Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction, and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by diverse cultures and different trends and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. They can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."

Fashion designers work in a variety of ways when designing their pieces and accessories such as rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and clothes. Due to the time required to put a garment out on the market, designers must anticipate changes to consumer desires. Fashion designers are responsible for creating looks for individual garments, involving shape, color, fabric, trimming, and more.

Fashion designers attempt to design clothes that are functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. They consider who is likely to wear a garment and the situations in which it will be worn, and they work with a wide range of materials, colors, patterns, and styles. Though most clothing worn for everyday wear falls within a narrow range of conventional styles, unusual garments are usually sought for special occasions such as evening wear or party dresses.

Some clothes are made specifically for an individual, as in the case of haute couture or bespoke tailoring. Today, most clothing is designed for the mass market, especially casual and everyday wear, which are commonly known as ready to wear or fast fashion.

There are different lines of work for designers in the fashion industry. Fashion designers who work full-time for a fashion house, as 'in-house designers, create designs owned by the company and may either work independently or as a part of a design team. Freelance designers who work for themselves sell their designs to fashion houses, directly to shops, or to clothing manufacturers. There are quite a few fashion designers who choose to set up their labels, which offers them full control over their designs. Others are self-employed and design for individual clients. Other high-end fashion designers cater to specialty stores or high-end fashion department stores. These designers create original garments, as well as those that follow established fashion trends. Most fashion designers, however, work for apparel manufacturers, creating designs of men's, women's, and children's fashions for the mass market. Large designer brands that have a 'name' as their brand such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Justice, or Juicy are likely to be designed by a team of individual designers under the direction of a design director.

Garment design includes components of "color, texture, space, lines, pattern, silhouette, shape, proportion, balance, emphasis, rhythm, and harmony". All of these elements come together to design a garment by creating visual interest for consumers.

Fashion designers work in various ways, some start with a vision in their head and later move into drawing it on paper or on a computer, while others go directly into draping fabric onto a dress form, also known as a mannequin. The design process is unique to the designer and it is rather intriguing to see the various steps that go into the process. Designing a garment starts with patternmaking. The process begins with creating a sloper or base pattern. The sloper will fit the size of the model a designer is working with or a base can be made by utilizing standard size charting.

Three major manipulations within patternmaking include dart manipulation, contouring, and added fullness. Dart manipulation allows for a dart to be moved on a garment in various places but does not change the overall fit of the garment. Contouring allows for areas of a garment to fit closer to areas of the torso such as the bust or shoulders. Added fullness increases the length or width of a pattern to change the frame as well as fit of the garment. The fullness can be added on one side, unequal, or equally to the pattern.