I’m spending my pre-senior-year summer working at a fashion magazine for the second time in ten months, and I am totally exhausted—not to mention almost completely broke.
“Really?” you might ask. “Exhausted? From working at a fashion magazine? Don’t you have friends who work 17-hour days at banking jobs?”
Of course. But you see, both my money woes and fatigue stem from a source separate from any actual workplace rigor: I am speaking, of course, about what a bitch it is to get dressed in the morning.
It is an unwritten rule in the world of fashion that when one shows up to work in the morning (granted, 10 a.m.), one should look, well, fashionable. In theory, this seems like a reasonable expectation. The problem I’ve found since taking up residence in New York City is that the act of working at, and dressing for, a fashion magazine is rendered nearly impossible by the simple fact that these jobs are based in the Big Apple.
This may seem counterintuitive, given the easy access to a vast Mecca of retailers from which to stock one’s wardrobe, but the reality is that when every one of the hundreds or even thousands of people you might encounter on the walk to the bus station, the bus to work, the elevator to your floor and, lord, the floor itself, has such access, the situation becomes a bit like a nuclear arms race.
What does all this have to do with my internship? I’m getting there.
There are any number of things that I am forced to deal with as I attempt to get myself dressed in the morning. A) I’ve already worn everything I own; B) everything I might want to wear is dirty, at the cleaners or missing entirely; and C) nothing is interesting to me anymore. This is, after all, the granddaddy of all fashion dilemmas.
Never to be one to tell people what not to wear (to their faces), I would argue that fashion missteps, poorly fitting clothing and wardrobe malfunctions are minor annoyances compared with the plague of being bored with what one owns.
The hardest thing for anyone who truly wants to put on something cool and interesting in the morning is knowing that something you own, something you love, has become trendy. Trendy is the pits. Trendy snatches up something you love, something you thought was yours and yours alone, and it exposes it for what it really is: an easy trick for making money.
The nature of New York as a home to countless boutiques, vintage stores and hole-in-the-wall dealers, makes it the perfect place to find a piece of clothing or jewelry that is wildly distinctive and special. The nature of New York as a home to department stores, chains, outlets, brand stores and countless street vendors also makes it the perfect place to find your seemingly unique piece plastered on every third chick that walks by you on the street.
Take, for example, the flowy, hippie-child skirts that slowly began popping up on campus this spring. If I see one more white, ankle-length, tiered skirt pass me on the sidewalk, I might actually puke. And yet there’s a gorgeous one sitting in my closet. The solution (and problem)? I won’t wear it again for another three years.
Compounding this fact at my job is that most people who work in fashion know fashion. I’m finding I do it, too.
I can tell if your shirt is from H&M; I can tell if your belt is from Banana Republic; I’m not judging—Lord knows I shop at both places frequently—it’s just that when you get to point of being able to brand the items you see on the people walking by you, the need for unique increases exponentially.
And at a fashion magazine, more money will not buy an escape from homogeneity. In other cities, at other jobs, the money to buy designer clothing can also buy exclusivity. Not in the fashion world, where people are given free clothing—or wholesale discounts—and certainly not at a fashion magazine, where most of the employees (myself included, sadly) could tell you not only the designer of your jacket but also the year and season it was produced.
This lack of clothing unknowns takes away the security that someone won’t show up to work wearing the same thing as you, as well as the pleasure of thinking you’ve found something truly special.
The concerned reader might wonder how I am dealing. Aside from the dwindling bank account, I’m managing—with a couple of tried and true tricks that I’d be a fool to reveal. The jaded reader might wonder if I would I give it up: the superficiality, the futility, the relentlessness? Not a chance in hell. The constant search for what is new and fun and beautiful is what makes the world of fashion so exciting.
Madeline Andrews is a Trinity senior.
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