Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) graduate Lisa Vian Hunter will take part in NBC’s FASHION STAR competition, which will broadcast a weekly fashion show to exhibit the designs born of each week’s competition challenge.

The winner of the FASHION STAR competition will take home a prize worth millions – to launch his or her designs into three of the biggest retailers in the United States; Macy’s, H&M, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Judging the competition will be a representative of each of the three retailers who will decide which designs they want to purchase from the designers by the end of the competition.

The fashion design competition will be hosted by Ella Macpherson, who is also the producer, and mentors to the design competitors will be Jessica Simpson, Nicole Richie, and John Varvatos.

Aside from the fame that simply being in the competition will bring to her, Hunt is already an accomplished fashion designer with her own line of clothing on the market. Her retail line is called Vian Hunter House of Fashion and was first on sale in Seattle three years ago. The fashion design school reported in a press release that Hunter started her clothing line in 2006, but began creating unique and original designs in 2003.

This isn’t the first major competition contestant for FIDM. Several of the fashion design school’s alumni participated in Project Runway, including Leanne Marshall, Nick Verreos, and Kelly Martin. Also among the school’s alumni are fashion designers that create original apparel for celebrities such as Monique Lhuiller, gown designer for the likes of Drew Barrymore, Angelina Jolie, and Katie Holmes; and Estavan Ramos, designers to Christina Aguilera, Selma Hayek, and Jessica Alba.

The Katonah Art Center is now providing training through two new fashion design classes available for public registration.

Rags to Runway and Fashion Illustration are the starting classes in the new program at the art center, which provides training in various art disciplines to kids, teens, and adults through small project oriented classes and professional instructors.

The fashion design classes are spearheaded by Gwen Sargeant, teacher for the new fashion design classes happening at the school. Sargeant is a graduate of the famous fashion design school Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and is currently teaching fashion design to students there. FIT is a widely acclaimed fashion design school in the United States, producing famous clothing designers and innovators in the industry every decade.

In a report by Westchester.com, Sargeant said she wants to inspire future fashion designers and teach them that “fashion is about more than just what you see in your head, it’s about what’s in style, what the customer wants.  It’s about seeing the entire picture.”

The Katonah Art Center is located in Katonah, NY on Bedford Road and also offers workshops, party events, art classes, and hosts several events throughout the year. They also offer summer camp art classes for kids and teens, raise money for art student scholarships, and provide party services that focus on the arts for kids, teens, and adults.

The fashion design classes at the art center will introduce students to the art and concepts of the fashion design industry and provide background knowledge in the discipline, while also showing students the basic skills and techniques of sewing and creating their own apparel.

Fashion design colleges prepare students for a multitude of fashion industry gigs; from sewing and manufacturing to the glitz and glamour of catwalk ready apparel, but the most important role they play might be in deciding where a person feels best in the industry.

For those who have that burning desire to design and produce top selling lines of clothing, there are plenty of general categories for fashion designers and trying out a number of them before finishing at a school of fashion design can really help future designers get a handle on what it is they are the best at.

Fashion design colleges are a great place to learn about designing apparel like kids wear, teenage (girls and boys) wear, sports apparel, knit clothing, outer wear, bridal fashion, and even accessories to consider. Within these general categories, fashion design colleges let students flex their creative muscle to find the type of design that feels perfect for the student.

It takes time to build a reputation and it takes dedication to the art of design. Fashion designers are rarely “general designers”, right out of a fashion design school. But to be truly successful, it might take a lot more than getting good at evening wear; famous designers rarely stop at one type of apparel on their way to claiming fame.

Fashion design colleges do just as much to help students find their place in the industry as they do to teach design. Just to name a few of the other possible careers that can be born of fashion design; consider pattern maker, tailor, stylists, buyer, seamstress, educator, customizer, illustrator, and model. For those who always seem to know what the next big trend is, there is even the career of “fashion forecaster”.

Fashion design classes helped teen Samantha Bryant win the coveted grand prize for a prom dress design contest she entered last year.

Thanks to her natural talent for art and the fashion design classes she takes at a local community college, Bryant won a spread in the magazine that sponsored the contest and other prizes.

Fashion design classes for high school students can translate into a jump start in a fashion design career; awarding them with necessary experience and in many cases, college credits that will transfer with them when they graduate high school and enroll in an art academy. For high school students taking fashion design classes through a dual-enrollment program or at a local college, the classes teach some of the basic skills that they would have to learn during their first years in an academy.

One of the first lessons student learn in fashion design classes is that there are many aspects of the fashion design industry. Manufacturing, sewing, and designing are all part of an interwoven profession where artists meet with engineers to make great fashion designs come to life. Sketching designs so that engineers can interpret real apparel details isn’t as easy as it might seem, so the classes help students like Bryant hone their skills.

Teens in dual enrollment programs or independent fashion design classes can propel themselves into the world of fashion design and take away some of the burden in college by allowing more time for creative endeavors.  Bryant, a natural artist, sketched her dream prom dress for Seventeen Magazine’s contest and gives some of the credit to the teachers in her classes. In addition to the magazine spread, she’ll be taken to New York to visit the workshop for David’s Bridal and was awarded a $25,000 scholarship.

In high schools where funding doesn’t come from tuition and grants, fashion design classes that help students make decisions about future career moves have to cut corners when possible.

That is why some high schools are taking fashion design classes to a new, much more affordable, level of “practice” by giving students the chance to design apparel using more readily available supplies. Some high schools are getting creative in their fashion design classes and it seems to be working out. Students need the opportunity to learn how to practice the basic principles, for example pleating and darting, but need to do so without the costs of materials.

Enter the world of paper and tape fashion design; we are talking about real, wearable designs and not paper dolls. At one high school, students were tasked to create a skirt using only paper and duct tape. Teachers were surprised by some of the results when the skirts actually turned out to be quite good.

The purpose of the paper and duct tape exercise was to teach students about the fitting process, so they were asked to create a skirt fitted to their own waist and hip, using techniques such as gathers, pleats, darts, and tucks to make them fit properly. In the end, the students learned the lessons and came out on the stage in front of an audience at the school to show off their handiwork.

One student used post it notes to create a checkerboard mini skirt while another student made us of tissue paper to create a ballerina skirt.  During the fashion design classes, students were also taught about cat walk shows and were provided instruction on proper posture and presentation of their designs.

Another publication that is well-known for publishing ranked lists of graduate schools, U.S. News 7 World Report profiled the fashion design college as well.

FIT has been in the Wall Street Journal, the Sacramento Bee, Financial Times, New York Times, and Even Forbes – just in the last seven days. So what’s with all of the buzz about this particular fashion school? The short answer seems to be: everything.

Some fashion design colleges teach students about fashion design; that is, they teach students how to conceptualize, trend, create, sew, manufacture, and even title their designs. Most also teach business ethics, career skills, client building techniques, and more in preparation for entry into a specific discipline within the field of fashion. FIT does all of that too, but the big difference might be who they attract and the kind of designers that come out of the school.

The fashion design college has made headlines in a number of niche publications thanks to its alumni that has gone on to saturate their industry; students like Emily Alexandria who is a featured writer in Accounting Today for her article “Fashion & Finance: The hottest sites to style you for the office”.

The fashion design college also plays host to some of the top names in design, which is how they landed in an article on the New York Times blog. The New York Times featured a story about the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology where top designers such as Oscar de La Renta and Donna Karan showed up to help celebrate 50 years of American Fashion.

As a household name after many years in publishing, Vogue magazine is the epitome of “fashion” reporting. Fashion designers take note of what appears in Vogue and the best fashion designers are published there.

A fashion design school springing forth from the massively popular magazine’s publisher might seem like a major threat to other design schools in London at first blush. But according to report by BBC News, there are rumors that the school will coordinate with other fashion design schools in the area on some collaborative projects.

Vogue’s publisher, Conde Nast, recently announced the intent to open up a London-based fashion design school that will likely have smaller schools still shuttering with concern about the new competition. They should remain calm, though – at least for now.

In addition to some courses that will be available to fashion design students at the master’s level, Conde Nast’s fashion design school will provide a one-year foundational program on fashion design as well as other fashion design related short programs and isn’t ready to open up to full degree programs. But they plan on it.

Students in England can qualify for grants to attend classes at the fashion design school this year, which involve £6,000 in tuition fees. State funded loans can be applied for as well.

“Conde Nast is perfectly placed to enter the world of education. The reputation and authority of our brands puts us in a strong position to teach and inspire the fashion and decorating talent of the future,” said Managing Director Nicholas Coleridge in the BBC report.

An industry publication recently published its list of top twenty fashion design schools, begging the question: What makes a top fashion design school?

Fashionista is a respected fashion design blog that took a look into the birthplace of many of fashion’s leading designers. Through a self-described painstaking process, Fashionista produced a list of the top fifty fashion design schools in the world. Topping their list are fashion design schools at Central Saint Martins, Parsons, and Bunka Fashion College. So – how did they decide who was “best”?

Their methods were well-rounded and included the opinions of all facets of the industry. “To generate our list, we spoke to students, employees at the schools, companies who hire graduates, and industry professionals. We also considered tuition costs, demographics, famous alums, and variety in programming,” the website said, adding that although their method isn’t scientific, it was as objective as possible.

It is likely that a student’s journey into finding their own best choice for fashion design school will be fairly unscientific as well. However, much of the decision might rely less on how awesome the school is ranked by industry pros and rely more on what a student can afford. As the site points out, we’ve also found that a world-renowned fashion design school can charge a staggering $40,000 to $50,000 per year.

Perhaps the best method of choosing the best fashion design school for an individual starts with tuition, but the industry blog is right in its methods. What other students say, how many alums went on to achieve success, and especially the opinions of hiring companies will matter about fashion designs schools within a student’s price range.

The students were asked to take what would be otherwise known as “trash” and turn it into apparel that the wearer simply couldn’t live without.

The challenge was part of the iStyle Fashion KL International Airport 2011 design competition. Creative students still under training in fashion design school successfully met their challenge by utilizing scraps of plastic, paper, and drink bottles.

The winning students were from the fashion design school at SML Fashion Academy and used the debris to create sustainable fashion designs. The challenge put the students’ newly acquired skills under the spotlight and created an intense situation in which the fashion design students worked under pressure to create their design in three stages of competition.

Sustainable fashion design, or eco fashion is getting much attention in recent years as young fashion designers and fashion design schools move into an era ruled by the thought that sustainability is critical to the future. Vogue magazine started talking about sustainable fashion in 2007 mentioning that it would likely be a lasting trend in the fashion design industries.

The unique competition required the fashion design students to use paper in round one, followed by round two with metal, and round three was dedicated to plastic. Each of the rounds also had a specific garment for the fashion designer to-be.

The paper round was intended for the students to design a child’s accessories, the plastic round was intended to result in recycled men’s clothing, and the metal round was a cocktail dress – something the students found most challenging. Their metal cocktail dress created by the winning team from SML fashion design school was set in the 1960’s era, but many creative designs were presented to judges from other students.

The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising recently announced that almost all of their graduates who use their career center find employment within a year of leaving the fashion design school and most of those find jobs within six months.

They also pointed out that this isn’t exclusive to any particular specialized degree from their school; it seems to work for all students, regardless of their major. In their news release, FIDM attributes their success ratio to high staff to student percentages and the nearly twenty-thousand jobs posted on their boards each year. Whatever the case, the fashion design school seems to turn out some of the best fashion designers in the industry.

Rebecca Gold, a graduate of the fashion design school went into business designing children’s clothing for celebrities known as “Love Jay Girls”. Her and her partner, Shana Cutler have already had their clothing line features in Brides and Parenting magazines and have their apparel worn by the like of big name celebrity children such as Tom Cruise’s daughter Surie and Angelina Jolie’s Zahara.

At the 2010 Grammy Awards, a few of the fashion design school’s alumni had their apparel worn on the red carpet by big names such as Kyra Sedgwick from The Closer on TNT. She wasn’t the only one at the Grammy’s wearing FIDM-born creations. Jenna Ushkowitz from Glee wore Kevan Hall’s designs. Hall has created fashions worn by Katherine Heigl, Vanessa Williams, and Tina Fey as well – to name a few.

There are abundant success stories from the fashion design school and plenty of students are hard at work in lesser highlighted positions. Graduates are places with successful fashion design companies following graduation thanks to the help of dedicated faculty members.