Whether you are enrolled in a fashion design program or are dabbling in design, the software associated with this ever-growing industry is an incredible resource and tool. Good fashion design software allows your ideas and sketches to come to life. It can also allow you to share, save and change your designs as your creative juices flow.

Uses for Fashion Design and Production Software

Fashion design software works well for those who have the vision but don’t fare well with a pen and paper when it comes to design. It can organize your ideas and allow you to explore fabrics, stitches, drape and more.

A good software program in the right hands can propel your career or help students navigate tough coursework or a heavy class load as they work toward a degree.

Digital Fashion Pro

This software is ideal for those who excel at design but stumble when it comes to drawing or bringing the idea to life on paper. The complete system of training, digital fabrics and hundreds of customizable clothing templates lets you create professional sketches of your fashion designs.

Digital Fashion Pro has hundreds of customizable clothing templates and digital fabrics for users to manipulate. It’s one of the easier fashion design programs to use for beginners.

Dress Assistant Fashion Design Software

For those who are just getting started, Dress Assistant offers a user-friendly interface. Items of clothing in the program can be mixed and matched to create unique outfits. It comes with a variety of cloth designs that are sorted by class and season to make matching fabric weights and colors easy.

The program is more for creating fashionable looks rather than designing dresses, trousers, blouses or skirts from scratch.

Kaledo by Lectra

This renowned fashion-forward software company continually creates cutting-edge programs for a diverse community of users. The company’s Kaledo product combines both personal and professional aspects of the fashion industry for aspiring designers. Users can create high-quality clothing designs for a wide range of uses, from classwork to personal use and catwalks to photo shoots.

While it is on a professional level, it is easy for beginners to get started and make headway in creating and organizing their fashion designs.

Virtual Fashion Program

Fun and user friendly, Virtual Fashion software provides a wide range of customization options. Create individual pieces of clothing in a variety of styles with a quick and easy-to-use interface. The typical user is new to fashion design software and uses the program for personal use, but professionals have used it as a quick and effortless way to build a clothing line that can be viewed in 3D by professors, clients or potential employers.

Adobe Illustrator for Fashion Fiends

It wouldn’t be a complete list without the tried-and-true Adobe Illustrator. It has been used by fashion design students for years and continues to top lists of the best fashion design and patternmaking software. It isn’t as easy to use as newer programs, but it covers a wide variety of designing needs, from sketching and patternmaking to the hue of the cloth and details of the fabric choice.

Free Fashion Design Software for Beginners

Edraw, a relatively new fashion design and production software, allows for a 30-day free trial. Users can create clothes from scratch in this program that is ideal for beginners. They can try their designs on a variety of body types with the preloaded models and mannequins.

Sync Software for Busy Designers

If you have a narrow niche, Sync’s fully integrated product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning apparel software system can be a time-saving tool for your design arsenal. The 22 modules are intended specifically for the apparel and footwear industry. They manage the product from conception to completion.

It is one of the most comprehensive ERP software systems for apparel and has more than 25 systems for creating and organizing, including:

  • QuickBooks
  • ShipStation
  • Shopify
  • Magento
  • Xero
  • Sage
  • MS Dynamics

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