15 Best Books For Fashion Design 2025: The Ultimate Reading List For Fashion Design Students And Pattern Cutters

1 // Textilepedia: By FASHIONARY is exactly what it sounds like, a dictionary of all your basic textile and fabric knowledge. It covers weaves, fibers, yarns, care and maintenance. From natural fibres, leather, knits and lace etc. A complete reference book for everything fabric related.

2 // Pattern Cutting: By Dennic-Chunman Lo is a comprehensive course and easy to interpret if you’re a complete beginner. It runs you through all the tools necessary to make a pattern and how to draft basic blocks from scratch to lead you on to more advanced pattern.

3 // The Art Of Fashion Draping: By Connie Amden-Crawford is written for fashion design and pattern cutting students, written with both metric and imperial measurements, it’s the complete tutorial on creating garments using the more advanced draping method, including the basic bodice, bias cut dresses and beyond.

4 // Pattern Magic: By Tomoko Nakamichi is the first of the 4 part series, teaching you how to sculpt with woven fabrics with set patterns and the fundamentals of working with woven fabric, giving you the skills to experiment and create your own sculptural pieces.

5 // Pattern Magic 2: Tomoko Nakamichi is part 2 of the series further teaching you new ways to sculpt with woven fabric with set patterns and the fundamentals of working with woven fabric, giving you the skills to experiment and create your own sculptural pieces.

6 // Pattern Magic, Stretch Fabrics: By Tomoko Nakamichi is a special edition in the 4 part series, this particular book teaches you how to sculpt with stretch fabrics with set patterns and the fundamentals of working with stretch fabrics, giving you the skills to experiment and create Your own sculptural pieces.

7 // Couture Sewing Techniques: By Claire B. Shaeffer is the best course in couture sewing. It runs you through advanced stitches, key couture tools and equipment, how to shrink, stretch and manipulate fabrics and how to apply all of these techniques to achieve the highest level of hand sewing.

8 // Creating Couture Embellishment: By Ellen W. Miller is a great partner for Couture sewing techniques as this book focuses on embellishments. From bead application to the use of feathers and traditional and professional stitching.

9 // Knots & Ropework: By Geoffrey Budworth may not seam relevant to fashion but a key to finding inspiration is looking in unexpected and creative places. This book is a brilliant reference for all of the knots you can imagine, with skills that can be creatively applied to your work.

10 // Poetic Cloth: By Hannah Lamb is a resource for inspiration on playing with textiles, adding details in unconventional ways and unique embellishment ideas such as new uses for patchwork and unusual means of embroidery.

11 // Textile Art: By Creative Publishing International isn’t the most beautiful book but it is a brilliantly dense catalogue of creative embellishing techniques. In its own words, it is “a practical and inspirational guide to manipulating, colouring and embellishing fabrics”.

12 // Haute Couture, From The Metropolitan Museum Of Art: By Richard Martin & Harold Koda explores the history of Haute Couture, beginning with the founding of The House Of Worth in the mid 19th century to the Haute Couture designers of today and makes for brilliant reference book for those who want to see the close up details of Haute Couture construction

13 // Fashion Forecasting: By Kathryn McKelvey & Janine Munslow gives a detailed break down of forecasting future tastes, predicting the future of the market and anticipating trends in the world of fashion including interviews with industry professionals.

14 // The Hidden Facts Of Fashion: By FASHIONARY Did you know bullet proof vets expire? Or that you don’t really need to wash your jeans? Filled from cover to cover with facts, knowledge and trivia you didn’t know you needed to know about fashion.

15 // Fashion Designer’s Sketchbooks: By Hywel Davies offers a collection of sneak peeks inside your favourite fashion designers sketchbooks to inspire or validate the layout of your own sketchbook.