GLAMOUR, GLAMOUR, GLAMOUR

This post is all about Glamour magazine, something I'm really excited about because I consider it a personal achievement that I was able to fight my way into the fashion cupboard there, without knowing anyone and through sheer hard work alone. I slogged for a month at Red magazine with Glamour magazine as a goal in my mind's eye. Finally, I truly feel as if working for 9 hours a day for free packing clothes into a bag like a child in a Vietnamese sweatshop was worth it because I was personally recommended to the girls at Glamour by the girls at Red for all my efforts! I'm more than capable of taking on the demands of the fashion cupboard but was never afforded the chance, until now..

Yesterday Koulla and Catlyn were out of the office and although I should have spent this week with Easy Living I was asked to come back to help them out and run things while the girls were away. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was when they came in to ask me- not because Easy Living isn't great, but because it means that I'd made a good impression. Not to mention the fact that the two cupboards are just next door to each other, and I was jealous of all the laughs coming from the Glamour cupboard without me! But mostly it was the fact that they'd asked me to get them out of a tricky situation. So, I arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed- ready to tackle the PRs and the returns, but of course things didn't go quite to plan..

9.30AM: Leave to get the fashion director's extremely specific breakfast order of 2 slices of lightly toasted granary bread with butter, NOT margarine, and the thinnest layer of marmite.
9.45AM: Spend 15 minutes walking around in the rain trying to find the cafe, only to have ask a builder for directions who then tells me that it closed down years ago so he's no idea which place I'm talking about.
9.55AM: Finally find the cafe by asking every place along Albemarle Street if they used to be called Nana's at some point in the last 5 years.. Luckily, awaitress is familiar with the order and knows exactly how to make it right.
10.00AM: Arrive panting at the director's desk to find she has gone for a meeting in the boardroom and I am to deliver it to her in there. Dither outside the room peering through the window desperately trying to pluck up the courage to enter and give her the, by this point soggy, toast.
10.05AM: Nina, the receptionist, takes pity on me and offers to do it for me. I gratefully accept and slink back to the cupboard to recover from my ordeal.

 *Fill my time tackling returns and dealing with PRs*

1.00PM: The dreaded call arrives, can I get the fashion director's lunch? Again, a very specific order from Itsu of: an omega 3 salmon supreme sushi box, extra ginger, chopsticks, NOT a fork, and a bottle of water- NOT from Itsu, but from Pret and NOT a screw cap but a sports bottle cap. Ok, I can handle this. At the very least I have a head start on this morning's fiasco because I definitely know where Itsu is.
1.10PM: Arrive at Pret with Itsu food safely in a waterproof bag [I'm learning!], and realise this fuss free lunch is too good to be true. I'm presented with 5 different types of water.. Ha, I can triumphantly rule out 2 that are sparkling! So that leaves me with 3, all different sizes.
1.15PM: After staring blankly at the water for 5 minutes I realise time is running out and interrupt Catlyn's photoshoot to find out which bottle of water is right. Frantic response from Catlyn- "Ok, get the 750ml, it should be £1.50. And did you remember the extra sushi? Chopsticks, not a fork?"
1.20PM: Pay for the water and catch the cashier laughing silently at me, I decide this is a low point in life when I've had to spend more than 30 seconds choosing a bottle size in case I'm blacklisted from Condé Nast forever.
1.22PM: I take a couple of minutes to consider that I am now the real life equivalent of Anne Hathaway in the Devil Wears Prada.. Not sure of the cafe's name or location, or the correct size bottle? You NEVER ask, you just say yes and figure it out later.
1.30PM: Deliver the food and scuttle away before she can reproach me for getting anything wrong.
1.45PM: The beauty assistant comes in to check on me, I explain the breakfast/lunch fiasco and receive a less than reassuring reply- "I had to do that for months. If you get it wrong you're never allowed to get her lunch again. One intern brought her the wrong yoghurt once.. She left soon after." Shit!

*Frantically try and get all the returns done before Friday, when there are another 6 suitcases coming back*

5.30PM: Home time! Or not. Look behind me at the rail and see a mountain of bags yet to be returned. I am determined to finish and have a clear cupboard for the girls to come back to so I plough on- surely this will only take an extra 30 minutes?
7.45PM: Finally finish the last bag, more than 2 hours after working hours finished and everyone else went home.. Catlyn comes back unexpectedly to drop suitcases off after the shoot and is so pleased that we have a clean slate to work from tomorrow that I feel as if staying late was worth it!

So, this is an account of my first time running an entire fashion cupboard single handedly and I can't lie- it was tough. I think it was made tougher by the fact that there was absolutely no one there to help out in the slightest and I was doing the job of three interns- juggling helping with packing for a cover shoot, collecting meals and returning more than 40 bags of clothes and accessories. I'm not being paid so the pain of the extra hours was more acute but even if I was, minimum wage wouldn't cover this! It might only be clothes but it's also a hell of a lot more than that! I hope this has given a little more insight into an average day at an international magazine and you have more sympathy for me now that you know I don't spend all my time dressing up in excessively large bras. To prove it, I'm going all Blue Peter and have included a before and after snap of the cupboard below..

BEFORE..

AFTER!

Calling the Fuzz!

Alright, now I really have built up an enormous backlog of posts as I'm into my second week at Glamour magazine.. The dramas at InStyle have faded away and now seem like they never happened! Unfortunately, they did happen and I am still feeling the effects since I get emails and text messages frequently asking about an item of clothing that I may or may not have called in/sent back because yet another piece has gone missing. 

On that note, and as promised, the Moschino Mystery will be continued. It came to light that it was not only one ridiculously expensive catwalk piece that sprouted legs and ran off, but THREE! A Moschino skirt, Miu Miu blouse and Marios Schwab dress. At this point eyes were shiftily peering from one to the other, forget suspecting anyone else- what if they suspect you? No time for accusations though- the plot thickens. The girls from Marie Claire, Woman & Home and Look all came by claiming they'd also had a spate of thefts. It was decided that the best thing to do was call the Fuzz and have them all watch the security tapes. By this point my mind was desperately trying to remember if I'd done anything hideously embarrassing within the camera's view that I would, in all seriousness, have to warn the assistants about before they watched the security tapes back.. Forget the clothes! What if someone had watched me put on the 42KK neon pink bra we were sent as part of Breast Cancer Awareness [good cause, bad bra] and load it up with staplers, hole punchers and rolls of sellotape..?  Actually that's the tip of the iceberg, the amount of arse they were going to see on that tape made me feel marginally better as none of it's mine! It could be worse anyway, at least I knew I actually haven't taken anything. Of course we can't point fingers without being sure, and since I left before this sticky situation was resolved I can't really comment, but suffice to say that one intern in particular must have been feeling the heat of the situation since they mysteriously failed to show up at work one day, and then the next until it was like they'd never existed! 

Now, you would think that this series of thievery would have some pretty serious repercussions for all the assistants, right? Perhaps docking of wages, as in a bar if you smashed a bottle of wine, but no. Most likely because they're pay packet each month isn't enough to cover even half the cost of that one Marios Schwab dress.. This is not to be snobby, as an impoverished student even the most meagre of amounts seems like riches! But considering the job they were doing, running their own shoots and dealing with senior editor's demands as well, the small amount they are paid per month seems less than fair- and certainly not enough to live on comfortably. I won't reveal how much it is, don't want to be blacklisted just yet, but I can bet that whatever your guess is, it is at least 20% lower! However, don't go feeling too sorry for them [or me] just yet because what they lack in pay they make up for in freebies. The gigantic bra doesn't paint a very attractive picture but they are really given some amazing things from PRs as presents or in exchange for being featured in the magazine. And it's not just them who reaped the rewards, the interns felt the benefits of our hard work in the form of old season clothes, jewellery and press freebies- not to mention the incredible beauty samples that can't be returned. Once again, I've got to keep some tricks of the trade to myself but for those of you who I see [that's all 5 of you..] I'll give you a sneaky peak of the goodies. An extremely difficult and fast paced job but not one without its peaks; the people there are extremely generous and not just in the superficial sense of presents, but with their time also. The senior fashion assistant was more than happy to step outside with me and give me guidance, advice and the inside track on positions and what to do next. During my time at InStyle there were no photoshoots beyond the first week, and rather than do what most magazines do, and in spite of the fact that there were four interns, they took our dates and phone numbers on departure to get in contact for the next photoshoot. This I found to be the most valuable and thoughtful aspect of working there- they appreciated that you had spent a month crammed into a windowless room, so hot that girls were having nosebleeds on a regular basis!, and want to try and do right by you. There are no guarantees, nothing new there then, that a photoshoot will materialise as they try to avoid backlogs of interns clamouring for photoshoots but at least they are trying. 

More on the trials and tribulation of Glamour later on in the week. For now, I'm doing a celeb move and taking control of the security tape situation.. Enjoy! 

I went on to show this picture to a stranger in a bar after work.. 

I am actually better endowed than this picture suggests

Round 2

Ok, so I admit that it might have been exactly one month to the day since I last posted.. But in my defence I am more used to a life of leisure, what they say about students is mostly true, and this getting up at 8am malarkey is wreaking havoc with my body clock! It is definitely true though, that when you have a lot to do time flies- I can honestly say that every single day absolutely flew by. This is what I'm using as an excuse for my poor show. In an attempt to make this enormous delay seem less obvious I'm going to upload a series of posts over the next couple of days covering the rest of my time at InStyle- just go with it- while trying to avoid creating a massive backlog for when I start at Glamour on Monday. 


If I thought I had a baptism of fire at Red magazine I must have been delusional, and the missing jewellery episode on my second day was just the tip of the iceberg. The consequences of having more than one intern at a time, and at such a rapid turnover, has its positives and negatives- I'm not sure whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Putting four strangers, effectively, in a room lacking both windows and air conditioning and pitting them against each other in a race to see who can be the favourite for the day and recover the jaw- droppingly expensive item first is a recipe for disaster. In some ways it was, and in others not so much (although the benefit of hindsight has slightly affected my perception of the escapades that went on). Adjusting to being at the very bottom of the ladder, and I mean the VERY bottom, is made harder because the people you are below are also interns who have been there longer and therefore automatically have the upper hand. This seems a cynical way to look at things but I did find myself constantly worrying whether everyone else was doing more than me- in the case of one intern I can at least comfort myself with the knowledge that they definitely weren't- and whether they were liked more than me. Not being a competitive person (honestly) I admit that I find this side of the fashion industry unpleasant.. It brings out the worst qualities in everybody, forcing them to forget the fact that we all need a little camaraderie, especially at a fashion magazine! 

However, it's not all paranoia and competitiveness- let's add mystery to the mix! Something I have never encountered before happened at the end of my first week that put the cat among the pigeons. After an exciting photoshoot in New York for the cover of the October issue (it's a good 'un!) the sheer joy of doing returns was brought to a halt when a Moschino catwalk look appeared to have sprouted legs and run off. Leading back to the issue of several interns, with all of us once again staring blankly at each other- fear lying just behind the defiant gazes- all hell broke loose. The positive side to the, frankly terrifying, realisation that you've lost something worth hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds is that while we experienced more of the fallout from this it is only because we are given more responsibility. 

Since the goal of this blog is to chart my progress (and maybe entertain a few people), dealing with irate PRs calling every hour of every day are completely worth it when I can see that I've been given more responsibility in my role and am gaining in confidence. Dealing with people is literally just as important as having an eye for fashion, and I know many of you will be shocked to hear that I'm not usually the best people person, but I am learning that what I consider to be overly friendly is normal for everyone else and this observation is paying off! Being on first name terms with people is invaluable, you never know when you might be [further] at the bottom and will need to call on a contact for help. I think we can all take a little snappiness with a pinch of salt and see that it's not the person, it's the job- in the words of Robyn "I'm really a nice person when I'm not at work!" I must say I agree, not that she hasn't been anything but lovely at work, but that it does force all your insecurities and paranoias to the surface so it's no wonder we're all griping at each other constantly.

Honestly, I think I've done really well remembering all these details (an exact quote, no less!) considering it was three weeks ago. For the next instalment of the mystery of the Moschino skirt and so much more, just hang on a couple more days- obviously this will be difficult, but try your best to remain calm.