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PORTFOLIO HEAVEN

As a designer, your portfolio is one of the most powerful tools in your creative armoury — it represents your vision, process, and value at a glance. Work smart by keeping it up to date by documenting key pieces throughout the season or setting aside dedicated time every few months. This proactive approach ensures you are always ready, whether you are actively seeking your next role, applying for a dream project, or a highly desirable opportunity comes knocking unexpectedly. A well-maintained portfolio also allows you to track your own growth, refine your storytelling, and highlight your most commercially and creatively successful work, making a strong and immediate impression when it matters most.

SHOWCASING YOUR BEST WORK

Fashion Heaven Diamond Logo

CURATE YOUR PORTFOLIO TO STAND OUT IN THE FASHION & CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

RECRUITMENT

Digital Portfolio Guide 

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Digital portfolios are now standard across the fashion industry. Platforms like Wix and Squarespace offer professional templates with user-friendly customisation and tutorials. Other popular tools include:

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  • Adobe Portfolio ideal if you already use Creative Cloud

  • Cargo widely used by designers and creatives for its clean layouts

  • Behance great for visibility within the design community

  • Format known for minimalist portfolios tailored to creative professionals

  • Canva increasingly used for well-designed, simple PDF portfolios

 

When building your portfolio:

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  • Curate through the eyes of the viewer, tell a clear, visual story and guide them intuitively through your work.

  • Label each section clearly by employer, project, and season to give context at a glance.

  • Ensure strong image quality, avoid visuals that are too small or low-resolution; viewers must be able to see detail clearly.

  • Balance scale and spacing, opt for a clean layout, avoid clutter and busy backgrounds and give each element room to breathe.

 

Alongside your online portfolio, a PDF compilation remains essential. It allows for easy sharing, offline viewing, and quick editing to highlight specific designs, seasons, or collections. Keep this up to date with your most impactful work from each role or project.

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION
WHERE TO BEGIN

Why Keeping Your Portfolio Updated Matters

As a designer, your portfolio is one of the most powerful tools in your creative armoury — it represents your vision, process, and value at a glance.
 

Work smart by keeping it up to date by documenting key pieces throughout the season or setting aside dedicated time every few months. This proactive approach ensures you are always ready,  whether you are actively seeking your next role, applying for a dream project, or a highly desirable opportunity comes knocking unexpectedly.
 

A well-maintained portfolio also allows you to track your own growth, refine your storytelling, and highlight your most commercially and creatively successful work, making a strong and immediate impression when it matters most.

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CHRONOLOGY

Curating Your Portfolio: A Visual Journey 

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Hiring managers are drawn to comprehensive portfolios rather than narrow edits. What matters most is clarity, structure, and purpose. Your portfolio should reflect your ability to capture the DNA of a brand and translate it into thoughtful, commercial design. It should inspire confidence in your process, your eye, and your ability to deliver.

 

Designers at the top of their game present their work through a clean, well-structured website showing the evolution of their career complimented by a PDF portfolio tailored to specific applications for easy sharing.

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Your work should be shown chronologically, starting with the most recent and working backwards. Each section should be clearly labelled with the season, brand (if applicable), and project name to give immediate context and include: 

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  • Clear themes, mood boards and colour/fabric palette

  • Collection design illustrations or in CAD format

  • Technical flats with relevant detailing

  • Swatches and trims for realism

  • Lookbook images, e-comm shots or campaign visuals showing the final product

 

This allows the viewer to follow the entire arc, from concept to creation, while showcasing your creativity, technical fluency, and ability to work with different brand identities.

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The goal is to present a well-considered narrative of your design voice, while making it easy for others to understand your process, contribution, and potential. Think of your portfolio not just as a collection of images, but as your visual resumé — a professional showcase that can open doors.

Mood Boards, Fabric & Colour Palettes – Presentation Guidelines

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Mood boards, fabric selections, and colour palettes should be presented clearly across one or two pages per theme, with a defined and cohesive concept. It is important to convey key inspiration, colour direction, and texture to demonstrate your eye for relevance and trend awareness aligned with brand values.

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Include the season and year clearly on each page to provide context. Adding concise, relevant text directly on the boards to highlight the theme, fabric direction, or colour story is encouraged and helps to connect key seasonal insights in the mind of the viewer and demonstrates a high level of attention to detail.

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Aim to showcase a comprehensive representation from the most recent two seasons — both Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. Include any best sellers, as well as designs that were on-brand and on-target but may not have been selected for final production.

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For previous seasons, curate and present your strongest work alongside any past commercial successes or standout creative pieces.

MOOD, FABRIC, COLOUR
 SKETCHES, IMAGERY

Design Development & Final Outcome


Where possible, include lookbook or editorial images to support your design work — but remember, it is your actual drawings, whether hand-sketched or CAD, that employers are most interested in. These show how you think and create and are essential for remaining competitive.

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Present your designs alongside final product images. This illustrates how your ideation translates into tangible results.

 

Outfitting & Seasonal Styling


Use illustrations or CADs to show how individual pieces come together into full seasonal looks. Outfitting demonstrates your styling ability and understanding of complete collections.

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Fabric, Trims & Technical Detail


Bring your work to life by including:

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  • Fabric swatches and trims to show texture and colour

  • Yarns for knitwear pieces

  • Strike-offs or samples for print designs

 

Placing these elements next to your design work helps convey a full, sensory understanding of your vision and technical execution.

Presentation & Practical Additions


Keep your portfolio layout clean and minimal — white backgrounds and simple formatting allow your work to take centre stage.

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Include your CV as a downloadable PDF and/or a dedicated tab on your website. Ensure it’s easy to access and always up to date.

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Depending on your specialism, consider including:

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  • Accessories Designers: mock-ups, material specs, and construction drawings.

  • Apparel Designers: tech packs that demonstrate garment construction knowledge and commercial awareness.

  • Footwear Designers: sole units, construction details, material specs, and range overviews.

  • Graphic Designers: typography, logo development, layout design, campaign examples, and branded assets.

  • Knitwear Designers: yarn cards, stitch structures, and sample references.

  • Print Designers: artwork files, repeat layouts, and colourway variations.

 

The goal is to highlight your skill and ability to design with both commercial creativity and technical execution in mind.

PRESENTATION
Illustration_Files_

Sketchbooks & Creative Process

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If you have been collecting ideas in sketchbooks, include them... people love to flick through raw inspiration as it offers a unique window into your creative mindset. Swatches, photos, print developments, texture studies, vintage references, historical research, and spontaneous sketches all reveal your ability to think visually and respond intuitively. This kind of content is always engaging and helps bring your design perspective to life. Present it as a curated section on your website, a supporting PDF, or a physical piece during interviews.

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