It’s taken some time, but fashion designers are finally able to download iPad and Android apps that were made with the needs of fashion designers in mind. Here are six apps that every designer should have in their toolbox.

Prêt à Template

The production side of fashion is not glamorous, but it is the beginning of every design. Although designers still love to start their designs with sketches and illustrations, the world has gone digital. That’s where this exciting new app by Robert Weiand comes in – to let fashionistas draw with a pencil or a stylus, mixing and matching references. Where this app excels is allowing designers to fashion clothing for any size or height. No longer are designers constrained by what fashion has long considered the “ideal” height and weight when starting their process. Prêt à Template is an award-winning app that changes the experience of creating clothing.

Tayasui Sketches App

Tayasui Sketches is one of the best sketching apps for artists who use tablets. Tayasui gives you every tool you can imagine, drawing on the worlds of graphic design, painting and fashion design. There are many sketching apps for iPad, but Tayasui is perfect for fashion designers, because it provides an incredibly realistic painting experience. This means it adapts to width, angle, and pressure of the stylus. It also has many different drawing and painting brushes, wet and dry, plus acrylic brushes, oil pastels and pen brushes. Tayasui can truly make your designs shine.

Procreate Art

If you want realistic painting for just $6, it’s hard to be Procreate. This is largely due to its Streamline feature, which can actually fix your brush strokes while you draw, making for a more organic look. For the purchase price, Procreate gives you a toolbox of 120 brushes. There are also artist brushes available for download. The app has an excellent color picker with a selection tool that lets you modify certain aspects of your drawing so that they can be edited without changing other aspects of the illustration or canvas. Another great feature for designers is time-lapse animation, which lets you show off the evolution of your design, and the way it will move on the body.

Fashion Professor Picture Dictionary

If you want to go back to design school, or just have access to traditional and new styles, the Fashion Professor has you covered. Monthly subscriptions to the site give you access to hundreds of video tutorials and vectors. The price starts at just $15 a month. The courses were developed by industry veteran, Dinna Soliman, who also teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The training available on the site has also been given to people who have gone on to work for companies like Donna Karan H&M, Jones Apparel Group and John Varvatos. If you don’t live in one of the fashion capitals of the world, like Milan, Paris, or New York, this app gives you unprecedented access to fashion design from great minds.

Sewing Kit

Seamstresses and designers love Sewing Kit, which helps you organize and track your designs and materials. With Sewing Kit, it’s easy to scan pattern envelopes to see if you already have the fabric suitable for teh design. Serious designers love the alert system that ensures they don’t over or under-buy. It also helps them know when they need to reorder fabric.

As these designers seek to expand their production capabilities, finding a reliable contract manufacturing partner becomes paramount. Seamlessly integrating a reliable manufacturing partner into the creative process allows designers to focus on their craft while ensuring a steady and efficient supply chain, making Sewing a true ally in the world of design and production.

Ruler 2
Sometimes it’s important to just have a basic backup tool for when you don’t have measuring tape handy. Ruler 2 gives exact measurements, giving the designer the option to save numbers for use later on. It also transfers A measurements to a calculator, and emails measurements so you can skip on the copy and paste functions.