The Datum Report

Occupation 3422 · Associate professional occupations

Clothing, fashion and accessories designers

Half of full-time clothing, fashion and accessories designers in the UK earn more than £36,848 a year, and half earn less.

Clothing, fashion and accessories designers plan, direct and undertake the creation of designs for new clothing and related fashion accessories.

How people enter it

Entrants have usually completed a foundation course, BTEC/SQA award, degree and/or postgraduate qualification. Vocational qualifications in Fashion Design and Design are available at level 2 and 3, as are apprenticeships at levels 2 and 3.

What the work involves

• liaises with client to determine the purpose, cost, technical specification and potential uses/users of clothing or related fashion accessory
• undertakes research to determine market trends, production requirements, availability of resources and formulates design concepts
• prepares sketches, designs, patterns or prototypes for textiles, clothing, footwear, jewellery, fashion accessories
• submits design to management, sales department or client for approval, communicates design rationale and makes any necessary alterations
• specifies materials, production method and finish for aesthetic or functional effect
• oversees production of sample and/or finished product or produces one-off products for fashion shows
• observes and manages intellectual property issues

Also called

Bridalwear designer · Fashion designer · Footwear designer · Jewellery designer

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for clothing, fashion and accessories designers, full-time employees, 2024 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 2 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Design occupations n.e.c. · Interior designers