Designing, making, fitting, and selling clothes, shoes, hats, and fabrics, from runways to costume shops.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Fashion Creative Director: Sets the vision for every collection at a fashion brand and leads its design team. Typical pay $160k.
Costume Designer: Designs the clothing characters wear in movies, TV shows, theater, and theme parks. Typical pay $110k.
Apparel Product Development Manager: Guides a garment from sketch to store, managing factories, costs, materials, and timelines. Typical pay $115k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Fashion Designer: Designs clothing and accessories, from sketches to finished garments. Typical pay $80k.
Textile Designer: Designs the patterns, prints, and weaves on fabrics for clothing, furniture, and home goods. Typical pay $65k.
Apparel Technical Designer: Makes sure clothes fit right by writing precise specifications and fixing fit problems. Typical pay $82k.
Fashion Patternmaker: Turns design sketches into the paper or digital patterns used to cut fabric. Typical pay $62k.
Fashion Buyer: Chooses which clothes, shoes, and accessories a store or website will sell. Typical pay $70k.
Merchandise Planner: Uses data to decide how much of each product to make and where to send it. Typical pay $75k.
Trend Forecaster: Predicts which colors, styles, and materials people will want one to three years from now. Typical pay $75k.
Fashion Stylist: Chooses outfits for photo shoots, celebrities, ads, music videos, and clients. Typical pay $55k.
Handbag & Accessories Designer: Designs handbags, wallets, belts, hats, and other accessories for fashion brands. Typical pay $78k.
Knitwear Designer: Designs sweaters and knitted clothing, including the stitch patterns and yarns, for brands or for hand-knitters. Typical pay $72k.
Fashion Show Producer: Plans and runs runway shows: the venue, set, lighting, music, models, and the minute-by-minute show schedule. Typical pay $75k.
Fashion Wholesale Account Executive: Sells a fashion brand's collections to department stores and boutiques from a showroom or trade shows. Typical pay $70k.
Fashion Sustainability Manager: Helps fashion brands cut waste and pollution by choosing better materials, tracking factories, and creating resale and recycling programs. Typical pay $95k.
Fashion Publicist: Gets a fashion brand's clothes into magazines, on celebrities, and in front of influencers. Typical pay $68k.
Denim Wash Developer: Creates the faded, distressed, and vintage looks on jeans by designing laser, washing, and finishing recipes. Typical pay $75k.
Fashion Editor: Decides which clothes, trends, and designers appear in a magazine or fashion website, and often styles the photo shoots. Typical pay $65k.
Adaptive Clothing Designer: Designs clothes that are easier to put on and wear for people with disabilities, using magnets, side zips, and seated fits. Typical pay $72k.
Starter: fastest way in
Tailor: Alters, repairs, and custom-makes clothing to fit perfectly. Typical pay $38k.
Costume Shop Stitcher: Sews and alters costumes in theater, opera, theme park, and film costume shops. Typical pay $44k.
Sample Sewer: Sews the first prototype garments that designers use to check a design. Typical pay $35k.
Fashion Model: Poses for photos, walks runways, and wears clothes so designers and brands can show them off. Typical pay $39k.
Cobbler: Repairs and custom-makes shoes, boots, and leather goods. Typical pay $38k.
Milliner: Designs and handcrafts hats, from fancy derby hats to custom felt cowboy hats. Typical pay $38k.
Sneaker & Luxury Goods Authenticator: Checks sneakers, handbags, and watches sold on resale sites to spot fakes before they reach buyers. Typical pay $42k.
Hand & Parts Model: Models just their hands, feet, legs, or other body parts for ads, product shots, and commercials. Typical pay $30k.
Textile Testing Technician: Tests fabrics in a lab to see if they shrink, fade, pill, or catch fire before clothes and car seats reach stores. Typical pay $44k.
Hand Embroiderer: Stitches detailed designs by hand with silk, beads, and gold thread for couture gowns, costumes, flags, and church vestments. Typical pay $40k.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.