How fashion’s creatives are weathering the cost of living crisis

To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. In the last four months, London-based fashion photographer Elena Cremona says she has worked longer hours for less money than ever before in her 10-year career. Some commercial clients request she deliver extra images and self-shot videos for shoots, which she’s expected to produce and style herself, she says. Meanwhile, freelancers more widely are finding budgets have gone down, just as the cost of living in the UK has gone up. “After I've agreed to a job, the client might very well pile on an extra three or four jobs for me to do on the day,” says Cremona, who regularly works with fashion brands and declined to share her typical rates. “I’m exhausted and I’m not getting paid enough. But, I also feel more pressure to say yes to jobs because I worry that if I don’t say yes then I’ll be out of a job. I need to be realistic and prioritise making ends meet, which is getting harder in these times.” Lia Clay Miller, a photographer based between Philadelphia and New York who has shot for i-D, Vanity Fair and Wall Street Journal, describes similar financial challenges. “There are a lot of bills I have to foot as a photographer,” she says, referring to the industry norm that photographers pay up front for studio costs and equipment rentals — especially on independent editorial shoots with small budgets. “When the turnaround times for getting paid are slow, and the cost of living is getting more expensive, it’s hard to keep [finances] balanced.” Vogue Business spoke with a number of freelancers across photography, styling, makeup and casting, who shared similar experiences of economic and professional uncertainty. In order to break into the industry, creatives have traditionally been expected to finance editorial and personal work to build up a portfolio, and well-paid jobs typically come long after they have developed a distinct personal style and received editorial recognition. It’s a commissioning process built on the expectation that creative freelancers can afford to financially invest in their own work — a burden compounded by brands and magazines cutting back on their ad budgets as consumer spending shrinks. “The volume of content needed by clients across the board for their digital requirements and social channels is rising,” says Jessica Bradbury, founder of Thursday’s Child, a platform that partners unrepresented photographers, filmmakers and digital creators from across the world with global brands on commercial projects. Brands are coming under increasing pressure to regularly release social-first campaigns across platforms such as Instagram and TikTok in order to stay relevant, alongside a steady stream of traditional media and product launch campaigns — and budgets aren’t necessarily going up at the same rate. “We have a responsibility as an industry to be proactive, agile and creative, and to respond to the changing landscape [and] budgetary parameters to deliver timely solutions,” says Bradbury. Such solutions must extend to creative freelancers, too, many of whom are faced with comparatively lower fees as the cost of living balloons. The UK’s inflation rate hit 10.5 per cent in December 2022, up from 5.4 per cent 12 months earlier. And the US isn’t far behind: inflation rates jumped from 1.2 per cent in November 2020 to 6.5 per cent in late 2022. Not qualified for traditional employee rights, freelancers are particularly vulnerable to economic turbulence. One-third of freelancers in the UK said they were now struggling to cover basic expenses, according to a survey conducted by the LSE in 2022. However, it is also these precarious conditions that make the freelance workforce particularly flexible and responsive to fluctuations in the job market. Considering the high proportion of self-employed workers in the arts and culture sector, how are fashion’s freelancers adapting? Raising rates, enforcing payment terms The most direct action freelancers are taking to protect themselves from the rising cost of living is to increase their rates. This is especially true for freelancers in fashion who say that rates for creative services are not typically standardised, but rather determined by a subjective sense of value based on knowledge, experience, and even circumstance. Though negotiating with clients on tight budgets isn’t always straightforward, honesty can help. “I've had to be really transparent when talking about rates, telling clients: ‘I can't afford to stay at the same rates as last year because everything else is more expensive,’” said London-based stylist Isabelle Landicho. “When I say that's the reason I’ve raised my rates, clients seem to be more willing to negotiate, because they're in the same boat.” Agreeing on rates with clients requires flexibility on both ends. In some instances, knowing when to compromise on lower fees in order to build a long-term relationship with a client can be a smart business move. It’s not always an easy balancing act. Cremona has started requesting that brands offering low rates for commercial jobs sign contracts confirming they’ll rehire her within a set period of time. So far, it’s worked. “They're still paying less than what I'm worth — but at least I have two fixed jobs I can rely on,” she said. Any formal decisions regarding budgets between client and freelancer should also outline clear payment terms. “Now is the time to make sure payment terms are properly written into contracts,” said Pip Jamieson, founder of global freelancer networking platform The Dots. “Sensible, quick payment terms for freelancers is really important to negotiate at the beginning of a contract to ensure accountability.” This might mean including late payment penalty fees in contracts or sending scheduled follow-ups once invoices have been filed. In times of economic uncertainty, London-based make-up artist Laila Zakaria, whose clients include Bottega Veneta and Marni, says she’s accepting more diverse jobs to help mitigate the effects of the rising cost of living. She also suggests reducing the terms of payment to 14 days from the standard net 30 days. “Late payments are already the number one issue many of us face in this industry, so why not reduce the time they can be late on?” she said. After all, the pressures of slow cash flow can be felt tenfold in times of crisis. Diversifying revenue streams “Nowadays, you can't do just one thing,” said Michael Rotimi, founder and director of Brooklyn-based talent agency, Offshore Agency. “It’s good to be able to offer multiple services that you can make revenue from, especially if you’re based in expensive cities like New York or London where there's a living crisis.” Rotimi, who founded Offshore Agency in 2017, now counts casting, talent management and creative consulting among the services he offers. Freelance casting director Abi Schwinck, who founded casting agency Sol Creative in 2021 after collaborating with brands including Uniqlo and publications such as Document Journal, has likewise recently looked beyond her usual creative duties in order to “find solutions that fit a wider range of budgets”, she says. Schwinck has focused her efforts on street scouting and casting — services that cater to a new generation of brands and magazines celebrating attainable beauty — alongside her work with industry talent that continues to appeal to commercial clients. Not only has the move to diversify the services she offers increased her client reach, “it also gives opportunities to people who’ve never had the chance to work in the fashion world,” she said. The direction in which creatives are expanding their skill sets largely depends on their area of expertise. For instance, photographers learning post-production skills allows them to take on jobs with smaller budgets, and also to charge more for all-inclusive services. Brands are also increasingly looking for short-form video content to fill their content calendars on TikTok and Instagram, so photographers or stylists that branch into movement direction or motion creation can place themselves at a competitive advantage. Diversifying revenue streams doesn’t necessarily need to include upskilling, which can be expensive and time-intensive. Photographers, in particular, are looking to licence existing photo projects to brands unwilling or unable to spend thousands on a new campaign. “A lot of people don't realise that there are a lot of potentially licensable images sitting on their Instagram feed,” said Bradbury. “That’s money they could be earning without shooting anything new.” Along these lines, Thursday’s Child is launching a licensing platform this spring, which will accept submissions from photographers and directors both inside and outside the platform’s existing network. Working smarter, not harder It’s not all bad news for self-employed creatives. A combination of slow consumer demand and modest business profits means that a growing number of companies are steadily turning to freelance labour, which is more cost effective, more flexible and often more specialised than full-time talent. “With layoffs happening across the board at larger layers, you do see more companies using more freelance [talent],” said Karla Martin, who is managing director for the fashion apparel and footwear practice at Deloitte Consulting. “There is the obvious cost saving, but it also potentially allows for access to a larger pool of talent, which can help keep assortments fresh and interesting.” Where there is demand, freelancers are rewriting the rules. Some, like London-based photographer Bex Day, have stopped hinging their income on local jobs, focusing instead on finding more lucrative opportunities in nearby countries to maximise their chances of getting hired. “I have noticed a lot of photographers have started relocating to other cities in central Europe for fashion jobs due to less work coming into London because of Brexit,” she said. It’s a sentiment that’s echoed by makeup artist Zakaria, who has in recent months positioned herself to be more available and more flexible to opportunities overseas. “A lot of the jobs with higher rates have moved to Paris,” she said. “Everyone’s writing that they’re based between London and Paris in their Instagram bios and on their websites. That’s smart, you need to be flexible to increase your chances of paid work.” Others are reconsidering their workloads to ensure they are being appropriately compensated for their time, while protecting their intellectual property. One example put forward by Bricks Magazine founder Tori West is withholding pitch decks — which are both labour intensive and artistically demanding — before meeting them in person. “It’s about being more efficient with your time, and thinking, ‘how can I still be great in terms of business development but without wasting my energy and resources on the leads that aren't going anywhere?’” said The Dots’s Jamieson. Like West, she suggests holding off on sharing detailed creative ideas with clients before they have shown explicit interest in collaboration to prevent instances of uncompensated labour and reduce the possibility of plagiarism further down the line. After all, in Jamieson’s words: “Time is especially valuable as a freelancer.” Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More on this topic: Emerging designers bear the brunt of economic crisis Fashion’s freelancer problem exposed Does fashion month make you want to ‘quiet quit’?

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