My devoted readings of Vogue along with other depictions of the fashion business on TV and in film had given me a false impression of how the business works. There was a glamorous gilded exterior presented by the media which hid the gritty and dirty reality of the busienss. Now that I've been working in fashion for several years, it's a little difficult for me to reconstruct this impression but here are a few things I remember being struck by:
1. A true "designer" doesn't sew the clothes him/herself. I think I imagined that somehow a designer magically created all the garments alone, which is impossible. This is what separates a designer from a dressmaker/seamstress. A designer is more like an architect (indeed, it was at Marc Jacobs that I first heard someone describe architecture as fashion on a larger scale) or a director of a film. He/she conceptualizes design ideas and directs his team to make this a reality. In addition to the designer, generally the team consists of one or more assistant designers, a patternmaker, samplemakers, production manager, and interns. Depending on how much money is on hand, one person may handle more than one of these roles.
By the time I was an intern at Marc Jacobs in 2001, the company had been around for a while and so it was fairly large. The MJ label took up an entire floor of a small office building in SoHo; the Marc label was on another floor. There were separate offices for production, design, sales, and I think PR, with the front of the floor housing an elegant showroom space and reception desk.
Marc himself was only around for a week or so a month, as he spent much of his time in Paris (designing for LV). Even when he was in the office, the interns were instructed not to talk to him (which of course, we all wanted to do) and he spent most of his time talking with Richard Chai, who was his assistant designer at the time. Richie, as he was called, had two assistant designers.
I was starstruck when I saw Marc walking around the office. I remember being struck at how small he was in real life (although I guess most people are). This was before his glam makeover, and he used to walk around in green sweatpants and a ponytail.
Interestingly, only one of the interns actually seemed to have any real responsibilities. He was Jack McCullough, who I only interacted with a couple of times during my brief internship at Marc Jacobs. He would later famously go on to start Proenza Schouler with Lazaro Hernandez with Jacobs' support.
2. Designers rip off ideas from other designers. I now know that fashion is very cannibalistic, and there are very few, if any, truly "original" ideas. However, at the time, I remember being very disappointed when I saw a rack of vintage clothing which was to serve as "inspiration" for the new collections.
3. In fashion, as in many other industries, you are expected to pay your dues. This means, that as an intern who is at the bottom of the totem pole, you should be expected to be treated like shit. Aside from things like picking up coffee or office supplies, we did things like pick up and drop off things to and from factories and stores in the garment district in Midtown. There were also tasks like organizing and cleaning up. Since I was officially a production intern, I was also asked to do work on Excel, mainly checking over to make sure that the numbers for store orders were correct. For me, the worst part of being an intern was just sitting around and waiting for someone to tell me to do something.
Also, I was expecting that in return for my slave labor, I would be taught things. In retrospect, I did learn a lot but I didn't appreciate it at the time. Additionally, interns in fashion don't get paid. It's difficult to break into the fashion industry if you don't have money or some outside source of income. You're expected to intern for free for a few days a week or more, and somehow figure out a way to support yourself. Even if/when you do eventually get a job in fashion, it usually pays poorly.
Essentially, I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel, and envisioned myself in this hell of running errands indefinitely and never doing anything creative or interesting. My parents weren't a huge fan of me doing fashion, as I've mentioned (and who would be a huge fan of pissing away 160K on a Harvard degree to have your child do fashion) and after a month I felt like I'd had enough of this. I rationalized that with my degree I could easily find well-paying employment where I wasn't doing menial labor, and where I was treated with a bit more respect. I informed my supervisor of my decision, who told me to tell her boss, the production director, Danuta. She listened with a look of understanding, and told me I was better off because fashion was such a tough business.
I regretted not being able to help out with the upcoming fashion show, but I felt free.
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