The New Working Class
The fashion industry has been eternally glamorized. The couture, the styling, the trend setting and being surrounded by clothes all day sounds like a dream job to anyone who’s part of it. But before aspiring fashionistas can work their stilettos into the tents of Bryant Park, there’s a lot of work to be done. Working over time when photo shoots take longer than expected, working the coffee machine at the office and, of course, working for free in the form of an internship.
That is if you’re not a celebrity. After all, celebrities don’t wait in line, they don’t do their own groceries or drive themselves to their destinations but they certainly do get what they want. As of late, it seems that what they want most is not a table at the Ivy but a job in the fashion industry.
Hockey star Sean Avery was the first celebrity to enter the fashion world by getting an internship with none other than Vogue Magazine.
“I wrote to the editor in chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, and expressed my desire to intern for the magazine once my team won the Stanley Cup,” he explained in a four page essay published on the Men’s Vogue website. “After just a couple of days I got the answer I was looking for.”
One of the benefits of being a celebrity is not having to travel through the usual channels. While hundreds of students and recent grads have to rely on a resume and cover letter directed to the human resources department, Avery can simply ask La Wintour for a job.
But his start wasn’t the only thing that set Avery apart from Vogue’s other interns. While fashion design students held on to their degrees and qualifications while running around Manhattan running errands for their supervisors, steaming clothes and packing for photo shoots, Avery was styling them, sitting on meetings with the managing editor and getting his own company e-mail address and desk.
Also riding the internship-of-my-dreams train is NFL Eagles player Stewart Bradley who’s currently an intern for Elle Magazine. So far he’s been seen at Fashion Week events with executive editor Anna Pezik and guest blogging for their website about his experience.
In his first blog post, the linebacker explained just how football has made him qualified for the job.
“During the “off” season each year I like to try to find an experience that will expand my horizons and take me out of my comfort zone. It’s a good way, I think, to grow as a person and learn new things,” he said. “What better way to do so than to intern at the world’s most circulated women’s fashion magazine?”
So while most candidates looking for an internship at Elle are trying to follow a career path, Bradley is on a journey to self-discovery. It is another benefit of being a celebrity; getting something that everyone else wants just because you can. This benefit applies to the most famous of celebrity interns: Kanye West.
The rapper is currently an intern for the legendary Louis Vuitton. According to the fashion house’s website a candidate for an internship needs to be a fashion design major who can earn school credit and be proficient in Photoshop and Illustrator. While West’s incompetency in the first two is guaranteed and the latter ones are more than likely the same, that didn’t stop him from getting the job, starting his own line of sneakers and attending every Fashion Week show seated on the first row.
So if these “interns” obviously aren’t qualified for their positions, why are they being hired? Because all other qualified candidates can’t give these companies one valuable gift: publicity.
Kanye West has mentioned Louis Vuitton in every interview he’s done since December. Vogue and subsequently Elle have gained notoriety for accepting their all-star interns. Diane von Furstenberg, perhaps, was the one with the biggest celebrity marketing plan by employing New York socialite Olivia Palermo.
Palermo’s biggest accomplishment may have been to climb the social ladder, she is also a part of the MTV reality show “The City” and is conveniently dressed in DVF for every scene she’s in. That allows DVF not only to have their name exposed to prospective buyers every Monday night, but to have a link on their website for the outfits featured on the show and it is no coincidence that they’re all sold out.
Every year, thousands of people graduate from colleges and universities around the country with majors in Communications, Journalism and Fashion Design with one goal in mind: to enter the fashion industry. They know it’s an uphill battle, that it is an exclusive place and only a selected few succeed and now they have to add the competition of every vapid celebrity who wishes to have a Devil Wears Prada moment. Since designers and editors could use any publicity they can get in this economy, those real aspiring professionals can only hope they at least get a letter of recommendation out of all of it.
