So, since the whole world and her goldfish have been asking me about my new internship, I’ve decided to write an exposé about the shocking world of fashion and its terrible treatment of its interns. Except I won’t be, since there’s nothing slightly shocking about the world of interning. However, I am learning that it is definitely more than ‘just getting the coffee’s in.
I’ll start from the beginning. For those that don’t know, my name is Jade. Also known as Jadeybaby along with a host of other nicknames which are infinitely more interesting that ‘Jade’. And since Wednesday I’ve been interning at the New Look Press Office just off Oxford St. The night before, a host of thoughts began stamping their way through my already overly crowded brain. The most overbearing being the fear of not being pretty or skinny enough to work in fashion; especially when I was certain to be surrounded by those ‘types’. Not to sound cliché, but I was actually surprised to walk in and see smiles, not fake, bitchy smiles but genuine ones.
I don’t want to really go into too much detail about the day to day jobs handed to me such as leafing through newspapers for New Look press coverage or finding image requests for magazines to possibly use, because I would probably bore you with the mundane nature of it all. As an intern your mind is not important, but your body certainly is. Your ability to type, run to Costa, pack boxes, rip open plastic bags and answer the most complicated phone ever invented become the most important things about you. On my first day, I was sure my brain would simply melt from lack of use and leak through my overly pierced ears.
(yes I spent my day ripping open plastic bags from THE Vogue. Made it a little less boring I guess)
However, on Thursday something miraculous was about to take place. The Holy Grail of shopping: The Sample Sale. This particular sample sale was a collection of all the samples the buying department had acquired during the fashion year, and it was their time to unload. So we, the interns – the lucky fashion bitches – had to set up the sample sale, and therefore had first dibs on the clothes. For every girl in the room it could only have been described as a fashion orgasm. So after a long and bloody hard day, I left work at 18:00 laden with three bags of free garments. They don’t pay us in money but they certainly pay us in clothes. Yeah a dream, but also hard to navigate a packed 73 bus on the way home; where you’ve been left standing next to a tramp who smells bad like a piss and sweat cocktail.
For those of you who are thinking about doing an internship in Press/PR I would say go for it. Especially if you are confused about the career path you want to follow. I’ve always been confused about whether fashion was the right path for me; teaching also dominates my passion. And while this internship has shown me that free clothes are nothing to be turned down, it has also proved to me that if I’m going to work in fashion, I need to be my own boss. I need to tell myself what to do. I need to decide my day. After being in university for three years I’ve learnt to be fiercely independent, and it’s not something I can easily turn my back on.
However, keep the free clothes coming and I may just change my mind.
P.S. photographs of my sample sale clothing coming soon. Haven’t decided whether to take photographs of them on my bed or model them for you...watch this space! Lol
Jade x
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