Fashion is more than just making someone look good. It’s a big and competitive industry where classroom learning is not enough. You need special skills to stand out.
These include smart designing, strong business planning, and new marketing ideas.
Most of all, you need constant motivation and fresh ideas to create unique designs. Books can help you with that!
We found 13 amazing fashion design books that cover everything—from basic skills to fashion business and sustainability.
Let’s check out the best fashion design books that every student, beginner, or designer should read.
Here are our top recommended fashion designing books
1. Draping: The Complete Course
Publishing year: 2013
Author(s): Karolyn Kiisel
This book helps new fashion designers develop basic and advanced draping skills. It starts with draping and advances through pinning, trimming, clipping, creating shapes with darts and tucks, using pleats and gathers to add volume, and handling complex curves.
The book has clear instructions and illustrations that make learning advanced designing techniques easy. It comes with a DVD that makes learning visually interesting and understandable.
Recommended for: Beginners
2. The End of Fashion
Publishing year: 2010
Author(s): Teri Agins
This book is a package of commercial history and business of fashion covering everything from manufacturing to retailing and licencing to financing and image making or branding.
Teri Agins provides the history of all major brands and labels, how they came into the market, an introduction to designers, and brand’s success or failure story. It also covers the fashion industry’s transition from elitist to mass-marketing clothes.
Recommended for: Advanced
3. A Practical Guide To Sustainable Fashion
Publishing year: 2020
Author(s): Dr Alison Gwilt
The book introduces designers to the key issues associated with the production, use, and disposal of fashion clothing. It provides stepwise guidance on identifying and evaluating the potential impact of different garments during the design process. Alison Gwilt guides on how to make fashion more sustainable and better for the environment.
The author has used innovative examples from international designers and brands to help you understand low-impact textile techniques, mono-materiality, zero-waste techniques, upcycling, and closed-loop design systems.
Recommended for: Intermediate
4. Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
Publishing year: 2008
Author(s): Dana Thomas
Dana Thomas has revealed the dark side of luxury fashion brands through this book. What people thought luxury fashion meant, a traditional feel, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience, has now turned into bulk manufacturing by multi-million dollar corporations.
Deluxe uncovers the reality behind the glossy-looking luxury fashion world that attracts anyone interested in fashion, finance, and culture. You will know how luxury brands are using cheap techniques to make more profits.
Recommended for: Intermediate
5. Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design
Publishing year: 2007
Author(s): Deborah Nadoolman Landis
From Kate Hudson’s full-length yellow silk gown in How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days to Kate Winslet’s sequinned, elegant black gown in Titanic, every iconic movie has a signature costume that is remembered for years.
“Dressed” showcases 100 years of Hollywood’s most loved costumes and characters and reveals multiple unpublished costume sketches and photographs. It has original sketches from great movie designers like Adrian, Travilla, and Edith Head that will take you in awe.
Recommended for: Beginner to Advanced
6. The Fashion Designer Survival Guide: Start and Run Your Own Fashion Business
Publishing year: 2008
Author(s): Diane Von Fürstenberg
The Fashion Designer Survival Guide is for someone who is interested in starting their own business. The book suggests how to set up your own fashion label, get a license, create a business plan, arrange finances, source materials, and get your designs on runway shows. You will also learn to use PR and marketing techniques, and work with media and celebrities.
Once you complete fashion designing advanced level courses, it’s time to start your own business, and reading this book will surely benefit you.
Recommended for: Advanced
7. The language of fashion design
Publishing year: 2014
Author(s): Laura Volpintesta
The book shares 26 elements of fashion design that every fashion designer must know. Reading this book is beneficial before you enter into a fashion design course.
It gives you an overview of how different fashion elements can be used in designs, including draping, texture, volume, contrasts, etc. Each fashion element features top designers like Rei Kawakubo for deconstruction and Diane Von Furstenberg for print.
Recommended for: Beginner to Advanced
8. PatternMaking for Fashion Design
Publishing year: 2009
Author(s): Helen Joseph Armstrong
This book is really interesting for beginners, and I always recommend students use it as a reference for pattern-making knowledge. It gives you pattern-making knowledge for men’s and women’s garments, children’s garments, drafting knitwear patterns, swimsuits, and jacket construction.
Armstrong has added everything a beginner needs to know for pattern-making, including three main principles: Dart manipulation, adding fullness and contouring, what tools are necessary, and how to take measurements.
Recommended for: Beginners
Also, get inspired by the creative minds shaping fashion! Explore Top Designers in Kolkata and discover trendsetters redefining style and innovation.
9. A Field Guide to Fabric Design
Publishing year: 2011
Author(s): Kimberly Kight
If you want to design on fabrics or textiles, this book can be your guide. It covers the basics of fabric designs, including the types of motifs, designs, and color contrasts, creating repeats, and printing on fabric.
A Field Guide to Fabric Design has two parts. The first Design and Colour section trains you on creating repeating patterns by hand and on the computer. The second Printing section trains you on how to transfer those designs to fabric, including block printing, screen printing, and digital printing techniques.
Recommended for: Beginners
10. The Business of Fashion: Designing, Manufacturing, and Marketing
Publishing year: 2011
Author(s): Leslie Davis Burns, Kathy K. Mullet, Nancy O. Bryant
This book is about designing, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of fashion products globally. If you are someone who wants to start your own fashion label or learn about fashion marketing, this book can help you.
It contains research-based content providing valuable fashion industry insights, the operation of textiles, accessories, and apparel, and the effect of technological, organizational, and global changes on the fashion industry.
Recommended for: Advanced
11. 9 Heads: A Guide to Drawing Fashion
Publishing year: 2012
Author(s): Nancy Riegelman
Anyone interested in textiles, costumes, or crafts can read 9 Heads. It examines the fascinating symbolism behind patterns and motifs used in embroidered textiles from different places, like Ghanaian patchwork or Egyptian head shawls. You get a glossary and dictionary of stitches to learn unique designs and understand different complex terms.
Recommended for: Intermediate
12. Textiles and Fashion: From Fabric Construction to Surface Treatments
Publishing year: 2023
Author(s): Jenny Udale
It illustrates the integration of textile design with fashion, showing ways to use fiber, fabric construction, and surface treatments within a garment.
You will start with knowing the history of textiles in fashion, and understand the link with technical innovation and social development. The next part of the book teaches you about the process of textile design, fiber production, dyeing, finishing techniques, and surface treatments.
This edition also covers smart textiles and 3D printing, interviewing details with fashion designers on how they use textiles in their designs.
Recommended for: Advanced
13. Color: How to use it
Publishing year: 2013
Author(s): Marcie Cooperman
Fashion designers can learn in-depth color theory here, how each color interacts, and how they can manipulate their design. This book isn’t popular yet, but it can be a great reference resource to understand what color elements can illustrate your idea or emotions behind the design. Proper use of color enhances the overall look of your designs.
Recommended for: Beginners
Final Words
I suggest reading all of these books to understand different aspects of fashion. You will learn a lot during your course and gain practical knowledge during your internships or jobs, but these books will guide you at every step.
I believe it is always good to read new things that aren’t included in your academic syllabus but are essential to survive in the fashion industry.
The KFDI team is a group of fashion education experts and career counselors with 5+ years of experience. We’ve helped over 800 students find the right fashion design courses and build strong careers. Trusted across Kolkata, we offer honest advice, course matching, and placement support—partnering with top institutes to ensure every student succeeds in the fashion industry.