a blog for the beleaguered
Best celebrity sighting ever: [Former French Vogue editor in chief/rumored Anna Wintour nemesis] Carine Roitfeld walking down the street in Paris. She was wearing insanely high heels, walking like she had a hunchback, and was flanked by two Asian assistants who were both chattering in French a mile a minute. Even though her posture freaked me out, I still adore her!
- Submitted by Marie
This month’s Vogue was full of interesting things. There were lots of articles about disgustingly rich people, and one about how Angelina Jolie is prettier than Princess Diana. (No, they really said that.) But the most interesting tidbit of all was how Andre Leon Talley – he of the designer caftans and buying tennis bracelets just to play tennis – started out as a receptionist. Granted, he was a receptionist in Andy Warhol’s Factory, but he was a receptionist nonetheless. Can you imagine ALT having to do plebian tasks like fetch coffee and hang up coats? I mean, THIS GUY.
Anna Wintour recently spoke at an event called “Fashion U,” where high school and college students can learn about the fashion industry. Among other things, she spoke about being fired from a job and advised everyone to follow suit:
I worked for American Harper’s Bazaar . . . they fired me. I recommend that you all get fired, it’s a great learning experience.
Is this why she fires so many people from Vogue? Because she’s hoping to enrich their lives?
Birds of a feather stick together – especially when both feathers are bosses with a reputation for assistant abuse. This week is Fashion Week, and Vogue editor Anna “The Devil Wears Prada” Wintour has nothing but nice things to say about Naomi “Cell Phone Tosser” Campbell. In response to claims that Campbell was a diva (shock!) during prep for Fashion Week, Wintour said, “Naomi was on time, professional and a joy to work with.”
Yeah, you two have no incentive to protect each other. Nope.
Remember how Anna Wintour’s daughter, Columbia grad Bee Shaffer, just couldn’t find a job? Well, even though she has a degree in theater and wanted to stay out of mom’s publishing world, Bee has finally landed herself a gig – as the assistant to Ricky Van Veen, the editor in chief of College Humor. No word on whether Bee will actually have to run errands and get Van Veen’s coffee or if she’ll just get to be the “pretty girl” in Vimeo videos, but either way, she’s got something to put on her resume now. Congrats, Bee – and good move sticking with the internet instead of the ever-dying world of print publishing. And if you ever have any workplace horror stories you might want to send this way, I totally promise to keep your identity a secret.
Now, let’s just hope there are some jobs left for the rest of us.
Bee Shaffer, the daughter of Vogue editrice/notorious boss Anna Wintour, is just like a regular person! She may get to join Mom in the front rows of fashion shows, but she took a less predictable route by studying theater at Columbia University. Now that Bee is out of school, she’s applying for jobs – and, oddly, hasn’t had much luck. Yes, it turns out that the recession affects even the daughters of legendary magazine editors. According to the New York Daily News:
The 22-year-old former Teen Vogue contributing editor went on a staggering 24 interviews since graduating from Columbia in May – all of them unsuccessful.
Part of me wants to be all bitter and “well, I sent out easily 200 resumes without getting a single interview, so suck it up already,” but part of me is also like “man, if it’s hard for this girl, imagine how bad it is for everyone else.” I think it’s safe to say that no one likes the job search process, especially when it’s your first job. Going on dozens of interviews and not having any of them pan out is embarrassing and disheartening. [I think Post Grad covered that fairly well.] Repeated job rejection getting to be a universal human experience, and that’s pretty depressing.
So, good luck, Bee, and I admire that you’re choosing a career other than the one where it would be super easy for you.
As its newsstand sales plummet and the entire magazine industry is in freefall, Vogue magazine has had to do things it never would have done in the past. Instead of only write about luxury and expensive things and people who are ten times more beautiful and fabulous than you’ll ever be, they have to occasionally look like they’re in touch with the regular folk. That’s why on the cover of the May issue there’s a headline that would be right at home on any magazine in your grocery store aisle – “You’re Fired! Surviving and Thriving After the Pink Slip.” However, because this is Vogue, the story isn’t about a working class person who got laid off and is struggling to make ends meet. Instead, it’s a first person essay by longtime Village Voice fashion writer Lynn Yaeger (pictured at left), who was laid off last year. While I think Yaeger is a good writer and her firing from the Voice was upsetting, I have a really hard time a) identifying with her, and b) not rolling my eyes continually during her article. If Yaeger wrote her piece [which is not available online, or I'd link to it] in bullet points, here’s what she’d advise you to do in your own layoff situation:
If you want a career in fashion, few places are better launching pads than style bible Vogue magazine. However, college design students, I regret to inform you there’s one less intern slot available this summer. That slot has been filled by a gentleman by the name of Sean Avery, who already has a day job–playing hockey for the New York Rangers.
Something tells me Avery won’t be spending his internship sealing envelopes or picking up everyone’s Starbucks order. The unpaid employee was a presenter at the FiFi Awards, which honor the best of the perfume industry. And there are rumors he may appear on the cover of Men’s Vogue. Does Sean Avery being an intern mean Venus Williams is going to become Anna Wintour’s assistant? Maybe college kids will start fighting for jobs as celebrity athletes.
Tennis player Venus Williams has dabbled in fashion designer, but she’s determined to be taken seriously in the industry. How determined is she? So determined that she’s willing to do whatever it takes–even if that means being an assistant for the woman who launched a thousand disgruntled-assistant roman a clefs. “I’ll be able to get an entry position getting coffee for hopefully Anna Wintour,” she told The Financial Times.
We appreciate the sentiment, but something tells us that with her money and clout she’s not going to have to make anyone else’s phone calls. Just a theory.
Vogue is no stranger to diva bosses–The Devil Wears Prada, anyone? This September’s annual ginormous fall fashion issue praises makeup artist Pat McGrath. Although we’d never heard of McGrath (but it’s hard to be a fashionista on an assistant salary), Vogue claims she’s the most important person in beauty right now.
In Anna Wintour’s Letter from the Editor, she praises McGrath’s attention to detail and tendency to be thorough. How thorough is she? So thorough she has an ‘army’ of assistants.
Like we said, we don’t know Pat McGrath from our (Payless-purchased) shoe. However, is having a cavalcade of assistants the real mark of talent these days? I can understand a famous/successful/globe-trotting person needing to have one, or maybe even two. But exactly how many is an army? Five? Twelve? Thirty? And why is it some kind of accomplishment to need that many people to follow you around at all times? Does that make you better at your job, or just better at micromanaging? Do you pay for all those assistants to travel around the world with you, or do you make them ride in steerage to cut costs? The assistants need answers, and they’re not willing to scour through the thousand or so pages to find it.
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