As images emerge of Anne Hathaway reprising her role as Andy Sachs, the once-bedraggled and now-bejewelled assistant of The Devil Wears Prada, I found myself having my own little trot down Trauma Lane.
Visions of angry designers and fashion-week heart attacks flashed through my mind like a montage of repressed miseries. The last time we saw Andy being terrorised by an editor was in 2006, about a year before I moved to New York and started my own, slightly misguided venture into the fashion world. I was young, naїve, and believed Sex And The City was an instructional video on how to live life. I wanted to run around in ridiculous shoes and wear massive hats while carrying tiny handbags. I yearned to cry over Manhattan men while drinking a cosmo in a sexy restaurant called something like BED or NIGHTMARE.
My New York (fever) dream started when I went to NYU and began interning at fashion magazines. At Vogue, I worked in a windowless room organising shoes and was barely spoken to except when my boss occasionally checked I was alive. My most poignant recollection from that time was when I was caught off guard at the elevator by the editor Anna Wintour who materialised from thin air. I didn’t know what to do with my body and lost control of my face — I was paralysed with fear, and overcome with panic as I considered my next move. Was I allowed to get in the elevator with her? Was it legal to do so? Would I be shot or imprisoned for trying? In the end, another employee came along, relieving me of the decision as I stood and waited to parrot her move. She joined the editor in the lift, I followed after. Nobody was tased or jailed.
Working at a New York fashion magazine was wild and weird. There were some pockets of calmness amid the hum of insanity, but there were enough en masse meltdowns for that to be the overarching theme of the experience. Sweaty assistants would appear in the accessories closet clamouring for kitten heels while seemingly in the throes of a medical emergency. “She needs the Gucci slingbacks”, they’d hiss while gasping for air and gripping the shoe shelves to steady their jelly legs.
Some of the insights I overheard, too, were fascinating - one editor, upon learning that she had a photoshoot with (Pokerface era) Lady Gaga, boomed across the open-plan office “God, fucking Lada Gaga!” with a fierce despair that reverberated throughout the booths. I later went on to work with designers who were equally opinionated about the celebrities they were forced to work with; one, in particular, shrieked in exasperation: “But nothing looks good on her!” when paired with a celebrity of more normal, less giraffe-like, proportions for the Met Gala. I wasn’t in the room with him at the time, but his wails could be heard outside the building and a few avenues over.
I didn’t know if I was even allowed to get into the elevator with Anna Wintour
While it was frightening to work with editors, I found designers to be far more manic and malevolent. Some would regularly make their teams work until 10pm - which was early compared to the nights (or rather, mornings) when employees were released from the office at 3am during fashion week. One brand practically ran on interns, something that it later had to scale back on after a lawsuit meant that it had to (gasp) pay them. Another designer was a thinly-veiled sociopath who enjoyed recreational drugs and having sex with his PR manager. He liked to juggle human rights causes with terrorising his staff, and my time there came to a swift end shortly after we had a staring contest in a meeting. He’d repeatedly asked me for a paradoxical item and my attempts to clarify his wishes were met with hostile glares. While I won the scowl-off and saved my pride, my job didn’t last long — no one stares at a gorgon and survives.
Although it’s easy for me to look back and focus on the hysteria, it was, overall, quite an enjoyable experience. Not because the bosses were good (they were mostly demonic) or the pay was fantastic (it was barely liveable), but because of the teams I worked with who suffered with me through the days and made it worthwhile. While I don’t smoke anymore, I’d happily spend crazy money to buy a pack and relive the collective unburdening of a smoke break. My favourite memories are when a colleague passed my desk with a piercing glare and whispered “outside” to indicate that their boss had either done something monstrous, or stupid, or monstrously stupid, and we’d all grab our coats and head for the door. While a lot has changed in the eight years since I worked in fashion - I believe that editor eventually came around to Lady Gaga and I’m sure that the smoking population has drastically declined - I know that, somewhere out there, there’s an intern standing next to a fashion editor, waiting for an elevator, in the throes of an existential crisis.
