“A friend of mine interned for a socialite who was involved with a lot of charities. She was in a town car on her way to a charity event with her intern. The socialite thought that her intern had a better top than she did. She forced her intern to switch tops in the town car or else she would have been fired, seriously. She never returned the top and insists to this day it is actually hers when she wears it in her office in front of the intern. ”
"The summer of my college graduation, I got a internship at one of the Big 4 record companies in the A&R department (in that day, very rare for a woman). Instead of learning about scouting bands and signing label talent, the label basically assigned me as free PA work for many of their artists. Making a very long story short, on one occasion the label put me with a hip-hop artist duo who would have me running around the 5 boroughs doing lame errands. The final straw was getting a call in the middle of the early AM (like 4am!), waking me up to have me go to one of the artists' weed spot to pick up drugs for him (not only weed, but other heavy Class A substances). That was my absolute limit (as the weed spot was in the back of a fake record store in Spanish Harlem, I would have to go alone, AND they wanted me to front the $$), I refused and I asked to be reassigned."
“When I had my first internship I wasn’t allowed to drink from the same water cooler as anyone that worked there so I had to go into the bathroom to use the sink to fill up my water bottle during the hot nyc summer. Nice people!! ”
"*Unnamed Stylist* made me do her grocery shopping, and once I had to return a thing of yogurt because she wanted the like, four ounce ones instead of the five ounce. One day my whole job was to research ‘who makes soups in New York’ because she was going on a soup diet."
"How about spending $6000 on transportation and rent in NYC to get coffee and everyone's lunch during photo shoots instead of the "photographic assistant" job as promised? Photographer never said a word about the bait and switch... it's a rip off students pay for in order to enhance their resumes."
The horror stories of interning in the fashion industry.
Internships have become one of the biggest steps to get your feet in the door in any industry. Most companies won't even hire you unless they see experience and big names on your resume. Let's face it, in this day and age, it's all about who you know and the fact that you actually know something just comes as a cherry on top.
Of course there are benefits that comes out of the experiences, but what about the process of it? Here are some of the stories told by actual people about their intern experiences in the fashion industry.