Following in the footsteps of Kanye West, who did a faux-internship at Louis Vuitton and folded T-shirts at the Gap for an hour, Lady Gaga is reportedly jumping from music to fashion by taking an internship with hatmaker Philip Treacy. Gaga and Treacy collaborated on two headpieces for Gaga’s recent tour, and she apparently applied for an internship in the traditional way rather than just asking her friend to hook her up. I think it’s really cool that she wants to start at the very bottom and work her way up in order to truly learn about the industry, but it also kind of bugs me to see a celebrity – who doesn’t need it – possibly take an internship position away from a student who could really benefit from the experience. I don’t have a problem with someone like Gaga taking on a vanity internship, but there is a part of me that’s like “you get to play at having a job while some people actually really need this gig in order to launch their actual careers? I’m going to give it three weeks of “interning,” max, before she’s designing her own line of hats. It’ll be the quickest promotion ever.
Cross posted from TheGloss.
I may not know much about the upcoming Smurfs movie, but I know two things: Hank Azaria is playing Smurf-hater Gargamel, and now word is that Tim Gunn will be in the movie as well! He will be playing an executive assistant at a cosmetics company. In other words, everything about this is amazing.
Have you ever flipped through a magazine and felt like they were missing your perspective on something? One girl, Ashley Falcon, felt like she and other plus-size women weren’t getting enough advice and support from fashion magazines. Rather than just complain, Ashley got going – she joined Marie Claire magazine as an intern, and soon she was penning her very own column for the publication. How did she make the leap from unpaid intern to full-time writer? One day, Ashley was sharing a cab with a Marie Claire editor. She mentioned that she had to work much harder than her more slender coworkers to find cute, appropriate work attire. The editor thought Ashley made a great point, and before long she was winning a huge following with her honest yet funny takes on plus-size shopping. The column, “Big Girl in a Skinny World,” is a hit.
Her first column addressed the gruelling quest for the perfect pair of jeans. She included three of her favourites that work for up to a size 24. That’s probably the first time those digits have appeared on one of the magazine’s fashion spreads unless it mentioned the model’s age.
The article is surprisingly and admirably frank. Ashley doesn’t just claim to be an expert, she offers her testimonial as an unashamed size 18: “I go through at least a few pairs of jeans every year, routinely wearing holes in the area where my thighs rub together.”
Ashley wrote that “It’s not easy being chic, but it’s an epic struggle when you’re a big girl.”
Congrats, Ashley, and keep up the good work!
Oh, fashion interns. Not only does wanting to break into such a competitive industry usually mean you have to accept several unpaid or low-paid gigs in order to build up your resume, one fashion website is now pushing their free help even further. Fashionista.com, who (like many other fashion and beauty companies) relies on unpaid interns to help them cover the bases during Fashion Week, has asked their staff to go above and beyond the normal call of duty. Check out this section from a recent intern job ad they posted:
“We’ll need you at least two days a week until Fashion Week starts February 9th, during which we’ll need you more. How much more depends on your schedule, but you should be eager to skip class in favor of MILK. Our intern hours are officially 11 to 4, but again, once the week starts there’s no on/off.”
You heard that right, everybody: your unpaid job is WAY more important than your education! School is for losers! I’ll see you guys at fashion week.
Internships at fashion magazines are among the most competitive and sought-after internships in the world. However, one fashion intern might be in trouble after this story made rounds online:
Outrage at Grazia magazine after an intern sent out regularly to buy skinny lattes for the beauty desk announced at the end of her stint on the mag that she had in fact been buying them all full-fat ones. [Gawker via Media Monkey]
Or maybe she’s trying to subvert the paradigm and defeat the system from within? That would actually be awesome. If that’s true, she can be my intern anytime she wants.
Writing on the Huffington Post, Friend of STA Brooke Moreland deftly breaks down the main types of holiday party outfits, what they say about you, and what others will think of you for wearing them. Here are a couple of highlights:
- The LBD: You think it’s timeless, everyone else thinks it’s safe and predictable. They’re also all wearing LBDs themselves.
- The Party Dress: You’re the life of the party. However, that means you also run a higher risk of barfing on someone or accidentally hitting on a coworker’s spouse.
- The Business Suit: You just came from the office, which means you’re a workaholic. Your boss thinks that is a good quality, but your coworkers probably think you’re lame.
- The Cute Holiday Sweater: Um, do I even need to mention this one? You may think “festive,” everyone else thinks “loser.” Save it for Grandma’s Christmas dinner.
- The Elegant Dress: Perhaps you’re overdressed, or perhaps you’re just so good-looking that everyone else is jealous of you. Sometimes, risks are worth taking.
You can view the whole post here.
Published on
November 6, 2009 in
Celebrity Assistant Soapbox and Video.
Tags: assistants on TV, celebrity assistants, fashion, getting fired, rachel zoe, reality TV, taylor jacobson, the rachel zoe project, TV, Video.
Taylor, the peroxide-haired “senior assistant” who seemed to hate her boss Rachel Zoe, has been fired. There was no reason offered by either Rachel or Taylor (who Ashley likes to refer to as “the awesomely bitchy one”). Along with Rachel and fellow assistant Brad, Taylor was one of the stars of The Rachel Zoe Project on Bravo, which just finished airing its second season. Today, Taylor emailed all her contacts the following note:
After four amazing years at Rachel Zoe Corporation, I’m saddened and exhilarated at the same time to announce my departure. After much thought and consideration, I have decided to take the challenging leap to go off and style on my own.
After the jump, let’s revisit some of Taylor’s finest (and most disgruntled) moments.
Continue reading ‘rachel zoe fires assistant’
“My first boyfriend’s mother was in wardrobe and I was her assistant. The first film I worked on was Mommie Dearest. I used to measure people nipple to nipple. The first line I heard from Miss Dunaway was: ‘Who is that fat girl in my eyeline?’ I was terrified. Funnily enough, when I became a movie star for five seconds [in The People vs Larry Flynt, for which she won critical acclaim], Sharon Stone called me and said, ‘Welcome to the industry. When I got here, Miss Dunaway welcomed me.’ And I was like, ‘Miss Dunaway has welcomed me already.’”
- Courtney Love in the Times Online
Fashion is a notoriously competitive field to break into – that’s why people are still willing to work for crazy bosses like Kelly Cutrone and Anna Wintour. However, it may be so competitive that even famous and/or rich people have to do grunt work. First, Tallulah Willis toiled away as an intern guest of the editors at Harper’s Bazaar instead of simply being handed a job or a column. Now, the New York Times reports that even famous Korean pop stars still have to start at the bottom:
Let us take the example of Sang A Im-Propp, who was a pop star in Korea before she decided, while on a business trip to New York, that she wanted to be in fashion. This was nearly a decade ago, and Ms. Im-Propp’s command of English was tenuous, but she enrolled at Parsons and in short order found herself an internship with Victoria Bartlett, a noted stylist and designer whom she admired and hoped would introduce her to the glamorous world of design. Instead, Ms. Im-Propp found it difficult to understand Ms. Bartlett’s heavy British accent, and at first she thought she had misunderstood just what Ms. Bartlett was asking her to do. Get cupcakes?
Not just any cupcakes, but the glossy butter-cream confections from the Cupcake Cafe, which is a four-block crosstown walk from Ms. Bartlett’s studio through the dodgy garment district, and it was freezing outside.
“It made me cry a lot,” Ms. Im-Propp said. “Vicky is an amazing artist, but she can be difficult.”
Could it be that fashion is actually becoming a great equalizer? I’d be a lot less demoralized about having to fetch coffee if the other lackey fetching coffee was a pop star. I’m just saying.
Talk about art imitating life – Ugly Betty star Mark Indelicato, who plays Betty’s fashion-conscious nephew Justin, may be jumping into the fashion world for real. Indelicato, age 15, took a tour of designer Carolina Herrera’s showroom last week. While there, he showed Herrera some sketches he had in mind for a denim line he wants to do. The designer was reportedly so impressed that she offered Indelicato an internship on the spot. Will he be a vanity intern who skips straight to designing, or will he actually get a chance to learn about the workings of the fashion industry?
Let’s just remind Carolina Herrera that, while it was very kind of her to offer this internship, she might want to hold out another year or two. Fifteen-year-olds, as we all learned from the Tallulah Willis at Harper’s Bazaar incident, are not able to be interns. So maybe Indelicato will just have to be a “guest of the designer” while he’s still a minor.
Following in the footsteps of Kanye West, who did a faux-internship at Louis Vuitton and folded T-shirts at the Gap for an hour, Lady Gaga is reportedly jumping from music to fashion by taking an internship with hatmaker Philip Treacy. Gaga and Treacy collaborated on two headpieces for Gaga’s recent tour, and she apparently applied for an internship in the traditional way rather than just asking her friend to hook her up. I think it’s really cool that she wants to start at the very bottom and work her way up in order to truly learn about the industry, but it also kind of bugs me to see a celebrity – who doesn’t need it – possibly take an internship position away from a student who could really benefit from the experience. I don’t have a problem with someone like Gaga taking on a vanity internship, but there is a part of me that’s like “you get to play at having a job while some people actually really need this gig in order to launch their actual careers? I’m going to give it three weeks of “interning,” max, before she’s designing her own line of hats. It’ll be the quickest promotion ever.
