'Glamour' Editor And Former Intern Spar Blogstyle
Glamour executive fashion director at large Suze Yalof Schwartz has some choice words for Julie Fredrickson, who interned at Glamour once upon a time for four days before discovering "just how much like pledging a sorority" the experience is. Julie's now gainfully employed at fashion blog Coutorture, which she co-founded. Suze congratulates her on her success, then calls her out on being a total spoiled brat.
Please! In my day as an assistant, we worked from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m. and later or even 24 hours in a row, without complaint. It was expected that we would run around NYC in search of whatever our editor needed and if we didn't find it, it was pretty much the end of our careers. Saying "no" was not an option and that was the best thing I could have ever learned from any job.
While there is an element of "get on the floor, freshman bitches" to Suze's take, it's also not hard to see her point of view.
Anyone who's gone from being an intern or assistant to having an intern or assistant has probably experienced the same sorority-sisteresque desire to make sure the new kids have it tough, and also, working in fashion is just hard. Julie should've known that, kept her mouth shut, worked hard and played by the rules.
Or wait, should she have? There's an important distinction here that neither of these ladies has bothered to specifically mention: interns don't get paid. Assistants, nominally, do. Julie mentions not being able to hack the insane hours at Glamour and still make it to her part-time job. The moral of the story seems to be that backbreaking fashion internships are just for the wealthy and they won't really get you anywhere fast, so if you want to work in fashion, maybe just start your own website. As even Suze concedes: "Who is laughing now? Coutorture has really taken off and Julie was right to assume that by now, even if she had stuck it out, she would probably still be a coutortured assistant."
Coutorture [Glamour]
Who's Laughing Now? [Almost Girl]