The payoff for a fashion career can be glamour and excitement. But the dues include hard work, low entry pay, and no guarantees.

"The fashion industry is a very hot, happening industry," says Pam Zuckerman, director of career services at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. "The rise of superdesigners and supermodels attracts students. A lot think they will be the next Calvin Klein. But people have to start at the bottom and pay their dues. It's not as exciting and glamorous as it appears."

Dianne Erpenbach agrees. "It's a tough business. It doesn't pay well at entry level. Fashion can have very demanding labor hours, and it can take a long time for a breakthrough," says Erpenbach, coordinator of fashion merchandising/retail management at Columbia College Chicago.

"Those with a lot of passion do well," she says. "You really have to have a burning desire to do this."

For Columbia College Chicago fashion marketing graduate Devin McKenna, 24, the dream came true fairly early.

McKenna, now director of marketing for the Color Association of the United States, recalls a whirlwind start: "I interviewed for this job and moved to New York one week later. It was heaven. At the first party I went to I met Tori Amos, Calvin Klein and model Antonio Sabato, Jr. At my first fashion show, I was so excited I was in tears. It was what I had always dreamed of."

A slightly different take comes from Maria Pinto, who started her own fashion design business seven years ago in Chicago.

"Students often have a bright-eyed, wonderful idea about starting their own fashion business, but it's not as glamorous as it appears," says Pinto, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

"I run the business until 5 p.m., then I get the chance to design. Fortunately, I enjoy it, but it's not for everyone," Pinto says.

Zuckerman and Erpenbach point to the wide range of job options in the fashion industry.

They cite four basic levels: the primary market includes design, manufacture and sales of raw materials such as fabrics and notions; the second involves design, production, management and marketing of the finished garments to retailers; third is retail sales to consumers, including management, marketing and publicity; and fourth is communications through magazines, newspapers, television, advertising, promotion, special events such as runway shows, trade organizations and forecasting services.

The dark side of the business, they say, includes allegations of sweatshop conditions and illegal labor practices in overseas factories.

Another negative is cultural, in the impossible physical ideal personified by famous models.

Nonetheless, the field continues to attract recruits. Columbia College Chicago says the number of its fashion design majors tripled between 1996 to 1998.

At the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, fashion department enrollment has increased by 65 percent over the past five years.