The Most Beautiful Job in the World: Lifting the Veil on the Fashion Industry

The Most Beautiful Job in the World: Lifting the Veil on the Fashion Industry

Overview

Fashion is one of the most powerful industries in the world, accounting for 6% of global consumption and growing steadily. Since the 1980s and the birth of the neoliberal economy, it has emerged as the glittering face of capitalism, bringing together prestige, power and beauty and occupying a central place in media and consumer fantasies. Yet the fashion industry, which claims to offer highly desirable job opportunities, relies significantly on job instability, not just in outsourced garment production but at the very heart of its creative production of luxury.

Based on an in-depth investigation involving stylists, models, designers, hairdressers, make-up artists, photographers and interns, anthropologist Giulia Mensitieri goes behind fashion's glamorous facade to explore the lived realities of working in the industry. This challenging book lays bare the working conditions of 'the most beautiful job in the world,' showing that exploitation isn't confined to sweatshops abroad or sexual harassment of models, but exists at the very heart of the powerful symbolic and economic centre of fashion.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781350110168
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 08/06/2020
Series: Criminal Practice Series
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 1,100,141
Product dimensions: 5.43(w) x 8.53(h) x 0.87(d)

About the Author

Giulia Mensitieri has a doctorate in social anthropology and ethnology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France. Her research focuses on globalisation, the transformations of work, and the coveted imaginary worlds produced by contemporary capitalism.

Natasha Lehrer is an award-winning writer and translator. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and The Nation, and elsewhere. She has translated books by Nathalie Léger, Chantal Thomas, Georges Bataille, Robert Desnos, and the Dalai Lama, among others. She won a Rockower award for jourbanalism in 2016, and in 2017 her co-translation (with Cécile Menon) of Suite for Barbara Loden, by Nathalie Léger, won the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Fashion and the Dream xiii

Introduction

When Fashion Becomes a System 1

The 1980s: 'Dress for success' 2

The 1990s: The imperialization of fashion 4

The New Economy and the cult of creativity 6

Anonymity 9

Part 1 Fashion and Capitalism: A System for Producing the Dream

1 Fabricating Desire: Press and Advertising 13

The Heidi shoot 13

Fashion photography: The link between production and consumption 20

The dream of transformation 25

2 Haute Couture: The Apotheosis of the Dream 29

The Abir shoot 29

What is haute couture? 33

The story of an haute couture dress 37

The clientele 43

Is haute couture a viable business? 48

Haute couture: Fabricating an image of France and Paris all over the world 50

The different types of dream 52

3 The Circulation of the Dream: Fashion and Globalization 55

Pedro and the curse of 'made in China1 56

Corinne against China 63

Local people versus citizens of the world: Chloé, Micaela and the ancestral charm of delocalized workers 67

Chloé 68

Micaela 69

Private fashion shows and global inequality 71

Local elites, global elites 75

Fashion in the world 77

Part 2 Working in Fashion, or 'Lucky to Be There'

4 On the Threshold of the Dream: The Salespeople 87

Gilbert and the dream of luxury 88

Selling the dream: David and the brand ambassadors 90

5 The Greater the Prestige, the Lower the Pay: The Rules of the Game for Fashion Workers 95

The Menu shoot 95

Working for free in fashion: Modelling 100

Agencies 102

The body as capital 105

The rules of the game in fashion economies 109

Visibility as a form of remuneration? 114

Fashion work as post-Fordist work 116

6 Prestige and Precariousness: Symbolic and Material Geographies 121

Mia at home 121

The value of objects 125

Between luxury and precariousness 128

Fashion cities 131

The precariousness of those who are caught in between 135

7 At the Heart of the Dream: The Designer-stylists 137

Thierry, designer-stylist 137

Thierry and Karl 139

Thierry after Karl 142

The arc of Thierry's career: Fifty years of fashion history 143

The transformations of Thierry's work 146

Thierry versus Karl: A question of visibility 147

Elsa: The work of the designer-stylist today 150

The rules of the game for designer-stylists 155

Marguerite: The itinerary of a freelancer 156

Reconstructing a framework 160

Maintaining opacity 163

Part 3 The Dream, and Those Who Work in It

8 At Work with an Up-and-coming Fashion Designer 175

Meeting Franck 175

The beginning of our collaboration 176

The next part of my 'internship' 185

Departure for Paris 188

Desirable projections 191

The day of the show 193

Untangling emotions 204

9 Knowing How to 'Be There': Work Relationships 211

The Deauville shoot 211

The tyranny of cool 219

Flexible relationships in cognitive work 222

10 Getting into Fashion, Creating a Persona, Coping in Fashion, Getting out of Fashion 225

Getting into fashion 225

Creating a persona 228

Coping 230

Getting out 235

Fashion: A place for the exception? 240

Conclusion 251

Loosening the knots 251

What fashion can teach us 256

Index 259

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