Interning For A Fashion Stylist

She does everything, from styling shoots, to running a blog, to putting out an online magazine every season, to attending fashion week. She had actually come to LIM and spoke in one of my career classes, and that’s when I initially met her. I was super interested in what she did, so I reached out to her on social media and asked if I could attend and assist her at a photoshoot one day, and to my surprise, she said yes! After that, I reached back out to her again and asked if I could intern for her. After interviewing with her assistant, I got the internship.

I have heard from a lot of people that to “make it” in the fashion world, you first have to spend an excessive number of hours in a fashion closet, and boy they aren’t wrong. My time at Audree Kate Studios was spent going out and buying/returning clothes and accessories for shoots, reorganizing closets, checking clothing in and out, and scouring the internet for potential sponsors.

Perhaps my most memorable day interning was right in the midst of New York Fashion Week. Audree had samples she needed me to go pick up; I must have had three garment bags with at least 5-8 clothing items each, and then four more huge shopping bags filled with shoes, purses, and earrings. As I struggled to carry it all and make it onto the three different trains, I still remember all the stares I got. Only one person was kind enough to ask me if I could handle it all, another simply just said, “Wow that’s a lot,” as if I wasn’t already aware that I was easily carrying more than my body weight in clothing. I’m pretty sure my arms fell off the next day.

Besides getting really defined arms for a few weeks, I learned a lot from my time there. Audree had us plan our own mini photoshoot, which unfortunately I didn’t get to actually produce because of COVID-19, and do five informational interviews. From that, I learned you can’t be afraid to reach out to people; most of the industry people I talked to were super nice and a few even told me if I needed help finding a job after graduation to reach back out to them. So even if the internship wasn’t “glamorous”, it was a great chance to learn new things and narrow down what I want to do in the future.

Here is a list of things I wish I knew before starting my internship with a fashion stylist:

• Always bring a snack

A lot of the time, you don’t know when you’re going to get to eat, so play it safe a bring a protein bar or something!

• Be flexible

I never really knew where I would be going until the day of, which I found to be stressful at first.

• Ask questions!!

The more questions you ask, the more likely you are to complete your tasks faster and how your manager wants.

• Try to make the best of it and have fun

I actually got to intern at Audree Kate Studios with one of my friends, and the little moments we got to make jokes and laugh were some of the best parts of the internship.