False Myths About Fashion Industry

There are a lot of myths surrounding the fashion industry. Here is a my list of top misconceptions, based on my personal experience. 

1. We all have a strong passion for all things fashion – this can be (and should be) true for most people on the creative side of the business, but it’s not to be taken for granted when it comes to the more traditional fields like sales, retail, finance, accounting, logistics, productions, buying, etc.
2. We are fashionistas – don’t expect to enter the headquarters of Versace (for example) and see outfits worthy of being captured by The Sartorialist all around. While the fashionistas rate is higher than in any other industry, it doesn’t mean that all the folks have a penchant for shopping and are aware of which is the new IT-must-have-or-die bag. Actually most of them are inattentive to the latest trends.
3. We know all the brands – it is near to impossible to follow up with all the brands that appear and disappear every day. The most important thing is to know which are our competitors and what they are up to. All the rest depends on the personal motivation and enthusiasm.
4. We can attend the fashion show – working for a label that takes part in the shows during fashion week doesn’t mean that the employees are invited, in reality they are explicitly not (unless we are part of the pr team or at a managerial or abover level). This is logistically understandable but I can assure you that great part of the members of the workforce wouldn’t be interested even if these events were doors open.
5. We all have employee discounts – this is generally true, but not for all the brands. The first company I worked for (a well established and medium size) didn’t have such a policy. If I wanted to shop in our stores I had to pay full price. The second one (a top players in the international fashion scene) offered 30-50% plus additional 50% during the sales period plus a similar discount for all the other brands that were under the same group. In a nutshell – the bigger the company the better the perks.
6. Everything is endlessly glamorous – actually a fashion job is just like any other job. We too spend all day working on Excel spreadsheets or other process-oriented and information systems from the medieval era (the ones with the black background and green characters; yes, they still exist). The difference is that when we look away from the screen we are surrounded by shoes, bags and dresses, or at least by their photos.

Do you have any other myths to share? Let me know in the comments.

Thank you for reading <3