5. SO HOW DO I GET THE EXPERIENCE?

Your portfolio is your ticket to jobs in the fashion industry. In the beginning you'll have to come up with creative ways to add to your portfolio, but that's your strong point, right?

Use Your School

Your schoolwork will be the earliest stuff in your portfolio, but you will need to replace these works as soon as possible with other examples of your skill and style. Use the most complicated assignments for your portfolio that show the limits of your abilities.

Volunteer

Offer to do costumes at a community theater, or put on a fashion show at your own expense. Volunteering may not make you any money, but the experience that it gives you can lead to paying jobs in the future.

You might try some of these alternative resources to give yourself more experience:

OptiTex is software that allows you to design clothes, put them on models and see how they'd look in a fashion show.

Fashion Toolbox is another example of fashion designing software.

Fashion Design Online is an online fashion design school, with an online resource library.