In April, the fashion industry suddenly halted as did everything else. What will a fulfilling career in the fashion industry look like when graduating during a global pandemic?
Most people in this programme will graduate within the next 4 to 10 months, I will be one of them. The majority hope to land either an associate buying position, fashion marketing internship, personal stylist position or store manager at a glamourous downtown office space or high-end clothing store. The reality is finding your dream job in fashion has become even more difficult at the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Although, it is a part of our human nature to learn how to adapt to new environments, which we've already done. There's an imminent fear in the back of every senior university student's mind, that there just won't be a place for us in our field after graduation. At the start of the pandemic thousands of positions were cut due to firms no longer being able to afford so many salaries. Since then, many people have been unable to be reemployed sadly due to firms realising that their positions are no longer necessary.
The fashion industry was one of the hardest hit industries and it's still quite vulnerable. If anything, this pandemic has shown how important each moving part in the supply chain is. As factories shut down and new restrictions on shipping and travel emerged, stock importation and apparel manufacturing took a hit, which sparked the debate, whether having fashion seasons are necessary at all, or have they always been a capitalist ploy to allure people into spending more money?
Back in March, many clothing stores had backorders for SS ‘20, therefore there simply wasn't enough inventory to sell to make up for the amount of salaries that needed to be compensated for. Due to this, thousands of people in retail we're laid off. Eventually clothing stores closed worldwide for almost an entire quarter. At that point, fashion brands came to the realisation that it just simply wasn't possible to manufacture the clothing for AW’20 in time, hence why they pushed many of their designs to future ‘seasons’ or have decided to go seasonless altogether, following in the footsteps of Gucci.
I wish I could recall the events of earlier this year in Covid-free present day.
Every day that goes by makes me almost certain that coronavirus is just something we have to live with in our daily lives in the same way that we adapted to the common cold. No one can put a definite end date on the coronavirus timeline, so let's just assume by the time second year fashion management students graduate and enter the workforce, we will most likely struggle finding employment in the field.
So, what does the workforce look like now that we have begun adapting? What better way to figure out what the world outside of our academia fishbowl truly like than to ask someone experiencing the ‘new normal’ who is currently working in the industry.
Elle Edwards is a personal stylist/shopper at Harry Rosen during his 9-5, however, spends the rest of his hours in the week juggling an impressive number of job titles. He is a freelance fashion photographer, creative director fashion consultant and also recently delved into scouting, conducting mentorships and branding.
He says that the new everyday workday is pretty much the same.
“Connecting with model agencies connecting with models, connecting with production, make-up artists, hair stylists, wardrobe stylists. Lots of planning and brainstorming.”
“it's a lot of getting in contact with client’s commercial clients and doing a lot of negotiating doing a lot of agreement contract review things like that have to prepare for, a lot of back at forth on logistics”
The only thing that has changed is it has become more digitized, more emails, more phone calls and zoom conference calls!”
When asked if any unexpected opportunities came his way due to the pandemic he said,
“The greatest thing for me is it comes to branding or fashion photography. I have jobs or potential jobs because everyone needs me to make content whether it is to market online or they need branding done to stand out from their competitors, so there's always a demand there for the services I provide which is great!”
“[Additionally] since the Black Lives Matter movements in June that encouraged people to put more energy into black businesses and black creatives in the industry and have become more aware of black talent.”
“I am now getting more recognition and support for my craft.”
Elle is actually not worried about the future of the fashion industry in Toronto. He believes that everything happens for a reason.
“It's just business and you just have to adjust to everything that's happening in the marketplace.”
“It's the survival of the fittest and I feel like if you want to grow or stay in business at least you have to be willing to adjust to everything that's happening in the industry and persevere.”
One of the biggest pieces of advice he has for anyone entering the industry is invest in yourself, do some soul searching and figure out what you’d find most joy in doing for the next 5-10 years and the research in that market to figure out your strengths and weaknesses and what you can bring to that sector.
“Build your network, the fashion industry is a relationship-based industry.”
“It’s not about what you know and it’s only so much about who you know, it’s more so about who knows YOU!”
“Brand yourself very well in this industry.”
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