawn representations of our garments rather quickly, so it is important to know specific shortcuts and tricks that allow us to focus on what is of utmost importance- the clothing. We’ll cover:

• Basic Fashion Body: How to sketch essential poses quickly.
• Detailing: Shortcuts for representing hands, feet, and hair with simple lines.
• Fabric Rendering: How to convey the weight and texture of fabrics using washes and movement lines.

What You'll Do in This Class:

You'll be able to apply these skills immediately to your own project: creating a set of three fashion illustrations you can share with your classmates for feedback.

If you're a designer yourself, use your own designs; if not, feel free to illustrate designs from your favorite runway show.