What a Chance to Be Here:
A Conversation with Giulia Mensitieri

Giulia Mensitieri holds a doctorate in social anthropology and ethnology from the EHESS in Paris. In her book, “The most beautiful job in the world”  ¹, she unveils a disenchanted reality, that of the working conditions of creative men and women in the fashion and luxury industry. Having been immersed in a world that is familiar to us made us want to talk to her. A meeting date was set in Brussels to talk about the issues that face the industry at large.

What made you choose the world of fashion for your study?

It started with an observation: my Parisian friends, be they scholars, designers or journalists, all lived from check to check. As a scholar it was also my case, so I wanted to investigate this new form of precariousness of the symbolic elites. At first, I looked towards contemporary art, but it’s a world that creates a lot of distance, whereas fashion, from up close or from afar, speaks to everyone.

Then I met Mia, the stylist that I talk about in the book. She was dressed from head to toe by in luxury brands, but she could not pay her rent. She is the one that really got me into this world. I quickly discovered that fashion is not the frivolous milieu that you imagine from outside. It’s filled with expertise, skills and sophisticated culture. People want to go into fashion because they are seduced by this media image of luxury, success and beauty. The problem is, once you’re a part of it, it’s difficult to give up, even when the working conditions are so bad that it would seem logical to leave. 

In the book, you illustrate this dichotomy with the notion of overexposure...

All work in fashion is overexposed. In photography, overexposure refers to an excessive exposition to light, which turns nuances, shadows and outlines into blurry and sometimes invisible shapes. The overexposure metaphor allows me to point out two things: the appeal of the dream, that fashion sells by constantly placing it under the spotlights, and the impossibility of seeing what the fantasies really are, hidden by these bright lights. Overexposure in fashion creates the conditions of its opacity.

A real issue that you also talk about in the book is the systemic individualization in this industry

Yes, young people are taught from the beginning to be individualistic. It’s a tough competition and each individual has to be a “unique” creative worker. It’s what I have called the “exceptionalization” of the creative worker. We often talk in terms of “creative genius”, there is a form of deification of the “designer” who has a vision, a universe. For young students and later for young workers, it’s a lot of pressure. The individual often takes precedence over the collective and therefore over solidarity. Common struggles for better working conditions are thus almost impossible. That reinforces the hierarchies and makes them all the more violent.

That is indeed what we learn at school. You have to have your own aesthetics and distinguish yourself from others.

Yes, there is this ingrained idea that working with others would mean renouncing something of yourself. Building yourself as a creative worker is difficult, especially when we are immersed in this neoliberal narrative: your life, your art. In fashion, the individual has to stand out to exist. He is, in a sense, alone before the world. That makes him at once very self-centered and very vulnerable.

When do you think the omnipresence of the creative figure dates back to?

It began at the end of the 1960s, when capitalism was heavily criticized for the alienation that it created in workers, by forcing them to sell their labour power at the expense of their intellectual capacities or their affect. Back then, corporate management would have seen this social critique as an opening. We also witnessed a structural change in capitalism: the de-industrialization and offshoring of the 1980s gave way to a service era. Cultural and creative industries became the economy’s focus point.

Creativity is the new creed and the artists go from a historically marginal figure to THE figurehead of modern economies. Today, everybody wants to be a creative worker. Here we go back to “exceptionalization” that we talked about earlier. A worker that is no longer one, replaced by an artist that has to distinguish himself at all costs, even if that means working for free, at night, or on personal projects that are supposed to give him the necessary «symbolic value».

In fact, in the last decade we have witnessed a shift in the designations, from « creator » to « artistic director ».

The artistic director is, for me, the symbol of the total dematerialization of the work. We are selling dreams. The artistic director is the one that creates, with many different tools, the imagery but not the product. He is the one that provokes the desire to buy. We are in a logic that is miles from the craftsperson’s skills. Here we see the ambiguity at the heart of fashion, its double nature, a cultural industry but also, simply, an industry.

The commercial imperatives would thus restrict the « creative freedom ». It’s this tension that often opposes the « creatives » with the other players in the fashion industry.

There is indeed this need for creative workers to legitimize themselves, because fashion is often perceived as hollow and volatile. We must be careful, though, about what we mean by freedom. The idea that creative freedom would be absolute, that you have to go to “independent" brands to find a freedom that is closer to “l’art pour l’art”. This notion takes root in the intrinsic opposition between Art and profit.

But I have, in fact, met a lot of designers that chose to work for more “commercial brands" - and I say this with no judgement - and that enjoy a quality of life: holidays, time for their families and getting out of the office by 6PM. Perhaps that is also freedom...

It is surprising. Financial insecurity is a taboo question in this industry. Talking about it would inevitably lead to questioning the very meaning of luxury. Journalistic investigations have revealed that many luxury products are made by workers in appalling conditions, not only in Bangladesh or in China, but also in Italy. We need to update the notion that we have of luxury itself, to ensure that the whole chain of production is exempt of exploitation.

There is a sort of tacit acceptance of certain things. We are all bit complicit in this opacity, because it’s more confortable to not see certain things.

For me, talking to a publication such as yours is akin to taking a stand. We are at the heart of a major issue for fashion in the years to come: how do we redefine the values of what luxury is, of what cool is? How do we change our ways, especially when it comes to traceability. The consumer has to be clear-eyed about the origin of his purchase in the countries that produce it but also here, inside the big companies.

We mustn’t forget the importance of fashion for the french economy: it’s tens of thousands of jobs, billions of euros of profits and a big part of french cultural influence that can’t be tarnished. All that contributes to this opacity. It is a real challenge to compel all the players, brands and consumers to think about the concept of luxury and the future of this industry, because it has to change.

End of the interview

What’s especially striking, after this discussion, is the relative lack of self-criticism in the fashion industry. There are certain things that you never talk about, from precarious working conditions to abusive situations. This unequal model allows the industry to continue functioning.

The question we ask ourselves, as the founders of Tide, is: how do we renounce this surrounding opacity in favor of more transparency? All contributors to the magazine have worked pro bono. Being open about this is important to us. Even if it’s not a goal in itself, we would like to soon be financially sustainable in order to better pay our future collaborators.

Redrawing the lines is not simple, but maybe if everyone, at his or her level, demands certain requirements, the whole industry would then be able to create more respectful working conditions for all.

¹ “Le plus beau métier du monde” published by La Découverte in 2018 and in English by Bloomsbury under the title “The most beautiful job in the world”.