This story is part of ‘Debunking the dream’, a series based on an exclusive survey of over 600 fashion professionals, which sought to answer two key questions: what does it take to reach a certain level of success in fashion, and what does it take to stay happy at that level? Read part one, which summarises the findings; part three on the lifestyle that a successful career in fashion demands; and part four on the subsequent mass burnout fashion workers are facing.
“Nothing has worked, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) has failed.” This is the exasperated conclusion of a DE&I professional working in the fashion industry. The sentiment was echoed by many other respondents to the Vogue Business ‘Success in Fashion’ survey, which sought to answer two key questions: what does it take to reach a certain level of success in fashion, and what does it take to stay happy at that level?
Responses showed that a person’s various intersectional identities impact the way they are perceived, how likely they are to succeed, what is expected of them in work and in success, and how tenuous that success feels to them. The survey asked questions about the barriers to success and the privileges that allow certain demographics to cut corners, which we analysed from the perspective of socioeconomic class, gender, race and ethnicity, disability, sexuality, body image or appearance, family support, geographical location and age.
An exclusive Vogue Business survey of more than 600 fashion professionals reveals that systemic discrimination, unsustainable lifestyles and a widespread burnout culture are spurring dissatisfaction. Without real change, the industry risks a mass talent exodus.
Survey respondents painted a picture of an industry obsessed with appearance — even in behind-the-scenes roles — where social connections and socioeconomic status are a form of currency few can succeed without. For those who do break through from marginalised groups, the pressure to appear ‘palatable’ often leaves them feeling disconnected and dissatisfied with their own success. Since 2020, fashion has made lofty promises to prioritise DE&I, but over the past year, amid economic uncertainties, many of those programmes have been dialled back. The idea that fashion has become more diverse and inclusive is misleading, survey respondents say. In fact, barriers to inclusion have become more sophisticated and covert. Many people from marginalised groups now feel disillusioned with an industry that promised to change but didn’t and are seeking opportunities elsewhere.
Fashion isn’t alone in struggling to embed DE&I, but the disillusionment marginalised people feel is heightened by the ‘dream’ fashion promises its workers. Many people in the industry grew up feeling awkward and isolated, alienated from the mainstream either by the way they look or the identities they hold. For these people, the industry doesn’t just offer a way to pay bills but community and acceptance. Marginalised people have sought jobs in fashion not only to gain acceptance into the mainstream but to access the engine that creates mainstream ideals.
“For so many of us who grew up marginalised, the fashion industry created images of both escapism and a lack of inclusion,” says disability rights advocate Sinéad Burke, founder and CEO of accessibility consultancy Tilting the Lens. “Many of us had the ambition to change it. Or we felt safety in the mass of queer people, or the mass of people of colour, which is slowly growing. Either way, I think most people working in fashion are there because they want to belong.”
The fact that certain marginalised individuals have broken through isn’t evidence that the structure of inequality has changed, says Ellen Jones, changemaker at inclusive workplace consultancy Utopia. “Part of maintaining structural inequalities is the fact that those people exist because it keeps people accepting that maybe it’s fine the way things are and that if you just work harder, you can [break through].”
Even at the top end of the industry, the likes of celebrity stylist Law Roach and Supreme creative director Tremaine Emory have stepped back from their positions, citing systemic problems in the way the industry operates and particularly the challenges for marginalised people. Elsewhere, designers of colour have come together to boycott Milan Fashion Week, alleging a lack of support.
Survey responses show that the system itself remains largely unchanged. Among the people of colour who responded, 52 per cent said their race or ethnicity has had a negative impact (somewhat or very) on their career in fashion, compared to just 6 per cent of those who are white. (Due to country-specific limitations on data collection, response rates were too low to report racial and ethnic groups separately. To provide directional findings, people of colour have been grouped together for UK and US markets.)
“Key challenges include limited access to education and resources, a lack of true representation in mainstream fashion platforms (rather than tokenism), which makes you think you don’t belong, and systemic biases within the industry,” says Milan-based talent scout Michelle Ngonmo.
Despite being female-dominated at the lower and mid levels, like many industries, fashion’s leadership is still largely male. One influencer and creative consultant who responded to the survey says sexism is the biggest barrier she faces. “Male colleagues have been promoted above me despite being less qualified because of the personal (and gender-specific) “matey” relationships they have been able to develop with senior management,” she says. Likewise, a sustainability strategic consultant adds that the male-dominated C-suite led to “lad culture” and “favouritism to male managers” in her last organisation, prompting her to leave.
For marginalised people, trying to build a career in an industry that wasn’t created by or for people like them can be confusing and frustrating. Instead of community, many find that fashion is a clique.
“Fashion, in particular, is driven by the idea that there’s only space for a talented few,” says journalist Aya Nöel. “You’re either successful, widely revered, validated socially and making enough money to live the glamorous lifestyle you interact with every day, or you’re someone serving that talent. Everyone has accepted there is inequality, so you’d rather be at the top than the bottom.”
Fashion is a highly coveted career, but the myth of a glamorous lifestyle often obscures the reality: blurred personal and professional boundaries and a relentless pace.
This mindset makes fashion ego-centric and exclusive, says hairstylist Jawara Wauchope. “You need a certain amount of confidence and tenacity [to be successful in fashion],” he says. People from underrepresented backgrounds are more likely to suffer from self-doubt in an industry that doesn’t instinctively support them, and imposter syndrome can be a bigger challenge. “If you are born with no glass ceiling, you operate differently than if you are born with barriers.”
Gender and race are the demographics given the most attention within fashion’s DE&I efforts, but survey respondents urge the industry to think intersectionally. Others call for more allyship at senior levels and for training programmes that help marginalised groups advance to senior positions. Across survey respondents and interviews, mentorship emerged as one of the key solutions that allow people from underrepresented groups to improve their chances of success in the fashion industry.
The vicious cycle of financial inequality
Fashion is centred around consumerism, and many jobs are located in capital cities, some of the most expensive places to live in the world. In the past, one of the only established routes into fashion work was unpaid internships, which only the financially privileged or well-connected could afford to take on. Despite unpaid internships now being outlawed in many markets, the routes to accessing work have not been replaced with alternatives. If anything, the number of opportunities has shrunk now that businesses need to pay for interns, making it even more competitive, and the legacy of unpaid work remains for those further on in their careers.
Of the survey respondents, 63 per cent have taken on unpaid work at some point in their careers. This skews higher for certain demographics: 76 per cent of people of colour have taken on unpaid work (compared to 63 per cent of white respondents), and 67 per cent of people under 35 (compared to 58 per cent of people over 35). There are also geographical differences: the number of respondents who had taken on unpaid work was higher in the UK (75 per cent) than in the US (60 per cent) and other countries (57 per cent).
Content creator and Bricks magazine founder Tori West worked as a cleaner after low-paid positions in social media and PR left her unable to support herself in London. It was only when she lost her cleaning work due to the pandemic and had to apply for government financial support that she was able to build her business, she says. “A lot of my middle-class peers didn’t have to take on other jobs because their parents paid their rent. When I went on universal credit, it was the first time I had a stable income and the time to build my business. Now, instead of being in so much debt that I had to jump the bus and steal food, I live on my own in London, and Bricks has its own office and photo studio.”
These experiences are endemic within fashion. “The employees who are happy in fashion and reach a good position are the ones who have enough economic capital to work for free or for very little during their first several years in the industry,” says anthropologist Giulia Mensitieri, author of The Most Beautiful Job in the World: Lifting the Veil on the Fashion Industry. “In the key positions of the fashion industry, particularly in France, you have people coming from the old bourgeoisie or with strong economic and social capital. Paradoxically, precariousness is a luxury that not everyone can afford, and talent has very little to do with long-term fashion careers.”
The perception that fashion jobs are lower paid and less secure puts off many people from underrepresented backgrounds, says Fashion Minority Report founder Daniel Peters. “There are still minority or marginalised students experiencing pushback from family [about building a career in fashion] because they’re worried about the challenges we face in this industry.” If the industry wants to become more diverse and inclusive, it needs critical paths into education and well-paid entry-level jobs with clear opportunities for career progression and personal growth, which means having mentorship built in.
Progress is slow, but solutions are starting to appear. Spurred by fashion features director Emma Davidson’s experience of breaking into the fashion industry, Dazed now runs a six-month internship scheme, paid at London Living Wage. The magazine also helps interns find somewhere to live and supports them with the initial deposit to secure it. For others who don’t want to — or can’t — come to London, and those who need to fit the internship around other paid positions, they find alternatives. Bricks offers working-class creatives free or heavily discounted access to the magazine’s in-house photo studio and pays a day rate of £250, which West says is almost triple what some bigger magazines pay.
Social connections and cultural capital
In many cases, achieving success in fashion isn’t about what you know but who you know. Nearly half (47 per cent) of survey respondents with family in fashion said their socioeconomic status had a positive impact on their careers. Furthermore, those who attended private schools were also more likely to say their socioeconomic status had a positive impact on their career, at 46 per cent (compared to 36 per cent of those who didn’t have a private education).
Personal connections count for a lot in an industry with notoriously opaque hiring practices, a penchant for nepotism, and a heavy emphasis on being seen at the right events. When Noël, print editor at 1Granary, moved home to Brussels from London a few years ago to save money, she realised how many of these connections were concentrated in fashion’s capital cities. “I hoped that going to fashion week twice a year would be enough to maintain my network, but it’s not necessarily in those official spaces that it happens,” she says. “You’re more likely to make connections at an afterparty than a fashion show.”
Model Florence Huntington-Whiteley, whose older sister is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, previously worked as a brand manager. She says the role made her hyper-aware of how people talk about others as extensions of the more established people they’re connected to, “placing them better or worse, and including them or excluding them” based on those relationships.
Without personal connections or proximity to fashion, it can be difficult to build the cultural capital necessary to succeed. Content creator Benji Park has gained a large TikTok following for his videos about fashion history, but he’s largely self-taught, which he says is an inherent privilege. “If you have the ability to self-teach in your formative teenage years, it probably means you’re not working, and you’re not distracted by other things, so you have economic safety,” he explains.
Cultural capital isn’t always something that can be bought or taught. Peters recalls the mockery a fellow student at the Fashion Retail Academy received because they didn’t know how to pronounce Balenciaga. “There’s a snobbery in the industry that we uphold, this system of gatekeeping information and looking down on people who don’t know insider information,” he says.
For many, change starts with access to education. Despite efforts from fashion schools to onboard more students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, the limited number of scholarships available can only go so far, and many students still miss out on grants for travel opportunities and internships, says fashion inclusion consultant Arooj Aftab. “Look at McQueen or Galliano, who came from nothing but were embraced by the industry,” adds Davidson. “You wouldn’t get massive talent like that into universities anymore because of the tuition fees. So many people are locked out of the fashion industry because they don’t have connections or financial privilege.”
Accessing an inaccessible industry
Financial privilege isn’t the only unseen differentiator shaping people’s experience of working in fashion. Physical disabilities, mental illnesses and neurodivergence can limit how people are able to show up in the industry and the way they are perceived by their peers, the survey shows.
The physical infrastructure of fashion is inaccessible to many — physical retail stores, changing rooms, the products themselves, fashion shows, events and travel, says Burke. “So many of the symbols that exist within the most glamorous moments of fashion are symbols of inaccessibility, which communicates a very explicit invitation, or lack thereof, to disabled people,” she explains. The biggest challenges are people’s lack of knowledge and exposure, but there is limited psychological safety for disabled people to self-identify as disabled or vocalise their accessibility needs, stalling progress.
Invisible disabilities are also a barrier to career success. “Past employers have not been able to understand or respect my limitations on account of me not ‘looking’ disabled, as I am also a model,” says one respondent. Bricks’s West says several of her staff have been forced to stand at shows despite communicating their invisible disabilities. “That’s a real disconnect, that people get a seat or not based on clout and not disability,” she says. Survey respondents suggest making the industry more accessible for disabled people by hosting networking events, improving fashion show locations, and adjusting the physical labour expectations for interns.
“We think about accessibility from physical accessibility to meaningful and accessible recruitment and retention, digital accessibility and the education needed to support these changes beyond compliance, even product accessibility,” says Burke. “The industry is looking for absolution, but this needs to be a long-term strategic priority, which we invest in from top-down, bottom-up and sideways.”
People with mental illnesses and neurodivergence say fashion is a particularly challenging industry to navigate. West, who has severe anxiety, PTSD and depression and is waiting on a diagnosis for autism, says, “Fashion week is sensory overload hell when you’re neurodivergent, and there are no warnings or support.”
Despite the self-care messaging in many fashion and beauty spaces, those with more severe disorders worry about stigma. “I’ve been too embarrassed to admit to mental health problems, assuming people will think I’m unreliable at best, dangerous at worst,” says journalist Ellen Burney, who had a psychotic episode in 2013 and has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia and complex PTSD. “I’ve talked myself out of huge career opportunities where I’ve known I would have to divulge more details, [even though] I know I could have done 90 per cent of the job exceptionally well.” Burney now writes a Substack newsletter called Unreality Bites, where she discusses the “pigeonhole portrayal of mental health in modern culture”.
There is plenty fashion could do to make its physical spaces more accessible and psychologically safe. In physical retail, Gucci has implemented tech to help blind and low-vision customers navigate the space, while Estée Lauder has appointed external agencies to audit stores for accessibility, and many stores now have quiet hours for neurodivergent people. In terms of the products themselves, companies from Tommy Hilfiger to Zalando are exploring adaptive design, which now has a presence at London Fashion Week through newcomer Unhidden. These consumer-facing changes have a halo effect on how included disabled staff feel in the fashion industry and often come hand-in-hand with employee training, which can help tackle unconscious biases.
Pretty privilege
Fashion is an image-based industry, but it’s not just models and influencers who feel that their personal appearance impacts their ability to achieve success. “There is a strong beauty bias,” says one sustainability consultant who responded to the survey. “If I look around my organisation, everyone is conventionally attractive. No one has visible disabilities, and most are white.” A strategic consultant was told they didn’t have the “right look” for their career, which typically centres youth, Eurocentric features and a slim, visibly able body. Many other respondents say they would like to see less emphasis on personal appearance and better support for DE&I.
Survey respondents say that age has negatively impacted their career, regardless of how old they are: 68 per cent of respondents under 35 feel they are not fairly paid, but those over 35 say their age has impacted them because fashion is perceived as a young person’s game. “I feel like job opportunities decrease after 30,” says one buyer. “I’d like to see more focus on skill and commitment rather than aesthetics,” adds a sustainability professional.
This bias is rooted in the idea that youth equals creativity, says Nöel, who has been researching youth for the next print edition of 1Granary, interviewing people who have been in the industry for over 10 years. “For an industry so reliant on newness, innovation and reinvention at a high turnover, it became easier to bring in fresh perspectives and move onto the next, rather than creating an environment where we support that evolution internally,” she explains.
The fashion industry pedals trends, and its workers are often expected to keep up. Many don’t have the financial resources to do so, facing judgment from peers. “Colleagues from wealthy backgrounds openly mock what a [fashion assistant] from a lower socioeconomic class is wearing if they aren’t wearing emerging labels or trendy clothes. They look down on cheaper brands — but some of us can’t even afford Zara,” says the anonymous founder of Fashion Assistants.
Whether models are sample size or plus-size, many are still forced to maintain a certain size, and disordered eating is rife despite the promotion of body positivity. “When [agents or casting directors] make comments about our bodies, you internalise it. You’re constantly put in positions where you’re comparing yourself to others,” says plus-size male model James Corbin.
Beauty standards are rooted in hundreds of years worth of discrimination against groups that are not deemed desirable, which can be traced back to colonialism. Reversing the beauty bias is no easy feat, but as an industry whose primary function is to generate aspirational images to sell to consumers, fashion has the particular power to create a new inclusive standard that could positively impact workers from underrepresented groups. Unlearning begins with improving representation, for example, in campaigns and on the runway, in order to expand the collective vision of what beauty can look like and, therefore, who feels they belong in this industry. But lasting change comes through hiring practices, so the people creating these images are as diverse as the final product.
From code-switching to community
It’s not just how you look; it’s also how you act. People from underrepresented backgrounds often feel the need to code-switch in professional environments, downplaying or exaggerating certain parts of their identities and personalities to achieve success and acceptance. Appearing “palatable” isn’t just about the work you do, but the way you carry yourself, how you speak and walk, the lunch you bring to the office, and the type of restaurants or exhibitions you frequent on weekends, says Peters.
Fashion is facing a burnout epidemic, with marginalised communities, purpose-driven professionals and freelancers bearing the brunt. As the prospect of a mass exodus looms, calls for a slower pace and systemic reform mount.
If companies want their employees to be their authentic selves at work, they need to create intentional and psychologically safe spaces, says consultant and workshop facilitator Amy Foster-Taylor. “If work isn’t a safe space, why would we want to show our humanity there?” For people to shed their protective layers and be their authentic selves, they need emotional, financial and community safety nets, she continues.
Finding a community in fashion is a crucial method of self-preservation, agrees Benji Park. “When you participate in fashion as part of a minority group, it’s important to find a community, so you have a safe space for the parts of you that are core to your identity, like your ethnicity or faith. You’re going to deal with things that others can’t understand.” Finding a community isn’t just about venting; it can lead to collective action via unionisation, which is one of the most effective routes to systemic change.
Only hiring people who look and behave like you won’t help the industry move forward, says Peters. Instead of rushing and recruiting familiar tropes, fashion companies should try to think longer term to avoid setting diverse talent up for failure. “It’s not just about looking at the new talent we bring in,” he explains. “It’s also about the people from minority or marginalised backgrounds who already exist in your company and what you are doing in terms of work streams and programmes that support and enable them to grow. That builds the foundation for the next generation.”
Better training, support and retention policies can have compound benefits, he adds. “By encouraging people to stay at a company [through these engagement and advancement opportunities], they pay it back into the business because when they become leaders, they’ll make decisions that can affect changes to support a new wave of talent coming in.”
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With data analysis by Amy Betts and Jayne Pickard.
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