Designing Your Own Fashion Studio

 Fashion students, tailors and professional fashion designers benefit from having a location solely dedicated to storing their equipment and fabrics, where they can work on their designs and ideas and bring their creative musings to life. Fashion studios can be used for a variety of projects, from the initial stages of design to creating the finished article. The creation of a piece will start with sketches, drawings and scrapbooking ideas, and will move to creating concepts or patterns on a dolly or sampling different fabrics. The next stage is the make up of a pattern in fabric, to sewing or printing and finally to trying the creation on a model. All of these crucial steps are carried out in a fashion studio that will contain a huge range of equipment, such as sewing machines, screen printing boards and dollies for displaying or working on items of clothing.

Size of the studio

Depending on the specific use of a fashion studio the size required can vary widely, but at the very least a fashion studio will need to accommodate a large desk for drawing designs and for working on large pieces of fabric. A fashion studio will also be home to a sewing machine(s) and include storage for a huge range of different materials, including fabrics, threads, buttons, ribbon, printing inks, pins and needles, and storage for finished items. A studio will also often incorporate an area for sewing and a separate area for printing or for working with spray or fabric paints.

Storage

When designing a fashion studio, practicality has to come first, but this doesn’t have to compromise style. In each case, choose items of furniture that will make the most of the space and that are easy to use and to clean. Plastic stacking shelves are great for an economical way to store lots of different items. If a clear plastic is chosen, it also makes it easy to locate different items or fabrics. It’s important to use the space really well by choosing furnishings that don’t take up too much room. A key item to source is a suitable desk. This can be an expensive purchase, but by sticking to something practical and durable, it will last a long time, provide a surface for multiple uses, and provide a good return on investment.

Floor coverings

When considering floor coverings, there are plenty of options to choose from. Anything that can easily be cleaned is a good choice, such as vinyl or carpet tiles, but fitted carpet and rugs are generally avoided as they are less practical: it is easy to lose pins in the pile, or stain or mark them.

Window coverings

Window coverings are another consideration, made easier by thinking about the times of day that the fashion studio will be used. Curtains can be impractical and blinds or shutters are less fussy and easier to clean. The B&Q shutters gallery has lots of ideas on how a fashion studio could look if shutters were to be incorporated into the design.