Job title:  Fashion Director

Companies that hire them: High-end department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and Nordstrom.

How to find out about openings: Professional association Fashion Group International lists information about open forum evenings and industry discussions that are good for networking. World Global Style Network (WGSN) provides news, trends, and industry analysis as well as flags personnel changes at the major department stores.  

How much you can earn: Salaries are in the $100,000 to mid-six figure range.

Useful skills: Having an open mind, curiosity, adaptability, an understanding that fashion is about more than clothes and represents a total lifestyle. And of course, customer service experience.

Number of jobs in the U.S.: There are as many fashion directors as there are high-end department stores. The number is around ten.

As the Vice President of Women’s Fashion for Saks Fifth Avenue, its Michael Fink’s job to know the latest seasonal trends and then educate his 30 buyers across New York’s flagship store on what’s hot in fashion.

Fink also selects the store’s merchandise—clothing and accessories—as well as which labels and designers will appear in Sak’s renowned window displays on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. One of the most important parts of his job is discovering new designers.

Last year in London, Fink “walked into a group [fashion] show in a hotel room. We didn’t know what we were walking into,” he says. And there was Jonathan Kelsey, a designer in his mid-twenties, showing off his first line of footwear—unique collection of metallic platform pumps. Fink loved what he saw and bought Kelsey’s first collection—a total of around ten different styles. “To take that chance, to be able to put him in our 5th Avenue window, that’s something wonderful to see happen.”

Fink sees himself not just as a buyer, but as an adviser and mentor to new talent. “In most start-up collections, a designer may be trying to please everybody. I’ll tell them, ‘You have five stories going on here, I need one. Can you go back and try a different approach for us.’” Fink was also one of the first to take a chance on Peter Som who today designs for Bill Blass.

While Fink wields enormous power by choosing which designers to highlight at his store, he says it’s up to the designer to capitalize on that exposure and that sometimes he and a designer may eventually have to part ways if sales don’t materialize.

“Over time if there’s no return on the investment, you have to move on,” says Fink. ”At the end of the day, we like to sell merchandise.”

Fink never dreamed of a life in fashion. His first love was music and he had every intention of graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and becoming a conductor. But a bad experience with a terrible teacher drove Fink to drop out of graduate school. “One person can alter your life,” he says.

In need of a job, Fink started working for the tailoring department of a clothing store in Boston. “I was surrounded by tailors and fascinated by how clothing was made and how you can manipulate it.”

On a whim, he moved to New York and became an assistant buyer at Bergdorf Goodman and found his new vocation wasn’t that different from his old one. “There’s an emotional quality to clothing just like there is to music.”

Today, with 25 years in the business, including seven years at the helm of women’s fashion for Saks Fifth Avenue, Fink considers fashion to be an art form. “Fashion keeps evolving and updating itself,” he says. “The couture collections prove that fantasy and invention can happen there. The whole world can get so excited or be appalled by a dress.”

But keeping up with the hectic schedule of Fashion Week is not as glamorous as it seems. Fink takes in shows from 9 in the morning till 10 at night. “We’re not wining and dining,” he says. “There’s no time to eat, there’s stifling heat.”

As soon as the models come out, Fink starts taking notes. “We don’t have anything in mind before the show starts because we want it to be an immediate emotional reaction,” says Fink.

After the show, Fink runs backstage, congratulates the designer, and gives his list of must-haves to the designer’s sales team.

“We’re always looking for what’s new, what challenges our eyes, what can we really sink our teeth in,” says Fink.