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Krystal
Fortune credits much of her success to impatience.
The Brooklyn
native knew she wanted to work in fashion from the time she was old enough to
speak.
“My parents
have home videos of me on Christmas morning when I was 2 years old opening
presents and naming all the department stores they’re from: Macy’s, Saks,”
Fortune, 34, recalls. “I just loved everything to do with getting dressed
up.”
In 2007,
just a few weeks after Fortune graduated high school, she enrolled in the Art
Institute of New York City’s associate’s degree program as a fashion design
major.
“I didn’t
want to wait four years to get a bachelor’s degree and start working in
fashion, and my family couldn’t afford to help me pay for school, so it seemed
like the best option,” she says.
At first,
Fortune envisioned a career for herself designing clothes: She learned how to
sew when she was 8 years old, stitching skirts, handbags and a dress for her
senior prom.
That
changed, however, after she took her first class in college. One of her first
assignments was to design a shoe inspired by a famous period of art. Fortune
created a black heel with a silver, curved back inspired by the clean, simple
lines of a chair from the Bauhaus period, a German artistic movement from the
early 20th century.
After acing
that assignment, “my fate was sealed,” says Fortune. “I was going to be a shoe
designer.”
Now, Fortune
is a head footwear designer at Eastman Footwear Group, where she designs shoes
for popular brands like Tretorn, Eddie Bauer and Nicole Miller. After negotiating
a raise in September, she now earns $100,000 a year, according to financial
documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
Here’s how
Fortune built a six-figure career in fashion without a bachelor’s degree:
Getting
her ‘foot’ in the door for a career in footwear design
Fortune
landed her first fashion internship, working for Tommy Hilfiger, in 2008 during
her second semester of college.
“I applied
to every job I could find listed in the ‘fashion’ section of Craigslist,” she
says. “I didn’t think twice about whether or not I was qualified or how
competitive it would be, I just went for it.”
As part of
her internship, Fortune was tasked with sorting thousands of color swatches,
pulling samples for leaders in the design, marketing and manufacturing
departments.
“That
tedious work trained my eye to recognize and differentiate color, a skill
that’s helped me throughout my career sometimes without me even realizing it,”
says Fortune. “There are, like 100 different shades of yellow, and I can name
almost any of them.”
Fortune also
interned at women’s fashion label Thuy during New York Fashion Week while she
was a student, working alongside their designers backstage to tailor outfits
and coordinate fittings for the models.
After
graduating from the Art Institute in 2009, she held a variety of fashion jobs
in New York: She worked as a hosiery designer at outerwear brand Royce Too for
a year, then at Skechers as an assistant retail manager for another
11 months before spotting an opening for an outerwear designer at Eastman
Footwear Group on Craigslist.
While
neither of her first two jobs after college was her dream job, Fortune says she
was able to gain “invaluable work experience” at each by shadowing designers
and taking advantage of on-the-job skills training, including practicing her
CAD (computer-aided design) technique. CAD software is used in the design
process to create 2D drawings or 3D models of shoes.
“Because it
was an outerwear designer job, I wouldn’t be focused on footwear, I’d be doing
accessories like jackets and umbrellas, but I saw ‘footwear’ in the company
name and thought it’d be a good opportunity to get my foot in the door regardless,”
says Fortune.
Although
Fortune didn’t get the job, a recruiter from Eastman called her a few weeks
later and offered her a different position, one that was more in line with her
interests and experience: Hosiery designer.
As part of her role, she’d help train other designers on transferring their
handwritten designs to digital software — a skill on Fortune’s resume that the
hiring managers were impressed with.
“At that
time, the fashion industry was rapidly changing, and brands were asking for
digital designs in place of handwritten sketches,” she explains. “But a lot of
the designers weren’t trained in the software needed to produce this.”
She started
her first job at Eastman in April 2012, and within a year, transitioned to the
footwear design team. Fortune says that staying up-to-date on her technical
skills has helped her rise through the ranks — and in 2018, she became a lead
designer.
Designing
75 shoes a month
Most of
Fortune’s mornings at Eastman’s office in downtown Manhattan start the same —
with music.
“I need a
good playlist to get the creative juices flowing,” says Fortune, who adds that
Nirvana and Beyoncé are on frequent rotation.
While most
of her workday is spent sketching designs for sneakers, hiking boots, sandals,
heels and other footwear, Fortune also spends a lot of time coordinating with
Eastman’s manufacturing teams in China and experimenting with different
materials — silk, snakeskin, leather — from the stockpile in her office.
“But it’s
mostly finding inspiration to flow out of me and put it into a shoe,” she says.
Fortune estimates that she completes anywhere from 50 to 75 designs on average
each month. Each brand Fortune works with will give her basic parameters for
what they’re looking for — a sneaker to add to a specific line, for example —
but she has “a lot of creative freedom,” she notes.
After the designs are approved by the brand’s sales and marketing teams,
Fortune works with Eastman’s production teams to ensure the design is properly
executed. Once first samples of the shoe are finished, they’re sent to trade
shows and stores’ showrooms to gauge consumer interest before being shipped to
stores and posted for sale online.
The skills
that have helped her succeed as a designer the most, she says, are proficiency
in graphic design software such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, time
management, communication, and, of course, creativity.
“Since I
work with so many different brands, I’ll often see men, women and children on
the subway, on the street, even in line in front of me at a coffee shop,
wearing my designs,” says Fortune. “That’s the best part of being a footwear
designer: I get to see my work being worn, and enjoyed, out in the world.”
Read the original article in CNBC
Written by Morgan Smith