The Fashion Designer Survival Guide: Start and Run Your Own Fashion Business

If you're going to make it as a fashion designer with your own line or label, you need more than inspiration and creativity-you also need business know-how. In The Fashion Designer Survival Guide, Mary Gehlhar, industry authority and consultant to hundreds of designers, offers behind-the-scenes advice for independent designers.

In this must-have guide, Gehlhar reveals essential information on where to find financing, as well as how to market, manufacture, and distribute your creations. You'll also hear from dozens of young designers like Zac Posen and Keanan Duffty and industry veterans like Donna Karan and Tommy Hilfiger about their greatest disappointments and their most exciting successes.

In this fully revised and updated edition, you will also learn to: Create a viable business plan, Find the best sources for fabric and materials, Brand your label and get your designs into stores-and customers' closets, Produce a runway show that will get results.