Swimwear Design Course in England

Learn how to design, make and sew your own swimwear. One-to-one swimwear design classes and workshops targeted at beginners, interested in learning how to design their own bikini or swimwear line. One-to-one classes are available either face to face, in our London Greenwich studios or online with live tuition. These classes are targeted at those interested in starting a swimwear business, or individuals who would like to understand the design and making process. You do not need to have any previous experience in fashion or the swimwear industry to take part in the classes. You don't even need to be able to draw, as we can teach you the basics of swimsuit design and drawing.

Our one-to-one classes are run from our London studios in Greenwich, so you have plenty of individual attention. All equipment is provided for you. We would strongly recommend that anyone interested in starting a swimwear brand should also try our swimwear startup workshop. This is a two-hour, one-to-one workshop that covers all the elements of starting and running a new swimwear business. This is a bespoke class, built around your own needs, so the construction of the classes will vary from individual to individual. You may want to discuss this beforehand with your tutor. You can choose just to do swimwear design, or just pattern cutting or just sewing. We also have swimwear classes available in Nottingham and Derby.

Sewing swimwear is a specialised field of sewing that takes practice to master. Knowledge of swimwear garment construction is vital for anyone interested in becoming a swimwear designer. If you don't know how swimwear is constructed, you can't design swimwear effectively. One of the most important skills needed to be a successful swimwear designer is the ability to communicate your design ideas clearly to the pattern cutter, sample machinist and factory. This is largely achieved using technical drawings, with detailed sketches and written information, explaining your swimsuit designs.

Technical drawings, or flat drawings, are an accurate reflection of your design, using realistic proportional sketches rather than distorted illustrations. The important thing is ensuring that your designs are interpreted in the way you intended them to be. Every seam and detail needs to be included, as the pattern cutter will likely take your drawing literally. For the inexperienced designer, hand-drawn sketches can be better than those produced by Adobe Illustrator. Even in a bad hand sketch, every detail in that sketch is put there deliberately. Adobe Illustrator tends to use generic images, with little subtlety. Because the images look professional, they can be treated too literally by the pattern maker.

If you are starting your own swimwear business, a technical drawing would also be used as part of your tech pack, providing a blueprint to the factory for your designs. Being able to provide your own tech packs could save you hundreds of pounds.

Fashion sketches, or illustrations, are not as important as technical drawings, but they are great for relaying impressions of your swimwear design ideas. You may use them to sell your designs to potential buyers. In our short fashion design course, we don't put so much emphasis on this element.

A range plan is an overview of your design collection, with all the styles, fabrics and colourways. It is a useful tool for the designer and gives potential buyers a clear view of what your designs are about. The range plan includes pricing, quantities per style and colour, fabrics, sizes and factory details.

Fabric and trim sourcing for swimwear can be a very time-consuming part of the design process. It is important to know how and where to source efficiently, otherwise you will just meet dead end after dead end. Our tutors are very knowledgeable in sourcing swimwear fabrics and trims.

Customer profiling is an essential part of starting any business, especially a fashion-related one such as swimwear design. It is important to know exactly what type of customer you are designing for. If you are trying to sell to the wrong customer, then you will have no sales.

Mood boards are really useful for a fashion designer or business owner, or anyone looking to understand and interpret your designs. While your pattern cutter needs a technical drawing to make the pattern, they could also do with a feeling of what you are aiming to achieve. The mood board consists of anything that gives you inspiration for your design ideas – colours, swatches, samples, designs, photos, text. It is a collection of various pieces of creative information for a new project.

A capsule collection is a condensed version of a designer's creations. You can have as many or as few designs in a capsule collection as you want.

Discover everything about pricing strategy to maximise profit for your fashion brand, as well as ensuring that your brand is correctly placed in the market. If you intend to start your own swimwear design business, you will need to make a profit. To do this, you need to understand all the costs involved in the production of your designs. Your markup is really important to determine your profit margin.