I barely made it through the small walk from the Soho vintage store to the nearby BP gas station. I felt truly blessed for it to be so close to the store and could not imagine the horror of dragging the bags to a nearby street corner with only the hopes of being picked up during rush hour. It’s amazing how, in complete exhaustion, what one would consider a blessing to be. As if the world was made to work in my favor in the time of unpaid labor crises.
I found myself in this position because, earlier, my boss had told me that he would “prefer” I took the subway due to the magazine’s dwindling budget. I didn’t doubt him because we all know that print will eventually die and this overabundance of vintage clothing rentals did not come cheap. I also figured, as I dragged the black vinyl across the street to the gas station, that he must not have been thinking about how much the bags actually weighed. (My rough estimate is around 40 lbs.)
Inside: two studded motorcycle jackets, vintage Comme des Garçons, chunky creepers and leather leggings. My arms almost gave out as I lifted the heavy bags into the taxi. When I arrived at the office, I could hear the disappointment in my boss’ voice, and I remember wishing not that I’d never had to get the bags at all, but that the other intern never mentioned how light she thought the bags were.
Interning is a rite of passage and most certainly a necessary evil to work in fashion. Some people are able to avoid it, but they’re probably a different type of human or have parents who are well-connected. If you wanted to be an editor someday, or even if you wanted to be the editor’s assistant one day, you paid your dues in lugging around vintage Givenchy (during the McQueen period). But most importantly, you had to subject yourself to the treatment of being an unpaid slave.
At the time, I was working on prep for a Vogue Italia shoot. I was being paid in school credit, but really I was being paid in experience to be on the same set as Nicolas Ghesquière and Steven Meisel. There were 12-hour days when I would run around the entire city collecting samples, all so that the editor had eight tables of accessories, 12 racks of clothing and five rows of shoes. (In case you’re wondering how many looks that was for, the answer is seven.)
Aside from the emotional and physical cost of interning, I was always bothered by the financial cost of working for free as well. Due to the threat of being sued, a good portion of companies require students to receive school credit for their work. In theory, college credit for an internship sounds great. You get credit towards your degree, real work experience and the company gets free labor in return. However, I often found that I was receiving credit to manage samples, get coffee (cliché ugh I know) and organize buying appointment photos.
Furthermore, while in school, I always felt the pressure to gain more experiences to fill my résumé. Even if the companies were not actually teaching me how to effectively use macros or to write a purchase order, the name of a company and position alone were valuable in the long run. There was also the academic culture at the college I attended, which was all about accelerating your career, with everyone flexing about where they were currently interning. This left me with a strong social pressure to seek prestigious internships, but with limited options to access them, such as:
1. Find a Paid Internship
As most of you know, especially in fashion, these types of internships are often mythical. They are either extremely competitive during the hiring process, or the company is too small and won’t hold the same value on a résumé as a big name designer (lol like the quintessential Marc Jacobs internship). Even if you are paid, it’s not always far above minimum wage. In fact, minimum wage is considered extremely lucky in these situations, and still, even that’s not a complete financial reality for everyone.
2. Pay for the Credit
This is the most fucked option because you have to pay for the internship class (usually outside of what is paid for in tuition or it fills a slot of another course) in order to accept the accredited internship of your dreams. The concept is ass backwards because it boils down to the student paying to work.
3. Find an Internship That Will Let You Work for Free (While They Hope to God You Don’t Sue Them)
Much like paid internships, these also appear to be rare, the main reason being that the company doesn’t want to get in trouble and receive bad PR (like Condé Nast). When I think back to looking for internships, I used to hope I would find one like this. It was the best way to avoid the $500 class and still continue to build my résumé. In this situation, all I could hope for was that maybe the company would offer a $10 stipend everyday so I didn’t have to spend more money on lunch.
Despite not being an ideal situation, I don’t have any regrets about deciding to take unpaid internships while in school. I knew that I was going to have to make sacrifices if I wanted a résumé to be proud of once I graduated. Interning also allowed me to navigate what part of the industry I liked and choose a solid career path before I left school, which was basically: leave editorial, never work in magazines and find a place that values me. As for the future, I can only hope that unpaid internship policies change and are improved to protect young innocent students from being taken advantage of.
When I think back to those rough days of prepping for photo shoots, I realize how strong I’ve since become. It reminds me that I can truly overcome any obstacle, whether it’s emotional, physical or even financial. I often see young girls and boys in Soho struggling to carry garment bags, their faces distorted in pain as they rush back to the office where the garments belong. After you’ve worked in that setting, felt that muscle ache, you can’t help but spot it immediately. As they pass me by, I instantly wish them luck that no studded leather jackets come their way.
