The quality of the competence activity of a clothing designer in the context of objectively changing requirements to the development of the industry includes the skill of extrapolating the personal conceptual experience of a specialist to the process of searching for new models of industrial products. Such project activity encourages educational structures to initiate pedagogical experiments on the selection of effective methodological techniques from different areas of practice, adjusted to the possibilities of the educational process. The article actualizes the problem of finding new methods for the formation of competencies of a modern designer. The article considers the fundamental principles of coaching as a method of the formation and development of professional knowledge and skills; a parallel was drawn between the didactics of the coaching method and approaches to the transmission of social and industrial practice skills that have developed in the process of the historical development of the design education system. The author defines the technology of coaching as optimal for the development of modern professional qualifications that accompany the activities in the field of design. It reveals the specifics of the application of technology in the professional training of fashion designers in terms of the content structure of students’ educational activities. Particular attention is paid to the methodology for constructing training sessions and the possibility of obtaining verified basic formulations of specific training tasks in design engineering, appealing to the individual abilities of future specialists and focusing on the experience of mentoring that has developed in the professional design environment. The effectiveness of the coaching method in the didactics of the professional training of designers was tested in the course of a pedagogical experiment using elements of a longitudinal study. The conclusion about the sufficient effectiveness of the coaching methodology in design education was made on the basis of signs of positive dynamics in the increment and deepening of competency-based skills demonstrated by students of the specialty “Design” during the intermediate and final control of the acquired knowledge.