Fashion Graduate 102- Portfolio
One of my earliest frustrations after graduating from fashion school, was wondering what to put in my portfolio. How should it be structured? What are employers looking for? I didn't have anyone at the time to ask for help and the internet was still not as robust a resource as it is today.
In my last post I talked about how to network effectively. If your lucky enough to click with some people, ask to see their portfolios or see if they already have one online. This is a great way to figure out what types of work samples employers want to see.
If your college is on point, you will hopefully have graduated with a bunch of work you can start showing to employers. In my case, I had lots of nice hand sketches, water color renderings, bag samples I made, and some computer line work. These looked good, but they were not the work samples employers were wanting to see. If you are thinking, like I did, that employers can glean your abilities from work samples, even if they are not the exact ones they are looking for- think again. In other words, don't expect an employer to see your senior thesis project look book and realize your creative and can sketch. One mistake I see students make is that they put a lot of work into a beautiful and impressive portfolio that doesn't showcase any of the skills employers are looking for in entry level designers.
Part of the reason I see this happens is because the fashion college doesn't have a focus on the skills employers are looking for in 'jobbing designers', so students don't realize their portfolios are missing something. Instead colleges prepare students to be creative directors out the gate. For accessories design, this means I get students who can make bags and style photoshoots, but when I'm looking for an assistant, I need someone who can CAD and help me stay organized. Remember, no one is going to hire a recently graduated designer to start designing a line from scratch and that the bulk of design jobs are not with well known brands. So what are most employers hiring entry level designers to do? This is the question to ask yourself when curating your portfolio to land you a job.
My advice is to look at other portfolios from professionals in your product category. Behance is a great resource for this, as well as Coroflot. For accessories design, I would like to see lots of CAD sketching, some spec work, round it out with a mood board and color palette. Pattern and graphic placement work is great too. If you have finished samples pictures, put them in too, but remember most of the job is everything that comes before the sample is made. If your have work samples from an internship, make sure those are in your portfolio. (That is the most valuable thing you can get from an internship BTW.) Anything you can include to give your employer confidence that you have the skills to do the job and show them you are reliable, is a plus.
What has been your experience putting together for your first job interviews in design?
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