A new book that exposes the darker side of the French fashion industry is sure to ruffle a few feathers.
'The Most Beautiful Job in the World' is a product of academic Giulia Mensitieri's PhD, which offers a very damning view of the way the fashion industry is run. It looks particularly at the working conditions of young creatives, who, for example, are paid in vouchers or clothes, rather than receiving a proper salary.
The book – which has not yet been translated into English – has already had a strong response from the French fashion industry, both from big names disagreeing with Mensitieri and from those who relate to the book, having personally faced this exploitation.
The book claims that France's second most-profitable industry – which is worth £15 billion – exploits most of the junior creatives that keep it running. Mensitieri's four years of research involved putting together 50 case studies of workers who she felt had been exploited. In her findings, she touched on how the prestige of working for certain companies or designers results in the feeling that it is acceptable for workers not to be paid sufficiently and for companies to escape usual basic regulation.
"In spite of its economic power, fashion is ruled by a contradictory rule: the more a job can accumulate prestige and claim a symbolic and material consecration, the less it will be paid," she told iD France.
One of her case studies included a stylist who was mostly being paid in vouchers for designer clothes rather than receiving a proper salary, meaning she was living on a friend's sofa, couldn't afford her phone bill and was eating fast food every day.
"She was wearing Chanel shoes and carrying a Prada handbag, being flown across the world in business class," Mensitieri told The Guardian. "I never would have imagined that she was in the situation she was in."
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