The Human Cost of Fashion Week

September, the January of fashion, is finally here. For the average fashion person, this means fashion week, fashion weeks, the fashion month. One of the busiest, exciting, stressful moments of the year, together with January (the real January) has arrived: New York, London, Milan, Paris – everyone is trying to fit schedules, budgets, flights, accreditations to meet the one big goal of being a part of it.

Designers, brands, press, influencers, photographers, communication agencies, assistants, interns, we’re all meeting at one given moment, at one given location, watching a very small and curated group of extremely beautiful people walking in never-seen-before for a maximum time of ten minutes. Those ten minutes, is when the magic happens. The magic all of the people above (designers, press, interns, etc) have worked, arranged, waited and sweated for.

But how to be among those limited group of people who get to see these collections before the rest of the world? That’s a tough answer, or better, there’s no answer. There’s no rule on the selection and curation of who’s entering that aspired place. Who’s in here and now is in, the rest is out. And who’s in here and now, might not be in the next season. Because there’s no entry rule, no selection system, no hierarchy.

“There’s no rule on the selection and curation of who’s entering that aspired place. Who’s in here and now is in, the rest is out. And who’s in here and now, might not be in the next season.”

I started my career as social media manager for a fashion company in Berlin, and that’s how I started to get invited to the shows. Then I quit my job and focused on becoming a digital content creator (a stretched title – what I mean by that is influencer) and I thought ‘OH, now it must be definitely easier to get show invites’. I couldn’t be more wrong. Influencers are at the bottom of the food chain (I mean the fashion chain), even after the cousin or the bestie of any intern who’s ever worked for that brand. Having connections is what’s helping you to get a spot in that room, and new coming influencers often have no connections. They’re mainly entrepreneurs working for themselves. Most of the time they haven’t been to fashion school so they don’t know anyone who works in the industry. They might know some PRs here and there but everyone knows that the PRs first concern during fashion week is the top of the food chain, aka THE PRESS. The power that the press holds on fashion week is deep and it has been going on since that one moment more than a hundred years ago when someone decided to sew something onto someone and make that someone walk in front of a group of people who might have or might have not wanted to wear the same thing.

“The power that the press holds on fashion week is deep and it has been going on since that one moment more than a hundred years ago when someone decided to sew something onto someone and make that someone walk in front of a group of people who might have or might have not wanted to wear the same thing.”

After the press you have buyers, the ones that are actually there to buy what the brand is offering. So buyers are super powerful because they bring sales. There are some other mid-tier roles and then you have like tons of people who have worked really hard, (sometimes day and night) to put that 10-minute-magic together. My dream would be to be part of a show production because being part of a dream turning into a real life moment is extremely powerful, you can’t be more hands on than that in this industry. That and also I’d love to be able to sneak in some friends and fam! How much sweat, how many tears, how much money, how much energy every single person who is or wants to be part of this craziness is actually consuming is just beyond human imagination. The craziest part of it all is that it looks so easy when you’re looking at it through your instagram feed. It’s designed that way. This industry is designed to sell a dream, but rest assured almost no one here is living the dream that’s selling. Happy fashion month!

“This industry is designed to sell a dream, but rest assured almost no one here is living the dream that’s selling.”