Is it time for people to just give up and walk away?
Remember that America’s Next Top Model episode where one of the contestants awkwardly presents her runway walk to the panel of judges, says it’s not really for her and that she’d rather went home, then leaves the room ignoring their attempts to respond?
The video resurfaced around 2019 and became a staple dish of the pre-shitposting, millennial-run Instagram meme pages’ menus, usually served with a caption along the lines of: ‘me at a job interview’.
If you are scrolling TikTok or Instagram Reels in 2024, there’s still a great chance that this clip will show up on your feed, together with ‘bed rotting’ and anti-skincare de-influencers, proving the urgent need to create an antidote to otherwise heavily aestheticised and increasingly irritating TikToks promoting stuff with ‘Little Life’ playing in the background.
But going back to ANTM and, more precisely, to Tyra Banks, who herself claims to have been body-shamed and bullied multiple times during her career as a model, to say that she was unfair to the contestants of the show is, like, to say nothing.
Examples? In season three, one contestant was told by Banks to “suck her stomach in” because she looked like she was “two months pregnant”. Another one was eliminated because of her weight gain. On top of that, there were multiple cases of slut-shaming and offensive language.
Although the show has, of course, been dramatised and over-exaggerated to some extent for television, Banks and other judges, who also worked various jobs in the fashion industry, constantly emphasised that the ‘hardships’ the contestants were enduring were an inseparable part of working in that industry.
If that is actually the case, was the ‘I wanna go home’ girl right all along? Is calling it quits before even properly starting out the best solution for wannabe models, buyers, stylists, designers and editors?
Not according to Marko Vrbos, a London-based Croatian fashion stylist, creative director and model. I just about managed to catch them relaxing in between the meetings on a random Thursday afternoon. A FaceTime call is all I could get however, a little throwback to the pandemic era I suppose.
That is the thing with fashion people: they are always busy, although they do not take themselves or their jobs half as seriously as the noughties romcom girlbosses, or Tyra Banks.
“The attitude which I think everyone should have if they want to make it work (in fashion), is that you should not care about your pride; obviously, respect yourself, but don’t worry about sending out emails to some big names, just fucking send them, what’s the worst that can happen?”
Marko is one of the few people who was able to start working in fashion without any financial support from their parents and without graduating from fashion school. They admit that it was partially due to their brief modelling career, which, they said, was “their own fashion school”. It also came with some useful contacts.
“In my case, it just does happen, but it does take a lot of work. And a lot of unpaid stuff. So, I used to do a lot of jobs aside from the modelling; I worked in a pub, I was a nanny, it wasn’t particularly easy. You also have to know how to network. Which parties to go to, who to talk to and how to talk to them to stand out.’’
Federica*, who moved to London from Italy, definitely knew who to talk to. After graduating, she began working as an assistant to an editor of one of the fashion magazines owned by Conde Nast.
However, she was not actually hired by the magazine, but by the editor herself. Although some of her pieces were published, her name is not on the staff list.
Yet she still believes she lucked out. She had well-connected friends who frequented a few private members’ clubs. Along with them came the networking events, at one of which she met her ex-boss.
She just about managed to get by, working part-time as an assistant, getting around £700 a month and then picking up some hospitality shifts. Yet, after working as an assistant for over a year, Federica realised that the career path she had chosen may not exactly be the most sustainable one in the long run.
“I always wanted to write, loved fashion and knew a lot about it, so obviously I’d want to be a fashion journalist. She [her boss] said that even if I was the most talented writer, it was unlikely that any fashion magazine would hire me full-time. Right now, magazines are getting rid of their staff writers and prefer to use freelancers more. For her also, the magazine was only one of the many gigs.”
Federica’s tasks were split between those gigs, then she was also responsible for running her boss’ errands. “I even helped her hang her washing once. I didn’t mind so much since she was usually nice but yeah, that’s not exactly what I had in mind by working in fashion.”
Federica, now interning as a high-end art gallery assistant, does not think she will return to working in fashion: “Even the way the internships go (in arts), they are easier to get and pay enough to survive. Maybe it’s just my experience but I think that there’s better money in arts in general.”
Marko agrees: “In fashion we have the least money in comparison to, let’s say, music or art. But then, my goal was never money, so in that aspect, is it worth it? I don’t know.’’
For Claire* however, it is not. Claire left the fashion industry after grinding for over a decade. She worked in various roles, mostly wholesale, and her CV contains some of the biggest names in fashion, including Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Hermes, and Michael Kors.
“I put 10 years into it and I saw a lot of people bail out way earlier than me and totally change their career. I think the fashion industry has a very short shelf life, you don’t see a lot of people that start out right after their graduation and work in fashion up until their sixties.”
It is commonly known that most fashion jobs are done by women and many of Claire’s female colleagues would get to a certain point in their career, only to later meet a spouse, get married, have kids and just bow out.
That seems to be the case in many branches of the industry. American Vogue has long been accused of basically being a ‘graduation school’ for affluent young women since they were the only ones who could intern for free and then leave the job after finding the right bachelor.
Although Federica, Marko and Claire worked in completely different environments, they certainly dealt with issues common across the fashion industry.
Obviously, trying to summarise working in fashion by comparing corporate office jobs to working in retail or modelling seems to be a reductive exercise. However, it seems like all these fashion jobs share common woes: it’s difficult to get in, and once you do, a high workload is often combined with low wages; competitiveness; elitism and unattainable beauty standards that you’re expected to meet even if your job is only behind the desk.
For Federica and Claire, all that was enough to leave the industry. Marko, however, firmly believes that all the negative aspects aside, you are still lucky if you get to do what you are truly passionate about, as long as you don’t take yourself too seriously.
“At the end of the day, we’re doing something amazing but we’re not saving lives, so please, everyone, just calm the fuck down!”
Featured image courtesy of Marko Vrbos.