<p>Interested in both. I love fashion, love business. What should I do to fulfill both aspects? I was thinking of attending FIDM and and concurrently receive a B.A. in Bus Mgmt from them. But I'm not sure whether I should get my BA first from another school (any UC specifically) and then attend fashion school, OR --> attend fashion school and get my BA in bus mgmt from them, OR --> fashion school and then go after my BA. Currently I have about 35 units completed, GE mostly, some count as pre-reqs for bus mgmt as well.</p>
<p>Ideas/suggestions, I want them!!</p>
<p>Is your home state Cal? What is your EFC? What can you parents afford?</p>
<p>Yes sir, Sacramento, California. EFC I’m not too sure, and my dad just put my older brother through USC. Lets put it this way –> my dad won’t be able to pay much out of his own pocket, any school (UC or not) beyond community college, I’ll have to get a loan/grant/something of the sort</p>
<p>I personally would not commit to a school like fidm unless you really know what fashion design consists of(on the job, if you don’t ask around, because it’s not what most people think). If I were you, and if you could get in, I’d look at doing business at usc, and take side classes at a local community college, a mile or two north of USC called LA Trade Technical College. They have a program in fashion design that will teach you the skills, and at $20-26(i don’t know how much it is these days) per unit, itll save you thousands on a fashion design education, the equivalent of fidm.</p>
<p>There’s also cal states, that have fashion design, or might be called apparel design at some schools. San Francisco state, and Cal Poly Pomona come to mind. No uc’s offer fashion design. </p>
<p>But my overall suggestion is please please go for business first or whatever type of major, and maybe consider adding fashion design on the side at the community college level. I say this because its not worth getting into a ton of debt for a trade like fashion design because frankly the industry doesn’t pay well, and when community colleges around the nation and in california are offering the education at thousands cheaper its a smarter choice.</p>
<p>Wow, good reply!! lol, I talked to my dad as well, hes like you might as well do business first then fashion because if fashion goes all bad, at least I have something to fall back on. Appreciate the wise words!!</p>
<p>Also, I was just thinking about this within the last hour. Fashion is a business first and foremost. Even if you were to become a designer for a company, you’ll most likely designing what the company wants you to design or what will sell, which is not necessarily always something you might like. From my experience, it seems like once you enter the industry as a designer, you get stuck designing whatever your first job places you in. For example, if your first job out of school is designing knit junior tops, guess where your experience will be? Guess what will happen when you try finding another job at another company, they’ll only want you as a knit junior tops designer, or something with knit tops, unless of courses you want to start at the bottom again and build in whatever specialty you want, which is very unlikely because you don’t really get to choose when theres hundreds or at least thousands of designers looking for a job, and who will take a job at a low wage(which is why wages are low in fashion design)</p>
<p>With business at least, you can enter the buying side, the sales side(representing clothing lines and being responsible for getting as many buyers to want your clothing), there’s also advertising, there’s also design room management, etc. A degree in business is more flexible than a degree in design. Once you’re in the business side of industry and actually getting paid a decent salary(in contrast to low salaried paid designers) you can really get a feel if you want to design or not.</p>
<p>My son has a similar dilemma and has decided to solve it in an unusual way. He will study in Tokyo, in Japanese. Japan has a number of really great fashion programs and, in general, private school tuition is cheaper there. He will start out at a four-year international college as a business major and work on his Japanese. He will take one fashion class at night each term at a nearby fashion college. After about a year or so, he will decide if this is “enough fashion education”. If not, he will put his BA on hold and attend fashion design school full-time. He also hopes to intern as much as possible in Tokyo, hopefully with his favorite brands / design houses.
In case any forum readers are interested, three great fashion design schools in Tokyo are Bunka ***usoku Daigaku, Mode Gakuen, and Vantan Institute. They are Japanese-language based technical schools, not BA programs.</p>
<p>There are rigorous, high-level fashion colleges in other areas of Asia, and fluency gained in Chinese wouldn’t hurt anyone interested in fashion! You would want to build in an extra year to your college plan to bring your language skills up to a minimum level.</p>