Freelance Fashion Designer for Custom Clothing Brands

Choosing a freelance fashion designer or an established fashion design company can be difficult, especially when starting an apparel brand. Fashion startups have limited investment and hope to bring their collection to life with some arrangement. But my friend, some tasks are better done by professionals. Having an excellent apparel design and sketching sense is good. But taking that sketch to the next level is the job of a tech pack designer. So, how do you start your brand with a limited investment? The answer to the question is simple. Follow the process and take one step at a time. Take it or leave it; your design needs to be backed by a solid technical specification. And as a fashion technical designer, I have seen many fail due to their misjudgment.

Brands directly go to a clothing manufacturer and ask them to help produce their design. Just imagine how a clothing manufacturer knows what goes into your mind and what you have visualized. The answer is simple. Source an able freelance fashion designer with ground-level experience in the fashion industry. Trust me, this will take you to the next level quite easily. The skills you should seek are the following: The candidate should be an excellent tech pack designer. Secondly, the candidate should have a creative outlook and can give shape to your idea.

Assessing the Situation For Starting An Apparel Brand

Most articles on the internet talk about “how to become a freelance fashion designer.” I could not get a single article that talks about how to hire one. What parameters measure the capability of a freelance apparel designer? Whether the designer is well equipped and has experience working on your idea, you don’t know. I am talking about this because it is west of your time if they are unfit. Sometimes, a designer is outstanding and has a great portfolio. However, they may not have the domain knowledge of your collection. As we all know, designers specialize in categories like men’s wear, kids’ wear, Intimate wear, and so on. Figuring out if the tech pack designer is the right fit can be challenging. There are more hurdles that we will discuss in detail.

Groundwork Before Hiring a Fashion Designer

Be sure of your collection line sheet. I met many brands that came to me with collection line sheets with unrelated styles: one style of casual wear, one of activewear, and one of party wear. With that kind of mix, you are wasting your time and money. You are not going anywhere. Your brand will not have value, and you will do nothing. My suggestion is to stick to one segment and focus on building your collection around it. Focus on one category and make a collection that people can relate to. And build your brand around this. Finding a freelance fashion designer becomes easy once your collection line sheet is in place. You can figure out who can do your job better and what expertise is necessary to make your idea alive. Choose what works best for you.

How can you hire a freelance designer?

Once you have your line sheet in place, the next step is taking help for design and tech packs. You need a technical fashion designer to streamline your collection for further processing. Your styles raw ideas are not ready for a clothing manufacturer yet. To make your collection production-friendly, you need a designer with technical expertise. So, how do you hire a freelance technical designer with appropriate technical expertise? Here are some of the tips you can use to hire a freelance designer. First, review their portfolio and see if they have done similar work to your category. If you do not find any, move on because the designer may have no experience in your domain. If you find work examples related to your needs, start the talk. Try to determine her expertise by asking questions about fabrics, fits, or other relevant topics.

Tech Pack Design Process Followed By Us

How do freelance fashion designers work?

Once you lock on a few designers, the next step is to figure out their working procedure. Some freelance designers work hourly, while others work on end-to-end assignments. Some designers charge extra for changes or alterations made to the design. For you, gaining clarity on the designer’s working process is essential. Also, you must ensure what you will receive for the money you pay. Therefore, obtaining written confirmation of the details you’ll receive for a design you assign to them is essential. If you are doing a complete factory-ready design, make sure the detailing you get is in the design package. A tech pack (factory-ready prototype of the style) has several details. It includes fabric, color, garment construction, and so on.

You may have the idea but are unclear about what you want, so try to make it perfect with several alterations. In this case, the designer works on the same style several times. Here, hiring a designer on an hourly basis is a good option. Those who work at a fixed rate do not like to make design alterations repeatedly as there is a fixed payment. So, you can decide what you want based on your needs. Go for package rates if you are sure what you want to do with your design.

How much does a fashion designer charge?

A freelance designer charge is more of a subjective way to calculate the cost of a service. The service is creative and has no fixed parameter to measure the cost. So, it would be unfair to give a number. But, at best, we can discuss fashion designers’ highest and lowest pay points. The average yearly income of a freelance designer in the USA is between USD 50,000 and USD 60,000. And if we calculate this into the monthly average, it comes out to be $ 4500 to USD 5000. But, the charge varies depending on the project, location, and other factors. Regarding the hourly rates, the designers charge between USD 75 and USD 140 per hour. The charge variations depend upon complexity, experience, and the designer’s location.

Paying Hourly Rates to Fashion Designers

Talking about hourly rates, experienced freelance designers charge between $ 65 to $ 150. And the designers who are already famous in the industry, charge higher than this. And the new and upcoming freelancers charge between $ 40 to $ 65. As per a survey, hourly rates for sketch artists and illustrators range between $ 25 USD to $ 120 USD. The variation in rates depends on the experience, specialty, etc.

Although there is a vast difference in the pay rates, we can still have a basis for calculating rates. The average weekly working hour is 40 Hours. Now, if a freelancer’s yearly rate comes out to be USD 60,000, the calculation goes like this. The total number of hours a designer can give in a year is 40 X 52 (weeks) = 2080 hours. We get the hourly rate by dividing the yearly income by the number of hours per year. In this case, it is $60,000 / 2080 = 28.9 USD. We can take this roughly USD 30 / Hour. If we compare the average rate of a designer with that of an IT professional, then the comparison is extensive. IT professional gets around $90 – $100 per hour—also, the rate changes depending on location.

The Way Forward

Fashion design has now become very competitive from both ends. The demand for fashion designers and the supply has increased manifold. When there is a lot of work coming for fashion designers, a lot of new designers keep on adding to this field. The oversupply of designers leads to many low-skill and low-pay freelance fashion designers. Startup companies and apparel brands choose this as an option. It leads to low-quality technical packages and lots of errors in apparel production. So, my suggestion is to examine the quality of a freelancer, not the price they quote. Instead, see her past work and portfolio and choose the best that suits your needs.

Support startup Apparel Brands.

For fashion startups, opting for a freelance designer comes in handy. At the same time, you can not be sure that tech packs prepared by freelancers resemble your idea. A designer needs core industry exposure to convert an idea into an actionable blueprint. With this in mind, search for a freelancer with proper industry exposure. In general, startups have limited resources. So working with a big fashion house is not an option for them. So, the only option left is to hire a freelance fashion designer. An excellent freelance fashion designer does the following before a collection design.

Analyze your market trend and give solutions on your styles that appeal to your customers.
Prepare fashion flats and keep tweaking them until they match your expectations.
It helps you choose fabrics and colors for multiple styles and optimize your cost.
Add technicalities to make the idea production-friendly, keeping your design aesthetics intact.
Suggest suitable and readily available quality trims and other accessories.
Suggest suitable clothing manufacturers to the client for sample development and apparel production.
Dealt with the manufacturers and developed cordial relations with them.
Communicate constantly with the client during the tech pack design process.
The designer must make use of appropriate CAD software to prepare vectors.

Hiring Full-Time Designers Vs. Freelance Designers

Most apparel brands find it more cost-effective to use freelancers than an in-house design team. So, they hire freelance apparel designers for their collection design and tech pack. There are two ways of working with freelancers. One is a time-bound and hourly rate, and the other assigns a turn-key project. In both ways, coordination with the clothing designer is vital. You must make sure the clothing designer visualizes your ideas well. It helps prepare fashion technical drawings with the proper specifications required by the style. The technical designer will design the appropriate technical specifications. As a result, it saves a lot of time and money, especially when working hourly. You can give assignments in two ways: partly with sketches to tech packs and then with clothing manufacturing. It is always preferable to assign a complete project if you are a startup brand.

Clothing designers working for brands exclusively focus on one or two particular segments. As a freelance fashion designer, you work with various brands with diverse thought processes and ideas. For example, if you work on means to wear today, you might have to work on denim designs or lingerie. So, opening up to diverse segments and expertise is essential for a clothing designer.

What it Takes to Become a Successful Freelance Designer

For a freelance fashion designer, three things are essential.

1. Create and showcase a fashion portfolio with original designs on various web platforms.
2. Access to pattern designers and manufacturing units in the nearby area.
3. You should set the deal memos right.
4. You must prepare a tech pack for any garment style.

Freelance Designer Supporting Emerging Apparel Brand

I work with designers when I have a heavy workload and delegate work to those who are the best in their field. My first choice is how well the person coordinates with me regarding working. We verify and test tech packs multiple times before sending them to the client. If you know the tech pack, please read the blog post “Stps in Tech Pack Design.” If you want a common-style tech pack template, visit our online store.

To get started, please fill the contact form with basic information about your collection idea so I can learn more about your vision, and tell you about our process and what pricing for your project will look like. We can also setup a WhatsApp call and I can answer any questions that you might have during our call. So Please share your WhatsApp Number so that i can reach you.

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