This is trip four out of the twelve markets I will go on this year. Twenty-seven flights. Outside the taxi, the air in Milan is thick and wet so we fold our sheaths of coats, scarves, and bags in order to make a graceful exit. Market is better known as Fashion Week. The online videos and Instagram stories overlook the commercial aspect of what resembles a parade of glamorous product sponsorships and celebrities. Independently of that fanfare (wherever it is) we do our jobs. We are the worker ants bringing the microscopic morsels of food back to the colony. Clothing Accountants. Buyers. We are, more specifically, buyers for a high volume e-commerce luxury retailer. Or actually, I am the buyer’s assistant. This means most things are said to me in this tone:

‘Don’t put my face in it.’

I lower the iPad. Before me my boss Aimee is staring at me intently, thrusting forward a hanger bearing a pair of chartreuse green track-pants with the words ‘Amour’ and ‘Boss’ embroidered in sequins across the knees. We have been taking notes and photos for three-and-a-half hours. The room is quartered by clothing racks, packed tightly by colour story, standing perpendicular to a wall of windows that overlook an overgrown field. It would be a less oppressive space if the walls were not black and the ceiling not so low. We are falling behind, especially because the salesperson we are working with has lost all motivation to help us. She is wearing a showroom uniform: a bottle green cardigan, tired white shirt and bouncy lavalliere bow around her neck. The deliberate sweetness of her uniform throws her bad mood into sharp relief. She keeps asking us if we want more coffee and running to the bathroom. She must not be on commission.

‘Is my face in it?’ Aimee asks. I look at the iPad, and see her scowl pop out just above the drawstring.

‘A little. Just the mouth,’ I reply.

‘That’s Look Five,’ she barks. ‘Write it down or we’ll forget… write it on the iPad.’

She’s at a loss for words and gesticulating. This is how we spend our days. Luxury clothing is sold in showrooms, to buyers coming from various stores, who sell it to customers. It’s a Russian nesting doll situation and it can be hard to tell who should be pandering to whom, though, somehow, I always end up feeling it should be me. This salesperson surely agrees since she is correcting all my colour names as I read the descriptions back to Aimee. It’s not bright blue, it’s ‘Turbo.’ It’s not pink, it’s ‘Arousal.’ Arousal is iconic, and they would prefer if we used that expression. Massimo would really prefer that. She gets flustered and runs off.

‘That girl has no sense of urgency,’ Aimee says disapprovingly.

The salesperson re-approaches, grinning widely, dangling a T-shirt with a phallic motif on it. Now we are excited.

‘That’s free money!’ is Aimee’s favourite expression, and she uses it here. It means something we can go deep and wide into. ‘Deep’ means we will buy a lot in quantity, and ‘wide’ means we will buy a lot of colours. For a long time we consider colours for the phallus, and which direction it should point. (Sideways is chic, up or down is crass.)

‘Can we have an exclusive colour?’ I ask. Aimee is pleased, and she gives me a praising look. The salesperson says we have to ask Massimo, but probably the minimum order would be quite deep and they would expect a marketing push from our end. Aimee reminds her that last time we received an ‘exclusive’ it turned up on Farfetch in several different stores, so we would rather they did the marketing push themselves this time. We talk about background colours, while I pull up our most recent sales report by colour. As with the last twenty exclusives, we choose bright pink. It is, after all, what the colour report says we should do. Recent research showed that most orders placed on our site were sent to large, new condo developments in rural areas in the U.S. We think of our customer as an urban creative: an architect or graphic designer for an up-and-coming firm in London or New York. The shared aspiration seems to be beneficial for both us and our real customer: the wealthy suburbanite.

The salesperson steps away to make a phone call and Aimee tells me that this brand is shit. She can’t wait to get out of here and on to the next appointment. She rolls her eyes. I have a flash memory of reading somewhere that brands were supposed to be ‘spaces for dreams.’

We make small-talk with the vendor’s manager, whose Airbnb host is refusing to deliver more toilet paper. Aimee makes sure to hit all the important points: budget, delivery windows, order deadline. She goes to the bathroom and I let the manager know we will not be meeting the deadline. She comes back from the bathroom much more energetic and they use hot words with one another while I finish typing maniacally. Hot words are indoctrinated during branding meetings and they indicate you belong here. We use them much like a mating-call. So Aimee makes sure to say ‘Disrupt,’ ‘SEO’ and ‘We really aren’t calling it a store, it’s more of a creation space’ to the manager, to which she replies, ‘Sustainable’ ‘Emotional pieces’ and ‘Our girl is really growing up with this collection, she’s just becoming so much more sophisticated (not old) and we want to really be responsive to that,’ and then we leave.

In the Uber Aimee texts our manager excitedly about all the free money.

I wanted to be a buyer because it sounded powerful: it indicated both ownership and curation. In reality most of my time is spent retyping product descriptions (‘yellow perfecto in stretch sugared lambskin with tonal top-stitching’) and lending a vague opinion about chic dick colours, carefully avoiding any strong statements. Instead of power what I have is ‘accountability.’ Accountability for the personal taste of strangers. Aimee would say it is the reverse: we only buy what the customer wants, so they are the accountable ones. I suppose we are co-conspirators. Aimee looks up from her phone, seemingly stunned.

‘Do you remember the tiny woman who was stealing everything off our rack at Wang?

With the short hair and the velvet pants? French?’

‘Yes.’

‘She died! She collapsed and died after a showroom appointment! In the bathroom!’

‘No she didn’t…’

I know this will weigh heavily on Aimee, who is a kind soul despite it all. The rumour lingers briefly for me, and I return to my thoughts. I’m thinking about the sleep I will have in a few hours. The other assistant researched that you can get a full REM cycle in ninety minutes and then handed me a large Dexedrine for when I wake up. According to him it’s what they do in the military, although that seems far-fetched.

‘We need to bid higher on Acne Studios on Google AdWords. When I searched it this morning we were the second option after Net-a-Porter.’ I blurt out, having suddenly remembered.

‘So e-mail Paul – he can place a larger bid when he gets into the office.’ Paul’s official title is ‘SEO (‘Search Engine Optimization’) Scrum-master.’ It’s a rugby analogy, meaning he is the organizer of our on-going battle for online presence. I send him a curt e-mail, resentful that I had to call it out.

As we approach the snake-encrusted door to our next appointment at Gucci, Aimee pulls me aside. A gaggle of other buyers who are changing from sneakers to heels with their hands on the brick wall are watching us.

‘I want to talk to you about the last Gucci appointment we had. I was really surprised that you undermined my selection to Sara when she asked you.’ I am caught off-guard by the public shaming and start babbling apologies. Aimee stares at her phone and says we’re late, we have to go in. I am still blushing when the girl from the front desk greets us and sits us at our table in the enormous velvet-upholstered red room. Even the walls and carpet are red velvet: it’s like being inside of an organ. I remember that we will likely be here for nine hours and feel nauseous. There are no windows, just dozens of racks of sparkly and lacey clothing lining the walls in schizophrenic colour stories. Aimee is trying to hand a cough-drop to a passing teenage fit model wearing a green lace full-length gown with an ivory bodice. The fit model, likely an Eastern European, refuses politely. Aimee says we have to make sure that we don’t see any clothes on that girl, since everything will look good on her, and it will throw us off.

While we wait for a salesperson, I pull out the iPad and we go over the analysis on a PDF sent by the merchandisers. What colours and silhouettes do we need?  She counts how many colours and fabrics we need to buy in the Dionysus bag, and notes with relief that price-point is not a determining factor in the bags department. However, we need to stop selecting so many colours of the Kangaroo-lined Princetown loafer. That silhouette is slowing down across the board.

Besides this glorified shopping list, we prepare by asking ourselves what the brand is going to accuse us of. Aimee asks me to pull up the report on off-brand styling to see if we are guilty with Gucci. (It is my favourite report as it compiles our worst online looks into a kind of photo blooper reel, with commentary from our manager to the stylists such as ‘STOP STYLING DRIES TROUSERS WITH LOUBOUTIN HEELS,’ ‘VETEMENTS SWEATSHIRTS ARE NOT DRESSES,’ ‘WHERE ARE HER PANTS?!’)

‘Wait no, I saw that this morning – show me the relevancy figures so I have them fresh in my mind.’ She gasps at the figure: only twelve percent above average likes on our Instagram for this season. Gucci has dropped several points within the brand relevancy matrix since I checked yesterday.

‘Ugh. Does that mean it’s going to become another markdown brand soon?’ Aimee asks herself. ‘I can’t deal with another one.’ We don’t control the Instagram. We recently hired an underground magazine from Copenhagen to run the social media content and make it look like we know things about music and culture. I heard they don’t print the magazine anymore, and instead work as a content factory for several brands. I liked the last presentation the editor gave when he said that our focus was now going to be on the daily life of the ‘Cool Everyman,’ giving up the polished ‘unnatural’ editorials of the past. We will, of course, continue to style the models in luxury clothing, only now they will be doing what is ‘natural’ to them: skate-boarding and participating in art installations in Miami.

I am hit with a wave of exhaustion as I stare at the massive wall of meticulously organized Dionysus bags. In the corner of my eye I can see our salesperson, Amanda, coming towards us with aggressive friendliness. My heart is palpitating off-rhythm again. How do we pull off these racks and shelves the two hundred styles that will appeal to the maximum number of affluent people for the maximum number of reasons?

How deep can we go into this collective space for dreams?   

Later, back at the hotel after an awkward and rushed dinner with a supplier, I take out the bottle of German energy drink I have stashed in the mini-bar. Everything still has a green fog over it, which is what happens when your eyes adjust to bright red for ten hours. After weighing entering orders against my ninety minutes of sleep, I decide to delay gratification and return to my laptop. Aimee is texting me from her room asking what orders are ready for her to review, and telling me that I should prioritize Versace. The order entry begins.

‘Large Black Prometheus Backpack in Varnished Goatskin.’ Style code. Colour code.

‘Medusa Head Necklace in Plated Stainless Steel.’ Style code. Colour code. ‘Medusa ring.’ ‘Medusa Bracelet.’ What is it with Italian brands and Greek mythology? My head crashes into my keyboard while typing up the list of Versace Medusa jewellery. I get up and pour the viscous yellow liquid into a plastic cup to continue my night of describing. Tomorrow, the order will get quantified. The next day it will get approved by the merchandisers. The day after it will get approved by the editors, who may suggest to add a runway piece. Then it will get sent to the brand who will ensure that we represented them well. Finally, the product will get made somewhere very far from where we go on market, and our customer will like it on Instagram having seen it on the Cool Everyman, and will buy it on sale at the end of the season.

As I get the kick from the Club-Mate, I remember reading about a parasite that moves through a remarkable number of hosts: a worm, a blade of grass, a bird, a cat, and its final host is a human person, transmitted while they pet their cat. The writer was impressed by the parasite’s amazing purposeful journey, in spite of having no consciousness. I’m still thinking about the parasite when Aimee texts me again to ask if the order is ready yet.

Lily Smith is the pen name of an assistant buyer based in New York. She has worked in the lower echelons of mass luxury retail for seven years.

“Do the interns get Glocks?”

“No, they all share one.”

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004)

A QUICK ONLINE SEARCH for fashion internships and you will find ‘dream jobs for fashion divas’ alongside ‘fashion intern horror stories’ as top search results. Unpaid fashion internships have gained notoriety as a critical – and highly coveted – first step to engagement with the fashion system.¹ Glorified by marketing, and romanticised in pop culture there is an enormous demand in the industry. The fashion intern community mascots the image crisis and socio-economic issues² regarding unpaid labour where the economic value of work is diluted in an otherwise rigorously capitalist industry. As a full-time intern in New York City for several luxury brands, my experiences have revealed the unstable and highly idealised culture of unpaid fashion internships and the power play that exists between intern and industry.

As a relatively recent global phenomenon, understandings of the fashion internship are vague and generally undefined to both industry and intern alike. The term is perhaps best understood by the rhetoric that circulates within the industry and proliferates marketing.  Phrases like, ‘an exciting opportunity’ and ‘a great way to get experience’ saturate listings on fashion internship listing websites, constructing an understanding of internships as career-focused, offering positive situational learning for the intern’s benefit.³ The true experience of fashion internships often contradicts these luring ideals. Positions are unofficial, unpaid, unstructured and largely unsupervised, comprised of menial tasks, errands and observations. This reflects the allocation of interns by the industry to supporting productivity and cost-effectiveness. This insecurity within the workplace reflects the insecurity of the intern identity: anonymous, disposable and subservient. Phrases like, ‘I’ll get the intern to do it’ which often circulates fashion studios, reinforce a nonspecific, homogenous image.  Indeed, the purpose and identity of the fashion internship are open to interpretation and subsequently, widespread misuse. As a new entrepreneurial spirit underpins the fashion system,⁴ the application process, serial interning and intern inequality are highlighting serious complications for the fashion intern community.

The interview setting crystallises the fashion industry’s authoritative relationship with its intern community.  For interns, the interview is a critical first point of contact with the industry where the applicant’s best work is showcased for approval and validation. Despite that the work is usually unpaid and informal, the company accepts the intern; the intern does not accept the company. Motivated by reputation value to charm and impress employers, prospective interns are processed like employees where a position must be earned. In my own personal experience, at an interview for such a position, upon showing my portfolio I began to explain the construction of a particular garment I had made, provoking  the comment, ‘we just might have to use that idea!’ from the interviewer.  I replied with, ‘thank you’ despite feelings of complete anonymity and disempowerment. Lured by the cliché rhetoric, ‘It’s who you know’ interns become willing victims for the exposure and self-marketability provided by fashion internships. The interview represents a doorway to this new entrepreneurial spirit of contingent labour.⁵ Free agency, autonomy and self-direction are positive aspects favoured by unpaid interns. However, this new spirit also signifies a casualisation of the workforce of which self-exploitation is a direct consequence.⁶ Marketing and media reinforce this stigmatic image through which a promotion of subservience and submission as seemingly necessary to progress, underlies romanticised pop culture imagery and glorified accounts of insider status. While Free Fashion Internships describes ‘fashion intern hopefuls like you’ like contestants and Intern Queen advises interns to ‘know their place’,⁷ the interview setting solidifies fashion internships as exclusory and interns as insecure. Indeed, the formalities of the interview perpetuate disempowerment as part of the fashion intern identity.

From desire and desperation for a covetable reputation rises a subculture of serial interns. A market saturated with demand for unpaid labour and little opportunity to progress, serial interning have become habitual within the fashion system. Reputation capital is the key incentive mechanism for interns where respect, references, networks and experiential learning are quantified.⁸ Prestigious, respectable internships often require the completion of previous internships and most placements do not result in an official paid position at all. Undertaking multiple internships simultaneously or consecutively has become an obligation in response to this. I have undertaken six unpaid internships at luxury brands globally, sometimes three at a time five days per week. Since none of them realised into an official position, my references are critical supporting material for self-marketability as confirmation of my reputation through an association with these studios. The bargaining powering of respectable references is outweighing remuneration value.  Indeed, why pay for labour ever again if it is accepted for free? A ‘race to the bottom’ is highlighted by unpaid interning, reinforcing the perception that certain kinds of work have no economic value. Serial interning has normalised the subservience of fashion internships where reputation serves as insurance against a perilous job market. The value placed on talent and labour in the fashion industry is no longer clear-cut, and the necessary distinction between intern and employee is an increasingly exploited grey area.

Privilege is a critical factor in the widening socio-economic inequality that defines – and divides – the unpaid fashion intern community. To work for free, interns commonly rely on external, most likely parental support to undertake a full-time internship. This has been my own experience and that of many of my interning contemporaries. To undertake unpaid work with minimal sacrifice to quality of life – that is, to have all financial needs met – therefore signifies socio-economic privilege. This lifestyle of quasi-inequality is romanticised by the aspirational characters of pop culture; from Blair Waldorf at W Magazine in Gossip Girl and Hannah Horvath in Girls. This majority group is less likely to feel discontent with the lacklustre conditions of unpaid fashion internships because they sacrifice less for the experience, normalising intern exploitation.⁹ In this inherently exclusive and self-preserving culture in the fashion system, the already-privileged continue to benefit, empowered with a head start to respectable credentials. For many young people, the financial hardship accrued through unpaid labour restricts them from entering the intern community at all.¹⁰ This discrimination highlights a growing outsider majority of non-interns, those limited within the widening gap between outsider status and industry involvement.¹¹ Pressured by limited entry-level alternatives and intern experience as a pre-requisite, not undertaking an unpaid fashion internship is considered more detrimental than the unfavourable circumstances they present. Indeed, socio-economic privilege preserves access to industry opportunity, diluting meritocratic values and perpetuating an intern hierarchy.

Rigorous quantifiable research into the widespread effects of unpaid labour within fashion must be undertaken to legitimise the intern community. Structured, enforceable, educational programs and financial incentives would reform and improve the identity of fashion interns and appreciate meritocratic and economic values otherwise diluted by the casualisation of contingent work. Indeed, without interns the fashion industry would grind to a halt; it is in the system’s best interest to nurture them.

1. Henderson, J.M. (2012). Are Creative Careers now Exclusively Reserved for the Privileged?  Forbes. August 31. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2012/08/31/are-creative-careers-now-reserved-exclusively-for-the-privileged/ ↩

2. The legal complications pertaining to unpaid labour are too extensive for this discussion. ↩

3. Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Nation. P.3. New York City: Verso Publishing. ↩

4. Wark, M. (1991). Fashioning the Future. P. 61-63. New York City: Taylor and Francis Publishing. ↩

5. Florida, R. (2012).  The Rise of the Creative Class. P.94. New York City: Basic Books Publishing. ↩

6. Andrew Ross notes “the flexibility [which free agency] delivers is a response to an authentic demand for a life not dictated by…excessively managed work” (Perlin, R. 2011, P. 37). ↩

7. Carstens, C.I. (2009) www.freefashioninternships.com/about/ and Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Queen Inc in Intern Nation. P.151. New York City: Verso Publishing. ↩

8. Florida, R. (2012). The Rise of the Creative Class. P. 74-75. New York City: Basic Books Publishing. ↩

9. Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Nation. P. 168. New York City: Verso Publishing. ↩

10. Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Nation. P. 159, 163. New York City: Verso Publishing. ↩

11. Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Nation. P. 159, 163. New York City: Verso Publishing. ↩