Fashion design is one of the most evergreen careers in the world where opportunities are always alive. India is a buzzing hub of experienced as well as new fashion designers with a rich culture of telling stories with style.
Whether you are a hobby-designer, or a student trying to get better at your skill, short courses and certifications in fashion design will always benefit you in the competitive fashion industry.
We’ve made a list of 10 courses where you can learn fashion design from the best or even turn your hobby into a career.
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1. The Designer’s Class
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The Designer’s Class has an online fashion design programme that has India’s leading fashion designers teaching various courses on the fashion industry.
Pros: It is taught by leading fashion designers like Masaba Gupta, Arpita Mehta, Kunal Rawal, Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla. Hence these are experienced, quality lessons and classes.
You also get a certificate after completing course work and achieving a good score. After this, you will be eligible for internship with established designers after your portfolio is screened.
Cons: It is a paid course. You do not have a course instructor you can clear doubts with. Course materials will be available for only 1 year, after which you need to re-purchase courses to complete them.
Refunds are also not possible on this platform.
2. Coursera
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Opened by Stanford professors in 2012, Coursera is your go-to MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) for online courses in any field, and fashion designing is not an exception.
You can access various courses of your suitable duration like Sustainable Fashion, Digital Fashion Innovation, Fashion Systems, Management of Fashion and Luxury Companies etc.
Pros: Some of the courses are Coursera free online courses. You can access courses offered by prestigious American institutions like Duke University, Carnegie Mellon University and Columbia University.
Coursera certificates add value to your CV. Financial aid is available for students who cannot afford expensive certifications.
Cons: Most Coursera courses are not free, and degree certificates cost a lot. Beginner-level courses offered are often not for students fresh into the subject. It requires a preliminary knowledge of fashion design.
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3. Aditya Centre of Excellence
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One of the best institutes for Skill Development Training in India, Aditya Centre of Excellence (ACE) offers affordable, quality education and training in various Fashion Design Courses.
It has mainly 3 courses: Fashion Design Intensive, Apparel Merchandising and Embroidery and Fashion Craft which trains students extensively for various job roles like
- Fashion Designer
- Apparel Merchandiser
- Hand Embroider
Pros: ACE offers carefully curated training programmes based on the current demands of the industries and market trends. The courses are NSDC (National Skill Development Corporation) qualified. It is the best option for fashion designing courses after 12th.
Courses are offered in hybrid mode i.e., both online and offline. So, students have an opportunity to interact with instructors as well as clear doubts and queries. This helps them have the best of both online learning and offline instruction.
Cons: These are short-term 6-9 months long courses that focus on job training. So, it is suitable for students looking for employment opportunities.
4. Udemy
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Udemy is currently one of the largest online learning platforms in the world. It offers a wide selection of courses in Fashion Design on its online platform. These certifications can help you boost your knowledge and expertise in the subject.
You can access Udemy courses from a diverse range of Fashion Design subjects like Clo3D for Beginners, How To Create A Fashion Collection and Launch Your Own Brand, Sketching for Beginners etc.
Pros: Courses are clearly listed, with a separate ‘Beginner Favourites’ section so that beginners can easily access entry-level courses. Every course you purchase will be accessible for lifetime.
They also have a 30-day refund policy if you are not satisfied with a course.
Cons: Most of the courses on the platform are not free. Further, Udemy free courses do not offer any certificate.
The Udemy certificate provided on completing paid courses is not officially accredited. Hence, these are not recognised by employers and Udemy certificates do not add to your CV.
5. Domestika
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Domestika claims to be the largest online community for creatives where you can access courses by the best professionals. This online platform started off as a social media platform for creative people, helping them with job opportunities. It offers over 80+ courses in fashion designing and Jewellery Design.
They have various exciting courses in Fashion Design like Introduction to Adobe Illustrator for Fashion Design, Sewing Machine 101: Make Your First Dress, Introduction to Fashion Design, Creating Your Own Fashion Brand and so on.
Pros: This is the best platform to learn fashion design basics for hobbyists and design students who want to better their skills.
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The content is high-quality, and the demonstrative courses give you actual hands-on training to various aspects of fashion designing like dressmaking, accessory design and even software like Clo3D and Cinema4D.
Cons: The courses are not free of cost, and the job opportunities listed by the platform are located in Spain, with few remote job opportunities. Most course content is available only in Spanish with subtitles in various languages including English.
6. Learn From Manish Malhotra
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Ever dreamt of learning fashion design from the maestro, Manish Malhotra? Well, now you can make that dream come true on this online platform.
Learn From Manish Malhotra is an exclusively online fashion design course where the designer himself shares experiences, insights and lessons in fashion design. You can cover all the necessary modules in fashion designing including costume design, bridal wear, men’s and women’s wear, fashion week etc.
Pros: The course duration of 52 weeks does justice to the lofty nine modules in fashion design that it aims to complete.
The certificate is certified by the Inter National Institute of Fashion Design (INIFD) which has partnered with the premier fashion design school, London School of Trends (LST).
And the obvious advantage is that the course is taught by the designer himself, who brings you experience gained from 27 years in the fashion industry working for movies, pop stars, royal families and fashion shows.
Cons: The course is pricey with each module priced at Rs. 999. The entire course material is online and the course fee cannot be refunded. The only method available to clear doubts is through a lucky draw where a student is selected every 10 days to attend a LIVE interaction with Manish Malhotra.
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7. Skillshare
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Skillshare is a paid online platform where students can access thousands of creative classes including fashion designing courses.
The platform has a number of interesting courses in fashion design including Painting with Watercolors: From Inspiration to Fashion Illustration, Adobe Illustrator for Fashion (CAD II), Fashion Drawing etc.
Pros: You can access detailed course info for every course, helping you decide on the quality and expertise promised by the course. It is based on a monthly/yearly subscription to access unlimited number of courses.
These are also taught by notable instructors who are established in their field of work, be it CAD or sketching.
Cons: Some of the courses are as short as 10 minutes while others can be more than an hour long. Compared to other intensive courses, these are very short-duration instructive courses.
8. EdX
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As far as certificate credibility goes, EdX courses are the best MOOC courses out there. This platform has partnered with prestigious institutions like Harvard and Berkeley University, to help you gain the skills you need in fashion designing.
EdX courses have an option of giving you a free-of-cost Audit Track of courses which have limited access to materials and do not give you a certificate on completion. The Verified Track, which is available for a price, gives you the entire course benefits along with graded assignments and exams.
Pros: You get a verified certificate on completing your course, taught by professors from reputed international universities. You can also access EdX support to get answers to your questions.
What if you’re unsure about the course you purchase? This platform also has a 14-day refund policy, allowing you to leave a course within that time and get full refund.
Cons: EdX has very few courses available for fashion design which include Sustainable Fashion, Circular Fashion and Future Trends of Fashion and Textiles. Moreover, the Verified Track registration is too expensive for an online-level certification.
9. Master Class
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Master Class is yet another exciting online platform where you can access quality classes in a specific field taught by reputed instructors or celebrity professionals.
You can access courses like Building a Fashion Brand, Fashion Design and Creative Collaboration and Fashion which are taught by expert fashion line founders and designers from all over the world.
--> Also read: 20 Questions That Every Aspiring Fashion Designer Has
Pros: For a monthly payment, one can access all the courses available on the platform. It has a 30-day free refund policy, which allows you to quit your subscription suppose you didn’t find any of the content useful.
Cons: Considering the small number of courses on fashion design, each only 2-4 hours long, getting a monthly subscription only for learning fashion design may be pointless and expensive.
10. University of Fashion
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If you’re looking for an online platform entirely dedicated to teaching aspects of fashion design, University of Fashion is the perfect option.
It has hundreds of step-by-step available at a monthly/yearly subscription. The lessons are separated into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels so that students know their level of expertise as the course proceeds. Some of the courses available are Draping, Pattern-Making, CAD Fashion Art etc.
Pros: Despite the online mode, the platforms answers questions and clears doubts on a daily basis “even on weekends” as their website specifies. You can receive a University of Fashion certificate upon finishing the course, which is valuable to your CV.
Cons: There is no fixed schedule to complete the coursework, hence students are not compelled to finish work within a fixed amount of time.
Online VS Hybrid Fashion Design Courses
Learning Fashion Design is a highly practical and demonstrative work which cannot be achieved completely online.
Online learning has its benefits because students get a closer view of demonstrative work like sewing, sketching, fashion illustration, CAD etc. But the real-time benefits of Fashion Design Lab or studio is very important for students.
This is why Aditya Centre of Excellence (ACE) is one step ahead with a unique hybrid mode of teaching i.e., it incorporates online and offline learning into a unique and intensive syllabus.
This way, students can access a portion of the syllabus from the comfort of their home and still have access to instruments and fashion tools, meet instructors regularly and clear doubts and queries. This leads to an overall holistic and fruitful education.
The Apparel, Made-Ups And Home Furnishing is a skill section at ACE that enables students to emerge as Fashion Designers, Apparel Merchandiser or Hand Embroiderer.
What are you waiting for? Join now.
