For anyone who is determined to be a fashion designer，it is not enough to have succeeded in college.The real test is whether they can survive，and become established during their early 20s，making a name for themselves in the real world where business skills can be as important as talent and creativity.
Fashion is a hard business.There is a continuous amount of stress because work is at a constant and extremely fast speed to prepare for the next season’s collections.It is extremely competitive and there is the constant need to make attractive advertisements of the latest fashion in newspapers and magazines.It also requires continual freshness because the appetite for new ideas is hard to satisfy.“We try to warn people before they come to us about how tough it is.” says Lydia Kemeny，Head of Fashion at St.Martin’s School of Art in London.“And we point out that drive and determination are absolutely necessary.”
This may seem far removed from the popular opinions of fashionable young people spending their time designing pretty dresses.That may well be what they do in their first year of study but a good college won’t be slow in introducing students to commercial realities，“We don’t walk our foot on the blossoming flower of creativity but in the second year we start introducing the restrictions of price，producing ability，marketing and so on.”
Almost all fashion design is done to a brief.It is not a form of selfexpression as such，although there is certainly room for imagination and creativity.Most young designers are going to end up as employees of a producer or a fashion house and they still need to be able to work within the characteristic style of their employer.Even those students who are most modern in their own taste of clothes may need to adapt to produce designs which are right for the mainstream of the market.They also have to be able to work at both the expensive and the cheap end of the market and the challenge to produce good design inexpensively may well be demanding.
