This week, this London Fashion Intern has been reading the following:
Reference fashion blog Fashionista has a new column,“How I’m Making It", where they "interview young people making a living in the fashion industry and pick their brains about how they got there". The first write-up features 24-year-old LA-based designer Donna Mizani:
I moved to L.A. after I graduated high school and went to study design at FIDM. After school I met a designer through a mutual friend and she became my mentor. She introduced me to a private label designer who needed an assistant. I started as her intern – it was my first real job in the industry. I started out getting coffee but sometimes she asked me to help her out on a few projects and she was really impressed by my design skill level so she promoted to associate designer. I worked with her for about 2 years and we designed for Nordstrom’s and Macy’s and JCPenney’s. That’s where I learned everything about the business
Many people in politics, including Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, have started as interns, as Interns Anonymous remind us:
Q: When you were at the Nation, Ed Miliband was your intern. What are your memories of him?
A: We talked a lot about the old left and his father’s distinguished role in it. His brother’s middle name is Wright after the socialist C. Wright Mills, a great friend of Ralph’s.
Journalism.co.uk was forced to clarify its position on internship posting "after running into something of a twitter storm by carrying an ad for a six month, unpaid internship on the Tesco magazine." According to Jon Slattery, site editor Laura Oliver said that
The ad was placed in error – we do list unpaid internships, so long as they are within a reasonable length of time. We had some useful Twitter conversations about the listing and the ethics of listing unpaid internships at all – these have helped us update our policy for posting such listings on the forum.
Following-up on its reader survey, Creative Review reports on the Mind The Gap Project, where LCC graduates Paul Cooke & Jemma Mackle draw a ten-point declaration of intern rights. For instance:
1) the basics to a good internship are being in a place that allows them to prove themselves whilst learning the trade. Every student wants the chance to show what they're about and feel part of the team.
4) Always try to get interns working on live projects rather than setting intern briefs, even if the work is sometimes monotonous or simply researching. The most rewarding internships are the ones where students feel they have contributed to something 'real'.
5) The question of money is always a difficult one. Covering costs makes doing the internship more possible, but contributing towards the interns' time will also make them feel valued, resulting in more commitment and a better work ethic.
And finally, a blunder minor members of the Royal Family have been guilty of, and which interns are not exempt from: an intern working on a US senate campaign got fired for proposing a one-to-one meeting with the candidate against a substantial donation:
“With a donation of $2,400 or more,” Garofano allegedly wrote, activists pressing for the fuel-standards bill “can schedule a one-on-one hour long meeting with the Senator.” Hosting “an event for $5,000 or more,” the email said, would offer “a better chance to lobby Michael.”
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