As an aspiring fashion journalist who daydreams about quilted Chanel handbags and can style an entire outfit with one glance at a blouse, the thought of interning with designer royalty like Oscar de la Renta, Balenciaga, M Missoni and Valentino would be worth its weight in designer couture. I’m not the only person vying for such rare opportunities, however, and those designers clearly know how desirable their internships are. Now that Paris Fashion Week is over, the four fashion houses are offering summer 2013 internships, but for a price. So if you want to intern at Balenciaga, be prepared to pay $10,000 and some change.
The four fashion houses have teamed up with the global auction site charitybuzz.com to auction off internships with proceeds going to Rosie’s Theater Kids, a New York City based charity that promotes children’s arts education and gives them experience in the theater. The charity was started by Rosie O’Donnell.
The internships auctioned off will have interns working in the head offices of the four designers in New York City for a month. The interns will be given school credit and the opportunity to work in departments such as sales, public relations and merchandising. All four internships are unpaid.
The Balenciaga internship specifies that interns will be responsible for working in the wholesale department, assisting in marketing campaigns and model castings, going to product training sessions at stores including Barneys and Bergdorf Goodman and gathering information from company sales reports.
The internships are currently estimated to be worth about $10,000 each, but bids have come in low. The Balenciaga bid stands at $5,250 as of Oct. 30, and the winning bidder will not only get the highly sought after internship but will also get to take home a Balenciaga bag of their choice.
So far, Balenciaga has the highest bid. Oscar de la Renta’s bid stands at $2,750, Valentino’s at $850 and M Missoni has yet to receive any bids. All four auctions end Friday, Nov. 2 and are limited to students at least 18 years of age who are enrolled in accredited colleges and universities both in the U.S. and other countries.
In 2010, Vogue held a similar internship offering the chance to work under Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour for a week. The proceeds went to the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and the winning bid amounted to a whopping $42,500. That’s nearly two years of tuition at the University of Tampa for a week to work under Anna Wintour. Another dream of mine would be to work for a fashion magazine as esteemed as Vogue, but I could never justify spending two years of tuition for a week of unpaid work and no guarantee of a job there in the future.
I would gladly work for free for a rare internship at any of these major fashion houses but I draw the line at paying. Internships are typically unpaid for. Why would someone pay money to work for free? The concept is absurd.
At first glance, the idea seemed sweet. After all, all the proceeds are going to a charity for children. Then I really thought about it. These fashion houses are nothing short of wealthy. These are major designers in a multi-billion dollar fashion industry. Could they not donate to the charities themselves rather than auctioning off unpaid internships? To put it simply, these designers are making money off of their own workers. That seems a little backwards to me.
Lauren Beth Dean from the University of Brighton thought similarly.
“Glamorising unpaid internships and (more significantly) encouraging students to pay to do them is not helping create jobs with fashion,” said Dean to dailymail.com. “How about Balenciaga and Co. just give money to charity themselves, without fueling this internship trade that is allowing designers to create a business without ever having to employ anyone.”
No one should have to pay for a job, especially one as demanding as a position in the fashion industry. Free bag or not, no internship is worth paying $42,500, $10,000, $850 or even $5 for that matter.
Jessica Keesee can be reached at jessica.keesee@theminaretonline.com.
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In scandinavia people think jews have a very strange face, especially the nose is very bad-looking,kinda scythe-like they say, . They call it ” Ful nasa”. the word “ful” is pronounced like the english word “fuel”. i kind of feel sorry for them, but maybe its the testosterone.. i´ve heard it increases the tissues inside the nose, especially bone mass.
It´s intresting to note that the hebrew work “nasa” can mean both “to marry” and “to lift” and “to desire” among many other verbs..