This story is part of our “Uncovering the Dream” series, which is based on an exclusive survey of over 600 fashion professionals and seeks to answer two important questions: what does it take to reach a certain level of success in the fashion industry, and what does it take to be happy at that level? Read part 1 to summarise the survey findings, part 2 to learn how your personal background influences your success, and part 3 to learn what kind of lifestyle you need to succeed in the fashion industry.
During the pandemic, the former fashion journalist decided to retrain as a software engineer after she says working in the fashion industry had eroded her confidence and made her anxious. After seven years of living in a “state of depression and anxiety,” she was burnt out.
“Since leaving fashion, I’ve been able to find and pursue a passion that’s entirely personal to me, and develop my own perspective, rather than being dictated by trends or the fear of being seen as irrelevant. In fashion, I was commercializing my interests and turning everything I enjoyed into an opportunity to monetize, and that just didn’t work for me,” says the former reporter, who asked to remain anonymous. Her new job gives her stability, a sense of financial security, and, best of all, a disconnect from the sense of self she never had while working in fashion.
With overproduction putting the fashion industry into overdrive and a global recession squeezing teams, the gap between employee expectations and reality is widening, leaving many employees with a pattern of disillusionment and unbearable pressure. Vogue Business’s “Succeeding in Fashion” survey 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 be happy at that level? The responses revealed three main factors that make people more susceptible to burnout: the way their identity intersects with the pressures they experience at work, the sense of purpose and influence they derive from their work, and the way they structure their time and lifestyle around their work. Since the start of the pandemic, calls for fashion to maintain a more realistic pace have gone unheard, and with the fashion calendar restarting in earnest, rates of burnout have only risen.
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Subverting the dream: Is working in fashion becoming outdated?
An exclusive Vogue Business survey of more than 600 fashion industry professionals reveals growing frustration with systemic discrimination, unsustainable lifestyles and a pervasive culture of burnout – and without real change, the industry risks suffering a mass talent exodus.
Subira Jones, founder of consultancy The Fireproof Career, says there’s a difference between exhaustion and burnout, though the two are often confused. “Exhaustion is when you’re exposed to acute stress that has a clear endpoint – you need to rest, recharge and reset,” she explains. “Burnout is chronic stress over a long period of time. No matter how long you try to recharge, you often can’t re-energize or perform at your best. When you’re burnt out, success isn’t sustained and it’s detrimental to your mental and physical health.”
The fashion industry needs to find a way to address its culture of burnout or risk alienating talent, limiting people’s capabilities, and slowing progress on bigger-picture issues like sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). But how?
Burnout happens when our lifestyle is out of balance. This means that work takes on too big a role or adds unnecessary stress. For the fashion industry, this stress is systemic. But by adopting small daily habits, we can create a gradual solution. Experts say that adopting these habits more widely could help the fashion industry slowly recover from the threat of mass exodus.
Burnout doesn’t discriminate, but fashion does
People from marginalized backgrounds are more susceptible to the dynamics within the industry and therefore more likely to experience burnout. “Black people working in high-pressure environments are asked to do more, [your flaws or errors] “They are less well-adjusted than their colleagues and this leads to feelings of burnout,” says Wang Chahwa, changemaker at inclusive workplace consultancy Utopia.
Representation can be an added burden for those who break through first: “There’s pressure that we’re not living up to people’s expectations of what success is, that we’re not doing well enough to represent people.” [from my community] “I want to show those who look up to me that they can reach the top while being themselves,” says James Corbin, a plus-size model who is black and grew up in a working-class background.
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Unveiling the dream: Who can make it in the fashion industry?
Vogue Business’s “Succeeding in Fashion” study revealed an industry obsessed with appearances that excludes and limits the advancement of marginalized groups. The illusion of fashion, which lures many of these groups with its promise of belonging, remains elusive.
With public attention comes greater pressure, as is often the case with success in the fashion industry. “The bar was low when I started out; I’m a woman of color with a small voice, so no one had high expectations of my work. Now the bar is much higher, and the pressure that comes with it is greater,” says Aurora James, founder of Brother Vellies, a fashion label that protects and creates jobs for artisans in the Global South, and the 15 Percent Pledge, a nonprofit founded in 2020 to support Black-owned businesses.
Some people struggle with feeling like they’re being tokenized when representing marginalized groups. Gender-fluid designer Fabian Kis-Juhasz launched her brand in 2019 at a time when highlighting marginalized identities was starting to become more common in fashion media, she notes. “In theory, this sounds like a good thing, but it also sounds like this weird mutual benefit: it brings attention and gives them something to write about. In many ways, I think I got to where I am because it seemed like a novel cause. I’m not sure that representation in that form is really all that successful,” she says.
