London Fashion Intern's blog

Who are you kidding, London 2012?

First of all, apologies for the lack of updates - this London Fashion Intern is busy interning, juggling part-time jobs and beating insomnia and its dear friend exhaustion.

On to today's business - adverts asking for volunteers for the 2012 Olympics have sprung up all over London those past few days.

The Olympics are still two summer away, but I'm already worried about the way London will (mis)handle them. Considering how often my Tube line breaks down during rush hour, how overcrowded some Tube stations are (I'm looking at you, South Ken) and generally how inefficiently so much of this city is run, I don't know how Londoners will survive them. In fact, I've already planned to get the heck out of here during the Olympic period.

Apparently, and to nobody's real surprise, the organisation of the Games will partially rely on volunteers. There is an official website dedicated to recruiting those people - I don't know how much it cost but my bet is that a few people could have been paid on the money spent doing it. Not to mention that it is Flash based. 

The website includes a quiz which starts off by asking "do you know how much hard work and dedication is involved?" It follows up with questions about your willingness to give up 10 days of your summer holidays in 2012 (plus three extra days before for training) and to find and fund your own accommodation and travel (they're only giving meal vouchers and free transport for when you're doing a shift).

To sum it up you have to be willing to give up most of your 2012 holidays and to spend money working on something you won't get paid for. What do you get in return? Not even free tickets or meeting with athletes, no. You will be part of the Olympic and Paralympic history and "you’ll get to keep your uniform as a souvenir." Well that's alright then. 

Job Posting: Who are you kidding, Green Future?

Green Future, self described as "the world’s leading magazine on environmental solutions and sustainable futures", is looking for "two motivated individuals to volunteer with the team".

Of course, "the internships are unpaid, but travel and lunch expenses will be covered."

Now tell me Green Future, how sustainable do you think our future will be if we keep not getting paid? How will we ever be able to afford green cars or to install solar energy in our houses on an intern non-salary?

I just hope that the expenses are large enough to cover for an organic, locally-produced lunch.

Job posting: Tiffany Wright brews a storm in the Twitter teacup

Yesterday, media-type Tweeps and bloggers alike were in quite a shock reading Tiffany Wright's "Real life/women’s magazines intern wanted" advert on EditorialJobs

Wright first mentioned that she wanted an intern on her blog, The Stiletto Diaries:

Having decided that i need someone  to help me find some fab real life stories, I have spent the day trying to word a suitable “ooh, i really want that job” type ad. Ideally I’m looking for a  recent graduate who wants to write for magazines like Cosmo, Glamour, Grazia, Now and More…so, if you know anyone?

This original job posting was utterly ridiculous, not least because Wright decided pink was an appropriate colour to write an ad in, and because she included a smiley. The list of tasks expected from the intern is rather thorough and includes "Writing teasers to send out to magazines" and "Coming up with features ideas for women’s magazines scouring newspapers and online every day for great potential real life features and then chasing these stories", two key duties when you are a freelancer. The very idea that she is willing to outsource those to an intern is quite worrying. By the look of it, anyone completing this internship would be in charge of so much of Wright's actual job that s/he will gain an invaluable insight into what being a freelancer entails. If you are good enough to be the ghost worker for someone, why wouldn't you do the same for yourself, and make actual money out of it?

Peter Watts, at The Great Wen, probably has the best, and funniest reaction to Wright's job advert, choosing to take the piss out of it rather than going on a rant. Funny can be so much more powerful than angry:

Tasks

• Coming up with features ideas: scouring newspapers and online every day for great potential features to steal
• Chasing stories, interviewing, transcribing, writing and taking cheques to the bank every week
• Sending commissioning editors obsequious emails containing poorly conceived feature pitches and then ranting impotently when they fail to respond
• Networking (ie having coffee with John O’Connell, where you will both gossip like old women about other journalists while trying to avoid paying the bill)
• Experiencing general low-level resentment every time you see a peer’s byline in a newspaper or magazine
• Pretending to be pleased for them
• Finally mastering practice/practise and effect/affect
• General admin duties (milk no sugar)
• Liaising with girlfriend and daughter
• Watering the potatoes
• Monitoring Twitter, hoping this will be the day when @caitlinmoran finally retweets something of yours that is witty and pithy
• Or failing that, @indiaknight
• Look, even @gilescoren will do at a pinch
• Coming up with witty and pithy Tweets
• Taking crap photographs for self-indulgent personal blog
• Getting three stars on tricky 5-7 level of Angry Birds

Wright has been rather silent since the beginning of the controversy. Her Twitter is still unmanned (maybe she does need someone to look after it after all), and the The Stiletto Diary entry she did yesterday was about the Bergdorf shoe application, with no mention of what is said online about her (though it's hard to know whether it's because she's chosen to ignore everything, doesn't know how to respond or wrote her post before her ad appeared on EditorialJobs).

Whether or not she gets an intern, or unpaid PA, call it as you wish, if she's any good at self-publicity, she could get quite a lot out of her little blunder. I'm pretty sure the number of hits on her blog have more than doubled since Monday morning, and her name is a lot more visible on Google.

For more on the controversy, see also

• Axegrinder: Now freelances are getting in on the work experience racket
• Tiffany Wright: That's NOT an internship
  
• Curse of the journalism ‘intern’ – when working for free goes too far

Job posting: one step in the right direction, elleuk.com

I have previously criticised ELLE for its seemingly abusive use of interns. This advert, posted today on Gorkana, gives me reasons to hope things will get better:

ELLEuk.com is looking for an enthusiastic and motivated intern to support the online fashion team for a minimum of six months.

As well as helping with call-ins, returns and compiling fashion and shopping pages you will be uploading content daily onto the site. You will assist with our London Fashion Week coverage and there will also be opportunities for you to do some writing.

You need to have a hunger for fashion, a good knowledge of brands and trends and be a budding writer. We also need you to be very organised, flexible and able to work well under pressure.

Previous experience within the fashion industry is preferred but online experience is not essential. This position is paid.

PAID readers. This London Fashion Intern has just made a little dance. Of course, how much it will be paid is not specified. Still, this is encouraging. The fact that the position is called "internship" a bit less so.

Job posting: ASOS is recruiting a Junior Editor

Two days ago, online retailer ASOS posted an advert on Gorkana detailing a junior editor position they are trying to fill. Apparently, they are looking for

 a talented Junior Editor or experienced Intern to start on a new online product within ASOS

I find the mention of "experienced Intern" (their capital letter, not mine) very interesting, not least because it lacks proper definition. What is an experienced intern? Someone who has spent the past years going from unpaid placement to unpaid placement all over the industry? Someone who has already been at ASOS?

More importantly, ASOS acknowledges the fact that an internship can be considered valuable experience, something many companies refuse to do since there is no salary attached.

Job Posting: The Marie Claire Protégée Project

While at Graduate Fashion Week, this London Fashion Intern picked up a flyer from the Marie Claire booth:

Do you want to work for the Marie Claire fashion team?

Visit marieclaire.co.uk/howtogetintofashion to find out more about the Marie Claire Fashion internship.

Starting in September 2010 the placement will last for 6 months and will be fully paid.

A fully-paid internship? Despite not being a Marie Claire fan (I find its fashion average and its real-life stories anxiety-provoking), I immediately checked the website, which is rather poor in details.

Marie Claire is partnering with Graduate Fashion Week for the very first time to offer one special applicant a paid, six-month internship with our fashion team.

This is your chance to learn from the best stylists, editors and fashion writers in the business.

For your chance to be considered, please send your CV, plus a covering letter explaining why you deserve the opportunity above everyone else, to caroline_garland@ipcmedia.com.

All applicants must be over 18 years old.

There is no information on what you will be expected to do, how much you will be paid, whether or not you'll get holidays etc. I am also bothered by the -e at the end of Protégée. Surely Marie Claire should also open its recruitment to men? 

Nonetheless, this is a step in the right direction and should be acknowledged as such. And I'm probably going to apply.

Job posting: Who are you kidding, ELLE?

On May the 13th, ELLE UK posted the following internship advert on Gorkana.

MAGAZINE/DEPARTMENT: ELLE fashion editorial department
[...]
JOB PURPOSE: Assisting the entire fashion team.
MAIN TASKS & RESPONSIBILITIES: This role involves all aspects of working for one of the UK’s most prestigious and extremely busy fashion departments.
We are looking for highly enthusiastic, super motivated and responsible individuals to support the fashion department for 1 year. You must have a wide knowledge of designers and trends, an unquenchable passion for fashion and must be willing to do even the most menial tasks. Your responsibilities will include assisting the fashion team on research, calling in clothing samples, sample requests as well as dealing with clothing inventory and thousands of returns. You must be extremely efficient and well organised and must be able to think on your feet; ‘Call me in a selection of fascinators in berry colours, 50’s style underwear and 17 Balmain style jackets, we’re packing in 1 hour!’. You will be responsible for elements of shoot production, price and credit requests, doing carnets as well as trips to starbucks for the whole team when they are stressed and still in the office at 9.30pm. You will help to organise fashion week requests, which is an exciting but demanding responsibility. Previous magazine experience (at least 6 months at a fashion magazine) and knowledge of designers is essential. We are looking for someone to start at the end of August.
PERSON SPECIFICATIONS: • Keen interest in all aspects of a fashion magazine • Careful attention to detail • Extremely organised with excellent time management skills • The ideal candidate will be a team player but also have the ability to work independently and in a pro-active manner • Responsible and work under pressure and deadline driven • Willingness and flexibility to take on and deliver specific project work.  To apply please send you CV to fashionintern@hf-uk.com

ELLE expects you to work for a full year, yet no financial compensation is mentioned. Clearly, you are meant to apply because this is ELLE magazine. Trivial worries, even limited to Oyster card and lunch expenses, pale compared with the possibility of working for "one of the UK’s most prestigious and extremely busy fashion departments". Of course, this might well be a fully paid position, with a proper salary. It's hard to know since, again, nothing is mentioned.

The advert asks for at least 6 months of prior experience in a fashion magazine. I would hope that with six months experience in another publication, you could at least aim for an entry-level position. How long do you need to be an intern for to show that you really are motivated to get into fashion journalism?

You will be expected to work for long hours, at least from time to time. Some will say that this shows your dedication. I just think it shows the industry's willingness to exploit the weakest. Working late doesn't show that you are more committed, it just messes up your personal life. No intern should be asked to compromise his/her free time for a position which doesn't have any guarantee of a future.

Let's face it, this internship probably meets the legal definition of job. It looks like you will have given hours, for a given length of time, have set responsibilities and obligations. This shouldn't be called an internship.

On the upside, you'll probably learn a lot and are likely to make good contacts at the magazine. So really, it's an internship to apply to if you are willing to spend the next 12 months hoping a very junior position opens up towards the end of your stay, and that you can get it.

Picture from Flickr user Blackbiscuit

Job posting: Whatever happened to Gorkana

Last week, this London Fashion Intern's RSS feed for Gorkana PR starting showing many job adverts, all day,  everyday. At some point, 17 turned up in my Google reader in one go. Of course, many were unpaid work experiences or internships, but a few (big) companies, including Net-a-Porter (and who doesn't want to work for Net-a-Porter), were recruiting proper employees. We all sighed in relief, taking it as a sign that the journalism job market was picking up, that we might have been right to be patient and not take up the first IB job we could.

Not so quick! This week, no J** advert has been posted. Gorkana has been more silent than ever. What happened? Did the Greek situation and threat that it might spread to the rest of Europe scare employers? Or have they just realised that posting on Gorkana means receiving more CVs than they have time to go through? If Gorkana stops being the go-to places for magazine jobs, where will they be posted?

Intern job posting: Worn Fashion Journal

If this London Fashion Intern lived in Canada, I would definitely apply for this internship:

WORN IS LOOKING FOR INTERNS FOR ISSUE 11

Our intern positions offer valuable opportunities for those interested in fashion and publishing. Because WORN is a small magazine, our interns work alongside our editors, writers, and graphic designers helping with real tasks (never fetching coffee or picking up dry cleaning) and getting a chance to show their stuff.

Why choose Worn? Worn is an independent print publication dedicated to offering a unique and inclusive perspective on fashion and style. Our readership is expanding dramatically throughout Canada and internationally. We are increasingly recognized by fashion lovers, vintage hounds, academics and artists as a truly unique and smart magazine for people who want more fashion and less fluff.

WORN Fashion Journal is a true indie publication, entirely made by volunteers, which I think makes their hiring interns normal. Described by Toronto Star as "a fashion magazine with an indie heart and a grad student’s soul" and by Xtra as "a 44 page f*ck you to Anna Wintour", it is published byweekly and available for purchase on Etsy. 

On the website, Wornettes give advices to internship applicants which can be applied to anything you will apply for:

As a whole, what we’re really looking for is a love of WORN and a firm understanding of what WORN represents.

*Note that reading a minimum of two full issues of WORN is absolutely required before submitting this application. Reading the website is not sufficient.

As for the application process, again it is worth having a look at if you are preparing a cover letter or interview for any magazine.

1) What’s your favourite article or from any issue (not the website) of WORN? Why?

3) Who do you think reads WORN? Give us a brief description (no more than 50 words) of the average WORN reader.

4) What publication (besides WORN of course) can you not live without? What’s so great about it?

5) Why do you want to be a WORN intern? What do you hope to get out of the experience? Is there anything in particular you’d like to do here?

What's not to like about that magazine? 

Wornjournal.com and on Twitter

Picture from buyolympia.com

Intern job posting: How desperate do you think we are?

This London Fashion Intern, like many London Interns, is a Gorkana PR subscriber. If you're not, you really should try it. I say that knowing full well it might mean more people going for the same jobs as me.

On Monday, the magazine Loaded posted the following:

Loaded, Work Experience

date posted: Monday, 1st March 2010

date ending: Sunday, 7th March 2010

Loaded need a last minute, work experience placement, Tuesday to Friday of this week.

Candidate must be 18+, keen to write and run errands and see the occasional boob. Email jeff_maysh@ipcmedia.com with 50 words on why you’re our man/lady.

The job description sounds like they need a laquais more than an intern. How much insight will you get into the publishing industry "running errands" for four days?

More importantly, how desperate have we been pictured that a magazine believes it can post an advert in the middle of the day and get someone in the office fresh and early the next morning? Worse thing is, I'm sure they got people applying, and not just because "you must be keen to [...] see the occasional boob". 

Picture: I considered posting a LOVE editorial because you know, it has boobs. This however is a 1785 engraving from Le Mariage de Figaro, a French Enlightenment play in which the valet, Figaro questions the very foundation of the absolutism and society.