Five things you never knew about working in fashion

Joe Stone (pictured) offers up the cold, hard truth about the fashion industry…

Before meeting my boyfriend, a designer, my fashion knowledge could be broadly summarised as ‘never wear a shirt with a hood’ (seriously though, don’t). Now that we’ve been together for a few years, I still dress myself about as well as Rita Ora hitting the sales – but I have gleaned some insights into the fashion industry. These are the things that no one tells you.

Fashion designers make no money
Starting your own label makes about as much financial sense as betting your life savings on Dannii Minogue scoring next year’s Christmas number one. Even if you’re stocked in Dover Street Market for £300 a pop, the costs of producing nice clothes in small orders without becoming a slave-master and ending up as a horror story on the sidebar of shame are so exorbitant that you still won’t be able to afford a round of drinks until you’re about 64. That’s why most fashion designers are so skinny. None of them can afford to eat.

And lots of them don’t cope well under pressure

You know that stereotype about fashion people being blood-sucking monsters? Totally true (at least, some of the time). Maybe you’ve heard about the celebrated designer rumoured to have flown into a rage during a fitting and kicked his own dog – we’ll call her Fluffy – to death? Or the interns forced to sign non-disclosure agreements after one of them was slapped by their boss for getting her lunch order wrong? Trotting out endless collections every year certainly seems to take its toll on head designers (*cough* Galliano). It is my belief that every time a kid with a temper decides to enter the high-stress world of fashion, Satan laughs.

Nobody has ever enjoyed a fashion week party

In theory, fashion week parties are great. Free drinks, glamorous people, and if you’re lucky, a goodie bag containing a new moisturiser made of seal ejaculate (or something). In practice, they tend to consist of loads of spiritually-undernourished hangers-on standing about asking each other what other (better) parties they’re on the list for. The hope is that at some point Kate Moss might turn up, and you can go to your grave claiming to have partied with her, despite the fact that you didn’t talk to her, look at her, or stand near her – for fear that she would throw shade on your look, condemning you to social suicide (and then, later that evening, actual suicide).

Everyone wears black

Turns out the devil doesn’t wear Prada, the devil wears COS basics in monochrome. This has always confused me about fashion people – if clothes mean so much to them, why do they invariably live out their days in monochrome muumuus (and that’s just the boys)? Perhaps it has something to do with the wisdom allegedly passed down by late famed fashion matriarch Louise Wilson – ‘If you’re fat, you can’t dress like a twat’.

Models aren’t (always) stupid

Here lies one of the unkindest universal truths. The received wisdom is that models are thick, because nobody is ever blessed with both beauty and brains. While that is sometimes true (love you, Joey Essex), it’s also true that many others luck out in the genetic lottery. I’ve met models who are just killing time between terms at Oxford, not to mention countless rotters who struggle to tie their own laces. The existence of brainy models goes to show that life is hard, and there is no such thing as justice. Just ask Fluffy…

Words by JOE STONE

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