Fashion Designing Fashion design is the applied art dedicated to the design of clothing and lifestyle accessories created within the cultural and social influences of a specific time.Fashion design differs from costume design due to its core product having a built in obsolescence usually of one to two seasons.The first fashion designer who was not simply a dressmaker was Charles Frederick Worth (1826–1895). Before the former draper set up his maison couture (fashion house) in Paris, clothing design and creation was handled by largely anonymous seamstresses, and high fashion descended from worn at royal courts