Fashion Job Categories — Page 10

Page 10 is a shorter, deeper page: three groups only, and two of them are design and production at their most specialized. Design is outerwear in four market versions — Juniors, Men’s, Women’s and Youngmens — plus Packaging Design, Plus Size Clothing Designer, Private Label Designer and the two product development entries, general and engineer. Time to get a good job: these are roles where a single product category is a whole career.

The miscellaneous group is three vice presidents — Operations, Human Resources and Licensing — and production is sourcing and textile craft: Sourcing Manager and the sourcing vice presidents, Spec Technician and Size Spec Development, Swimwear Pattern Maker and Swimwear Production Planner, and the textile bench of Tailor, Textile Lab Manager, Textile Screen Printer, Textile Test Auditors, Trim Developer and T-shirt Printer.

One Category, Whole Careers

Outerwear shows why this index separates roles that sound alike. An outerwear designer for juniors and one for young men work to different fits, price points and styling references than a women’s outerwear designer, and each description treats its market separately; private label design, also here, answers a different brief again — designing to a retailer’s own brand rather than a designer label. Reading the four outerwear entries side by side is the quickest way to see how market segment changes a design job.

The production group pairs the commercial end of sourcing with bench craft: sourcing managers and vice presidents negotiate and place production, while spec technicians, lab managers and test auditors make sure what arrives matches the specification that was bought. The Tailor, returning here in the production group after the tailoring path described on page 1, represents the hand skill the whole system still depends on for samples and corrections.