Focus on France Ian Sparks reports from Paris

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Ian Sparks reports from Paris on an expose of the French fashion industry.

Ascathing new book has stripped the veneer of glamour from the French fashion world to reveal the low wages and harsh working conditions of young employees desperate to succeed in the country’s second biggest industry.

The book entitled ‘The Most Beautiful Job in the World’ tells how trainee staff wear luxurious clothes, carry €2000 handbags and fly business class, but sleep on sofas and eat fast food because they are often paid in clothes vouchers instead of cash. Most are too frightened to complain because their bosses tell them they are ‘lucky to have a job in fashion at all’ and could be replaced with eager new trainees ‘in seconds’, author Guila Mensitieri writes.

The Italian post-graduate student originally wrote the book as her PhD on the inner workings of the fashion industry, but the details exposing the seedy underbelly of the glamorous world of haute couture were quickly picked up by the French media and a publishing house.

The author began her thesis eight years ago after meeting a young Italian sylist named only as Mia. Mensitieri writes: “She was wearing Chanel shoes and carrying a Prada handbag, being flown across the world in business class. I never would have imagined that she was in the situation she was in.

“She couldn’t afford to rent a room, so she was couch surfing at a friend’s house behind a screen in the kitchen. Sometimes she had no money for her phone bill. She was eating McDonald’s every day. She never knew when she would be paid for a job and how much she would get.

“For example, for a week’s work, a very big luxury brand gave her a voucher for €5000 to spend in their boutique. It’s true she could have sold it, but working in fashion means being seen in a constantly updated uniform of beautiful, expensive clothes and accessories – paid for by vouchers such as the one Mia received instead of a salary. This situation is nothing exceptional. Mia is just a paradigm of what is going on.”

Mensitieri, who attended the École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales, one of France’s elite grandes Ècoles, said of her book’s publication: “I was a little bit scared when it came out because it’s quite a strong denunciation, even though that was not my goal. I’m an anthropologist, not a journalist.”

She added: “When we think of exploitation in fashion we think of sweat shops abroad or sexual harassment of models. But that’s not what I was interested in. I was looking at the creative side: stylists, makeup artists, young designers, interns, assistants.

“What I really want to make clear is that exploitation exists at the very heart of the powerfully symbolic and economic centre of the maisons de couture, the big luxury brands. But it is a different form of exploitation. In some cases, also barely legal.”

A different world?

Mesitieri said during a launch of her book in London: “The message from the fashion industry is that you don’t have to be paid because you are lucky to be there at all. Working in fashion is hyper socially validating, even if you’re unpaid. That’s an important point for me.

“Fashion presents itself as something exceptional, a world outside the ordinary. There is a kind of confused denial of the norms of labour conditions. The dream that French fashion, especially, projects is that of a life of effortless luxury – mundane everyday facts of life such as working for a living, or indeed even money, are considered vulgar, taboo, even dirty subjects.

“But is it really possible that France’s second most profitable industry after cars and before armaments – a €15 billion industry – can be an exception in capitalism? To me, fashion is the very centre of contemporary capitalism – it upholds the old forms of exploitation, factories in Bangladesh and so on – and the new, very modern forms which are more a kind of self-exploitation, a blurring of the line between your work and everything you are outside of work.”

To understand fashion’s reach and power, Mensitieri explains, look at the parade of designers President Emmanuel Macron invites to the Elysée palace.

She said: “The government is keenly aware of the industry’s economic and symbolic power. In France, to say ‘I work in fashion’ is something extremely important.

“That is why lowly workers will accept almost any kind of eccentric behaviour from their bosses, and the workers justify this by saying, ‘Oh, but he’s a genius. That’s what geniuses do’.”

Mensitieri, who calls this phenomenon ‘the glamourisation of domination’, said one interviewee for the book told her: “My boss was earning €13,000 a month but I was on the minimum wage. Just €100 a month more would have made the difference to me. But he wouldn’t do it.”

And it is not just people working in fashion who might recognise themselves in these descriptions. It is a similar scene across all the creative industries and academia, says Mensitieri. She also makes a good comparison with the charity sector where, it is widely held, ‘doing good’ is incompatible with being paid well.

She added: “If you want to change things, you have to look beyond fashion, or whatever industry you’re in, and talk to people in different fields who are working under the same conditions.

“There is a strong anti-fashion movement in the UK and, in France, models are working together for better working conditions. You need to start collaborating – which is an almost heretical thought in fashion. You need to stop thinking of yourself as special.” n