During my time as an intern in the infamous fashion cupboard—where all the gems were stored—it was the age before social media, visibility around diversity didn’t exist, magazines dictated “the look”, and all of the confidence I once had quickly fizzled out. I would spend my days bonding in misery with other interns while packing clothes into plastic bags to be returned to their prospective agencies. I learnt the name of every agency in London—if there was ever a pub quiz on agency addresses I am pretty sure I would win the top prize. I soon reached the next step of being a fashion assistant, and had I known that it was going to be my last promotion in the fashion world I might have enjoyed it more, but I was too consumed with comparing myself to the rich girls I worked alongside. I would smile politely during every conversation surrounding wealthy fathers buying daughters Prada shoes and financing short trips to the South of France for the weekend. Meanwhile, my industry conditioning turned into more worrying actions: I had hair straighteners hidden in my drawer and I often lied about my parents living in Scotland because I felt it was received with disgust.
Anecdotal as it may be, I remember being on set once—4 AM on the beaches of Miami with a famous model. A swimwear shoot, the photographer wanted to catch the early sunrise which meant as the assistant, I had to have my five suitcases of bikinis—yes, five—hung, steamed and ready to go for 3.30 AM. Assisting a Fashion Editor at that time was a largely thankless job; in essence, you’re looking at a fluffy kind of manual labour with the promise of your name in the credits list once the shoot is published as payment. I was helping the model change and then inevitably, the conversation of body types began. The team’s discussion varied from why pregnancy ruins your body to why big bums are disgusting; this was of course before the world found out what Black women always knew: big bums are beautiful too. They then looked at me, suddenly realising I was everything they were convinced was wrong with the female figure. With a small ounce of embarrassment, I received their pity words: “It’s okay that you’re curvy”. I’ll never forget it, because all I could think was, “Well, I’m okay with it, but are you?”.
wazup.