The lumpy blue jumper that tells you all you need to know about fashion journalism
OK, I know the Devil Wears Prada is just a movie
And films aren't real life
But watch the trailer, and look out for the blue jumper - it's the key to being a great fashion journalist. Honestly.
The Devil Wear's prada is actually a brilliantly observed portrait of what it's like to work on a major (ok, the major) fashion magazine.
I worked in Vogue's London HQ for a while, not on that mag but in the customer titles division.
I've stood behind the pencil-thin fashionistas in the Vogue Cafe, waited an age while they gabble into their phones as their incredibly complicated, life-enhancing yet s-l-o-w t-o p-r-e-p-a-r-e smoothy is mixed for them.
There are many great lines in the Devil Wears Prada, but this exchange is the best: it gets to the very heart of why fashion -and fashion journalism, matters.
And I mean matters in the real world of business, finance, jobs and livelyhoods.
I've taken this from the IMDb and it goes like this:
Miranda Priestly: [Miranda and some assistants are deciding between two similar belts for an outfit. Andy sniggers because she thinks they look exactly the same] Something funny?
Andy Sachs: [the intern]No. No, no. Nothing's... You know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. You know, I'm still learning about all this stuff and, uh...
Miranda Priestly: 'This... stuff'? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select... I don't know... that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent... wasn't it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.
If you want to get into fashion journalism, click the link, it takes you into the latest careers masterclass from Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide
