Helpful Fashion Design Books
Our Favorite Reads For Summer!
As we Refresh & Renew this Season, we turned to our most recent inspirational & helpful books to kick off our Spring Plans & Projects



In a recent blog post, we suggested ways to find Your North Star. Having a long term vision with your ultimate Why and goal, you can better stay on track to get there. Read our post here. If you're not sure what your North Star is, this book will help you find your true calling
Whether your an adventurist type or not, the 12 Hour Walk is an incredible journey of Colin O'Brian. I loved his story and am planning my 12 hour walk this month! Stay tuned as I will post about how it goes!
Eric Thomas is such an inspiration to thousands of people. HIs childhood story and how he overcame obstacles to find his calling, his power and create his own success. This book gave me a personal power boost- like a good friend who is your biggest cheerleader. I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a good success story!
Helpful Fashion Design Books


This unique resource with 142 swatches and yarns of the most recognized and widely used varieties of fabric encourages consideration of not just fabric’s aesthetic appeal but also their structure, feel and weight. Natural fabrics such as cottons, silks, wools and linens are included, as are a wide range of manmade ones including alternative plant fibers like bamboo and hemp.
With accompanying information on fabrication, weights, and construction, this book will help student fashion designers to make informed textile choices based upon an understanding of raw materials together with the processes that make up a fabric.

This Pattern Making Sketch Book is useful for certain segments of
Dressmakers
Home sewers
Professionals in fashion design
Fashion students
Professors
Industry professionals
Advanced sewists
If you are learning Pattern Making, Pattern Cutting and Sewing, this sketchbook will help you in many ways.

The practical, definitive guide for aspiring fashion designers
Fashion Design Course is a popular and widely praised instructional textbook that over the years has become a god standard for anyone interested in fashion. This must-have design book is the only guide students of fashion need, featuring information about the industry and activities that help students find inspiration, develop techniques to sharpen their observational skills, and create their own design. Separate sections coach readers in getting started, understanding figure proportions, planning and designing garments, and creating and assessing flat specification drawings. This beautifully illustrated guide is organized into units that reflect curricula at leading international design colleges.
Becoming a successful fashion designer involves understanding a wide variety of core principles, but, just like people, fashion is ever-changing. That's why it's so important for designers or students of fashion to recognize newer fashion trends and methods of design in the ever-changing world of style. This edition of Fashion Design Course includes new information for anyone looking to stay up-to-date on the world of men's and women's fashion, including tips on how to:
Manipulate motif, texture, mood, and detail with confidence
Challenge their conceptual abilities
Discover their design vision
Develop their ideas through process and investigation
Create a dynamic portfolio that showcases their design skills and gives them the edge when they're looking for work in this competitive but exciting industry
From inspiration to sketching, stitching to promotion, this is the fashion book. Ideal as a design companion for current students of fashion or as a standalone introduction to the field, Fashion Design Course is the definitive guide for anyone looking to learn and grow in the fashion industry.









What makes Fashion Design for Kids stand out on the runway and from other fashion design books:
Fashion design 101—You'll be ready to take the fashion world by storm with a foundation in the basics: learn what a fashion designer does, how to choose fabrics, how clothes are produced, and so much more.
Creativity-boosting, no-sew exercises—No need to thread the needle just yet as these skill-building exercises, like coming up with cool, new names for classic colors and creating a fashion mood board, can be done in the book.
An inclusive approach—This book includes gender-neutral activities geared toward all creative kids who love fashion.
Fashion Design for Kids is a must-have guide for aspiring fashion designers who want to bring their ideas—and maybe even their own fashion brand—to life!

Bring your inspirations to life by sketching them over the lightly rendered figures reproduced in this helpful journal.
You'll also find templates of heads for hats and make-up designs, and foot templates for shoes.
Contents also include depictions of basic garments to get you started; representations of sample patterns such as pinstripes and herringbone; size equivalents; measurement tips and record; and a fashion glossary.
Paper is acid-free and of archival quality.
Sketch pages are micro-perforated for easy removal.
A ribbon bookmark is included to keep your place.
Use the inside back cover pocket to hold notes, business cards, etc.
The elastic closure secures your journal.
Perfect for fashion design students.
A5 size: 5-1/2'' x 8''.
192 pages.
Sustainability


New to this edition
- Enhanced focus on issues and practices of concern within design and product development processes
- New sidebars, Ideas in Action, focus on an expansion of real world applications and include interviews, case studies and profiles of professionals
-Best Practices at the end of each section feature new examples of contemporary industry practices including The Filippa K. Story, Sri Lanka: A Model of Sustainable Apparel Industry Initiatives, and Peg and Awl: To make things out of nothing
- End-of-chapter discussion questions raise important issues and implications for future development
- New chapters 4, 5, 10, 12 and 15 discuss topics such as social media, social responsibility, technology, cradle to cradle design and design challenges
- Instructor's Guide available
Sustainable Fashion STUDIO
- Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips
- Watch videos that bring chapter topics and concepts to life

Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to traditional chains like JCPenney now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. Retailers are producing clothes at enormous volumes in order to drive prices down and profits up, and they’ve turned clothing into a disposable good. After all, we have little reason to keep wearing and repairing the clothes we already own when styles change so fast and it’s cheaper to just buy more.


An investigation into the damage wrought by the colossal clothing industry and the grassroots, high-tech, international movement fighting to reform it
What should I wear? It’s one of the fundamental questions we ask ourselves every day. More than ever, we are told it should be something new. Today, the clothing industry churns out 80 billion garments a year and employs every sixth person on Earth. Historically, the apparel trade has exploited labor, the environment, and intellectual property—and in the last three decades, with the simultaneous unfurling of fast fashion, globalization, and the tech revolution, those abuses have multiplied exponentially, primarily out of view. We are in dire need of an entirely new human-scale model. Bestselling journalist Dana Thomas has traveled the globe to discover the visionary designers and companies who are propelling the industry toward that more positive future by reclaiming traditional craft and launching cutting-edge sustainable technologies to produce better fashion.
In Fashionopolis, Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling—even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi’s, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the crusade.

This introductory text to sustainability in fashion includes best practice case studies and profiles of companies such as Patagonia, Veja, Christopher Raeburn, and Stella McCartney. It begins with an overview of the fashion business, tackling the issues of the linear production model of make, use, dispose, before exploring the idea of the circular supply chain across all areas of the industry.
Circular Fashion is the must-have book for students, creatives and anyone passionate about sustainability and fashion.

Stylish women everywhere are realizing the environmental damage of fast fashion on the planet and looking for new ways to dress that don't involve cramming the wardrobe with clothes that may never get worn. As Paris-based style-coach Aloïs Guinut explores in this invaulable book, French women have a lot to teach us about how to cherish the planet without sacrificing your style:
- Know what works for you.
- Buy less and buy better.
- Mix vintage items with a few wisely chosen modern pieces.
- Look after what you have and make it last.
- Seek out quality fabrics that don't poison the environment.

With innovative examples of best practice from international designers and brands, the chapters follow each key stage in the life cycle of a fashion garment and explores approaches such as low-impact textiles techniques, mono-materiality, zero waste techniques, upcycling, repair and maintenance techniques and closed-loop design systems.

Clothing is one of the most personal expressions of who we are. In her landmark investigation Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Elizabeth L. Cline first revealed fast fashion’s hidden toll on the environment, garment workers, and even our own satisfaction with our clothes. The Conscious Closet shows exactly what we can do about it.
Whether your goal is to build an effortless capsule wardrobe, keep up with trends without harming the environment, buy better quality, seek out ethical brands, or all of the above, The Conscious Closet is packed with the vital tools you need. Elizabeth delves into fresh research on fashion’s impacts and shows how we can leverage our everyday fashion choices to change the world through style. Inspired by her own revelatory journey getting off the fast-fashion treadmill, Elizabeth shares exactly how to build a more ethical wardrobe, starting with a mindful closet clean-out and donating, swapping, or selling the clothes you don't love to make way for the closet of your dreams.

Illustrated throughout with infographics, photographs and diagrams of creative works, eighteen essays focus on six regions, examining sustainable fashion in the context of local, cultural and environmental concerns. Also included are 18 regional 'Spotlight' sections highlighting the differences and similarities across regions by concentrating on examples of best practice, design innovation and impact on the community.