Fashion marketing, beyond fashion design

Some people have asked me about my career, well, more exactly they’ve talked to me looking for advice, How’s the career?, How’s the University? Will a get a job in the real world?, What can I work at?, What’s the difference between “Fashion communication and marketing” and “Fashion design”? Do I have to sew? Anyway, a lot of other questions, so I decided to write this post, to help you make it clearer someway, while you graduate from the High School or to help you decide what to study if you are interested in the fashion world.

I’ll start telling you my story, I was always passionate about fashionm maybe secretly and I never showed it off, It wasn’t until I finished High school that I shout it out to the world that I wanted to study FASHION. In general, parents are so skeptical when it comes to this kind of careers cause they have the same questions you’ve done to me, specially if we talk about job opportunities and money when the career is over. We’ve got to know that the fashion in Colombia is not seen as a formal work yet, just like it’s the artistic or musical case.

I began studying Fashion design, I can’t deny I liked it at first, but I wasn’t feeling completely fine, there’s this cultural thought that fashion is nothing but design, and it’s absolutely false, even though we know there aren’t so many study options for this industry in Colombia, cause there’s this lack of choices in the industry. I did two semesters and well.. It was not what I was expecting, not at all, I wanted to work in fashion, but I didn’t want to draw or sew, it’s a beautiful art, but it’s just not for me.

Thereby, I had the opprotuniy to find “Fashion marketing and communications” in LCI Bogota, that summarized, has  EVERYTHING to do with fashion but design, I mean events production, merchandising, visual merchandising, communication, editorials, styling, production, fashion writing, anyway, there’s this world of infinite possibilities to work on this career that you will discover along it, so there’s nothing to worry about, it’s not necessary to start with prior knowledge just to learn it all in the end, all you need is passion, discipline and constancy.

At the start you’ll think it’s not easy and you won’t be able to make it, but you must not have that kind of thoughts, because believe me, there are awesome things in this career that make you change your mind from being you study or work, to become your hobby, the one you’ll do for a living, and of course our hobbys will always be our favourites moments, so if you’re going to see it this way, with exams of the runways and Chanel concepts, why not?

Let’s now talk about another topic that’s really important, how the university works, because you’ll only find this career on LCI Bogota, there are other universities that have similar names but are focused on costume design, so don’t let yourself be confused. In the university, if you begin without prior knowledge you can learn to work perfectly the Adobe programmes, like Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign, and if you want you can learn the other programmes too, additionally, languages are pretty important, specifically english, and if you talk it fluently you can learn French, Italian or Portuguese.

The university works on quarters, like three semesters each year, so… yeah you’ve got holidays, but I tell you again, from my experience that’s not a big deal from the second quarter forward, when you start to love and value your money and studies, because there’s this discipline that make you think that you’re not losing your money and, that those 4 months are what you’ll do in a whole year on any other university, so you can be sure that here you won’t lose your money and that holidays stop being 3 months to 2 weeks, but you’ll get used to it. you’ll realise that’s enough time so you don’t forget anything and you won’t come back lazy, there’ll be more constancy, and that’s something that has been really useful and that I’m thankful of everyday in my work life, because those who know me, also know how much I love to be working and to never stop.

Also, I thinks there’s another important topic, and it’s about work, in my opinion I think it’s all about yourself, without putting aside what thanks to Sandra Merchan, the career head director, you can get excelent opportunities, international internships like Wang or Marc Jacobs and jobs at great places and colombian media enterprises for example. My recommendation for you is to start working while you’re are studying, step by step, start to create projects, goals, start to discover what you want to do, that’s whast gonna help you when you go out to the real world.

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