The most ridiculous thing I had to do during my three-month internship at American Vogue was to order a blacked-out company limo to chauffeur a plate of cold turkey sausages about a mile to the Hermès showroom. My boss, fashion assistant to one of the more prestigious editors and furiously feisty to boot, thought nothing of spending close to $100 ferrying sausages, or anything else for that matter, around Manhattan.
There was no pay, the work was menial in the extreme and yet a million girls would kill for the chance. Yes, what follows is my very own version of The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger’s fictionalised account of one girl’s baptism of fire working for an American glossy, and now a film starring Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep.
The internship, advertised on a University of London website, was based in New York. I nearly fell off my chair with excitement when I saw it and stayed up all night preparing my CV. “Can you fly out for an interview?” asked one of the fashion assistants who phoned a couple of days later. I remember booking my flight right then, even though the magazine had politely refused to pay. I flew out a week later with a gargantuan suitcase full of potential interview outfits that I’d agonised over, having fobbed my boss off with the original “emergency family wedding in New York” story.
The weather was stifling on the day of the interview so I plumped for a little black dress from H&M and prayed that they wouldn’t mind it wasn’t Prada. I sat in Vogue’s Times Square offices for what seemed like an age, looking at the impeccably groomed women who clip-clopped through reception. The fashion assistant who eventually emerged, looked me up and down. “Interning at Vogue is a privilege,” she said. “A million girls would kill for the chance.” Ten minutes later, after a depressingly short interview, I was walking out of the building. I returned to England with a heavy heart, thinking that I’d flown thousands of miles for nothing.
It was a total surprise when I received an e-mail about a week later to say that I had got the job and could I start in January? Of course I could! I was off to live in New York to work for Vogue — you couldn’t get more glamorous than that. I arrived in January 2005 into a freezing winter. I had no friends and nowhere to live, which was both terrifying and strangely exciting. After a few nights at a horrible youth hostel in Times Square, I found an apartment share on the Upper East Side through an online roommate service and prepared for my first day at the world’s largest fashion magazine.
On Day 1, a seasoned intern took me on a tour of Vogue. Nearly all of it was open-plan, except for a smattering of offices reserved for the more senior editors. We got to the office of Anna Wintour, the Editor-in-Chief, and my guide lowered her voice as if we were in a church. “When you walk past Anna’s office, do not look in. Keep your eyes forward and walk quickly past.” “Is it really like that?” I asked as I broke the rules and peered past Wintour’s two assistants. I could see only part of the room, which was painted white and had framed fashion pictures all over the walls; it looked like a living room. “Yes it is and if you ever run into Anna don’t make eye contact, just look down and walk on.” I never knew if these were Anna Wintour’s rules or were made up by those around her to protect her.
I gathered with four interns working that day. “You know what she [our boss] keeps saying to me?” One of the senior interns replied: “A million girls would kill for this job — just like everyone did in The Devil Wears Prada” “Do you think she’s [Wintour] really that bad?” Another intern replied, “Perhaps the book isn’t really true.” Our boss, the fashion assistant from my interview, broke up the conversation, barking orders for me to go out in a car and pick up clothes from various designers’ showrooms. These would then be photographed and returned — Vogue never purchased anything. The amount of clothes and accessories called in for one shoot was staggering.
Before I knew it, one of the many company limos that waited dutifully outside the Condé Nast building had been booked and a long list of destinations was thrust into my hands. “I don’t know how to get to any of these places, it’s my second week in New York,” I stammered pathetically. “The driver will know where to go,” said the boss. I needn’t have worried; the driver whisked me to the destinations as if he had done it a million times that day — he probably had.
Flouncing out of the Chanel boutique, laden with bags of couture and stepping into a limo while New Yorkers look on might be every girl’s dream. In a blizzard, with armfuls of heavy bags, no sign of the ruddy driver and mascara running down my face, I couldn’t think of anything worse.
I managed to scramble back to the office, looking dishevelled and not at all “Vogue” and hand over my booty. “Oh it’s snowing outside?” said one assistant, looking me up and down, before announcing that she needed me to go out again. Back out I went, wishing I had a more Shackleton-esque coat. I tried to give the driver directions while trying to take instructions from the assistant on the phone telling me to go to “Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Dolce, and hurry”. I started at 9am, had no breaks and left at 8pm. I was absolutely exhausted and hoped that it hadn’t been a typical day.
It had. Day 2 was the same. This time I managed to make it to the Condé Nast cafeteria to grab lunch on my way out. Lunch was the only thing that Vogue had offered to pay for, the only drawback being that I had to pay for it first and then they would reimburse me. The place was enormous and bursting with sumptuous offerings. Sushi chefs prepared fresh sashimi, vegetables were stir-fried in front of your eyes, two salad bars groaned under the weight of scrumptious fare, desserts and cakes were plentiful and, contrary to popular myth, people were eating them. The cafeteria seemed to span acres but sitting down was forbidden. You had to eat at your desk so that you could be on call. I lost count of the times I was asked to do something or to hurry up while I was hurriedly ingesting food.
After a couple of weeks, I was allowed to do “returns”; the laborious task of sending post-shoot clothes back to the designers’ showrooms. I was constantly told off by my boss for not being fast enough: “What’s wrong with you, girl? You were so good yesterday and you’ve slowed up. If you can’t do returns properly then you shouldn’t be doing them. We rely on you to be quick and I can’t be expected to babysit you. If you don’t want to do this job there’s a million girls who do” — just the thing to lift the spirits.
Returns were done in the fashion closet, a vast walk-in wardrobe with rows of designer classics from shoes to handbags. Floor-to-ceiling cupboards exploded with knickers, bras and socks. It was like a fashionista’s sweet shop and if someone didn’t have something to wear, they would look through the rails, “borrowing” a top or dress. I heard one rumour of a famous designer who was furious when he found an article of clothing from his collection, lent for a shoot at another magazine, on eBay.
