Being a Truly Integral Fashion Designer

Last update: 21/06/2025

It took me a long time to find a single word for the concept I always wanted to convey—I kept piling on adjectives—until “integral” finally came to mind.

Whenever I talk to, or watch, a seamstress or a patternmaker at work, I catch their energy and feel pure admiration. The number of details they master, the depth of each one, the manual skill and overall physical talent these professions demand—it’s impossible not to be deeply impressed.
Although I am not a professional seamstress, I have spent years sewing and perfecting techniques, and I find huge pleasure in garment construction as well as in drafting and transforming patterns. I know firsthand the creative independence that comes from owning those skills.

The same holds true when we move to concept development—expressing feelings and turning them into fashion. We blend lines, textures, colours, and emotions to give a design its own non-literal mood and meaning while still meeting a target customer’s needs, relying on solid textile technology knowledge to achieve the desired result. Here again, there is so much to learn, so much to weigh—whether we’re talking illustration, digital design, fully artistic fashion figures, technical sketches, flat drawings, or the spec sheets that underpin a collection or a single style.

Fashion is a vast world packed with thousands of details, which is why these tasks are so often split among different specialists. I have nothing against teaming up with experts; what I strongly oppose is ignoring—or failing to master—the many disciplines bound up in fashion design. I have seen plenty of sketches that omit darts or place a zipper in the wrong spot, or designs that disregard how a fabric behaves and can’t source one that delivers the volume or drape required. To design from a position of strength, you must understand every process. How can a designer’s creativity thrive if they overlook the technologies and methods that bring a concept to life?

For that reason—and for many others I can only touch on briefly here—I argue that becoming an integral designer is the best path. Naturally, we each have greater or lesser talent in different areas, but the deeper we dive into learning, the more strengths we discover. Add to that the need to stay current, as in any profession, and you have one of the things I love most about this field:

…“You never stop learning.”…

Ileana Hernández

Fashion designer, educator and founder of "Anaely Academia", where she guides entrepreneurs with her DPE methodology—Design, Production & Entrepreneurship—helping them create, produce and launch their own fashion brands.