Will fashion ever respect the intern?

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“It was a completely unpaid internship,” says Hannah, a fashion graduate who, at 21, had her first internship at a fast-growing design studio. “I'd stay ‘till 11pm for weeks running up to the show. Some of us would come in on Saturday and Sunday. There were more interns than people working there.”

The shadowy legal status in between worker, volunteer, and employee means that if the employer doesn’t pay an intern, they become a “voluntary worker,” and therefore don’t require payment. As of January 2018, the US law changed, so that companies must only prove that the intern benefitted more than the company gained to not pay. According to WayUp — a career platform for college students and recent graduates — this makes it “easier now than ever for companies to avoid paying their interns.”

Non-profit The Sutton Trust reported that “86% of internships in the arts were unpaid” in 2018, and that completing more unpaid internships didn’t lead to higher employment, with students sometimes becoming stuck in a cycle of unpaid work.

But the times are slowly changing. In September this year, LVMH announced it will recruit 25,000 people under the age of 30 by 2023 and will add 5,000 new internships and apprenticeships. Kering — mother company of Gucci, Balenciaga, and Saint Laurent — launched a two-year talent incubator aiming “to fast-track talent for future supply chain and logistics roles through job rotations, mentoring and intensive training programs.”

Since the summer of 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement has applied real pressure to businesses to increase diverse hiring globally. A recent survey by Monster found that “83% of Gen Z candidates said that a company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is important when choosing an employer.”

“After years of research and millions of data points, many in my field have agreed that employers paying their interns is a simple yet effective change that makes a huge difference in driving more equality in the workplace," says Liz Wessel, CEO of WayUp.