The Fashion Sketches

An understanding of the human body is integral to fashion sketching, which is usually the process of drawing the clothed figure on a stylised human form. To a lay person, fashion sketches can often appear abstract, energetic or even unfinished, but in fact fashion sketches serve different purposes depending on their intended use. A fashion sketch for a pattern maker would normally require a level of detail and finish that might include line drawings of all the seams, darts or even topstitching, while a more personal sketch would not necessarily require such detail if its intended purpose was to convey an initial idea or simply explore a silhouette.

Experimenting with fashion sketching can help you build confidence and develop your drawing skills. All fashion sketches should aspire towards answering a design problem or a brief. Without this context a fashion sketch might be considered little more than a stylish scribble. In fashion terms we can talk of figurative sketches that don’t need to be realistically proportioned to the human form. Most sketches are drawn with a degree of speed and stylisation that is intended to convey a mood or attitude, beyond visually describing the clothes.