Fashion Internships Offer a Dose of Reality No Degree Can Provide

Before any of you head into fashion internships, you may spend some time thinking about whether you want to spend more time learning without any earning.  And the lower your bank account balance gets, the more tempting it will be to skip the internship all together and just head straight in to the job force. 

::Skipping an internship is a bad idea::

Fashion internships give you hands-on experience that no classroom can provide you with.  I don’t care how frazzled you are, running between classes on campus; nothing will prepare you for the day you have three client meetings booked back-to-back, in three different locations and you’re responsible for making sure that every swatch of fabric is where it’s supposed to be.  The level of stress that you will encounter every single day that you work in fashion is unmatched by any school experience. 

Although you will deal with many different people throughout school, you will likely be with the same set of classmates for most of the time.  Not so in the world of fashion.  Your major client will be your direct boss, but then you also have to deal with the dynamics of everyone in the office, along with their clients and the client’s assistants! The list is never ending!!  A career in fashion demands that you be able to juggle multiple personalities on a regular basis!

Fashion internships can be a big dose of reality too.  You may be simply smitten with the idea of a career in fashion, but after the real-life experience of an internship, you may decide a fashion career isn’t for you.

Hands-on experience is an unbeatable perk of fashion internships.  At the time it may not seem like much of a perk, but later in life, if you are up for a job and your nearest competitor didn’t do an internship, chances are you ‘ll get the job.  So take advantage of fashion internships while they’re being offered to you; it’s an experience you’ll never regret.