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.
It’s not uncommon for college students or recent grads to intern at magazines–Lauren Conrad, anyone?–but more and more high schoolers have tried to get in on the intern game. Having internships is a big boost on college applications, but some businesses get picky about who they want as free labor. Take Teen Vogue magazine, for example. After some problems with teenage interns tagging along uninvited to fashion industry parties, getting drunk, and making idiots of themselves, the magazine has now unceremoniously banned high school student interns.
Sorry about the ban, guys. Maybe you can work at the Gap instead? That’s almost the same thing as interning at a fashion magazine, right?
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.
Today the fashion world mourns the loss of the awesomely-named Isabella Blow. Isabella, a stylist and fashionista in London, apparently died from cancer.
Isabella got her start as an assistant to two of the most famous names in the fashion business, Vogue contributor Andre Leon Talley and the woman who was an indirect inspiration for this site, Anna Wintour. Let’s face it: anybody who can work for Anna Wintour and come out with a respectable career in the fashion world has got to be hardcore. And she could pull off some eccentric outfits like nobody’s business.
We’ll miss Isabella Blow for her style, but we here at Save the Assistants will miss her as a reminder that a former assistant can always go on to glory. Well played, Isabella.
