They must have the anticipatory instincts of a psychic. The delicate logistical and people skills of a hostage negotiator. And the indefatigable prowess of an action hero. They need strong arms and tough knees, a cool head and a steady hand. They need to both manage expectations and surpass them. They should actually be able to wrangle a wild goose if sent off on a chase for one. They must be exactly where they are needed at all times (so, everywhere!) but also be invisible. And do it all with a never-ending supply of pins, tit tape and good cheer. Oof, no pressure. Who would want to be a fashion assistant?
Well, lots of people. Too many, frankly, for the dwindling number of positions available. These sometimes thankless roles — not only as the right hand but also the left, and the feet too, of a stylist or fashion editor on magazines, shoots and red carpets — are always highly sought-after.
Why? It isn’t the money, nor is it an easy ride. Rather it is the chance to learn by osmosis and proximity, about the practicalities and nuances of an industry that can be opaque, even to those who have percolated in it for years. Get through those suitcase-lugging, steaming, first-on-set and last-to-leave days and there is the possibility of a truly enriching creative career at the end.
Now the fashion assistant is being thrust back into the spotlight. The highly anticipated film The Devil Wears Prada 2 arrives in cinemas this spring. Expected around the same time is Best Dressed, a novel by the former US Vogue staffer Filipa Fino, which is repeatedly described as “explosive”. It’s the season of the semi-fictionalised assistant. In January, Workhorse, a novel by another former US Voguer, Caroline Palmer, was published — an exhilarating, knife-sharp look at the early-Noughties magazine scene through the eyes of a young editorial assistant. “You do not complain. You do not explain. You do not point out when you are treated unfairly. You do not ask your superior to repeat the garbled name of the person she wants you to telephone. You don’t chew gum. You don’t eat hot sandwiches. You do not wear flats,” Palmer writes of the unwritten but firmly enshrined diktats that a glossy’s junior staff must abide by.
Now another new book, the beautifully executed Assistants, gives these supporting characters their deserved main-part moments. Conceived by the French stylist and creative consultant Virginie Benarroch, with portraits by Lola Raban, it offers intriguing glimpses into the lives of contemporary fashion assistants. There they are, surrounded by suitcases, weighed down with bulldog clips, glued to their kit bags, all of them instinctively stylish. (Some were nervous about being in front of the camera for once — “Deer in a headlight,” Raban says — not that you’d know to look at the photos.)
For Benarroch — a former French Vogue staffer who got her start in fashion assisting Franceline Prat, a revered editor known for her work with Helmut Newton — it was a project she had been thinking about for years. Her assistants Mathias and Louise are featured, as are Benarroch’s daughters, snapped accompanying their mum on set. “They work really hard, and at the end they have a line at the end of the page on the photoshoot,” she says of wanting to shine a light on them and their often-unsung contributions. “I think it’s really important for me to show to the world [what they do].”
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Mathias Rota, one of Benarroch’s assistants
LOLA RABAN; STYLING: VIRGINIE BENARROCH
Lena Maurel with her tools — a lint roller, scissors and the all-important clips, which are used for adjusting clothes during a shoot; and Federico Pozzi with shoot essentials close to hand
LOLA RABAN; STYLING: VIRGINIE BENARROCH
She also hopes it might make the industry a little less intimidating to the next generation. Childhood friends, Benarroch and Raban were not raised in insider Parisian circles. Benarroch says she thinks back to growing up in southern France and imagining everyone working in fashion as “someone superstylish with heels. [But] at the end [of the day] it’s just normal people who want to work hard,” she says. “And I think it’s interesting to show to the new generation that it’s normal people.”
A confession: I started my career as an assistant. And I could not hack it. I “forgot” to call in clothes for shoots, hooked up with photographers’ assistants and almost crumbled under my boss’s requests.
Indeed, the list of bad or boundary-stretching — or plain boring — behaviour fashion assistants are exposed to is endless. Some examples include: booking their boss’s doctor appointments; being bombarded with work calls at a funeral; going to extremes to track down a specific, in-demand look, only for it not to be used on the shoot; scrubbing the gusset of a sample an editor has borrowed. As such, discretion is a hard-and-fast essential for the fashion assistant, even more so than emotional and physical fortitude.
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Benjamin Georges wears a shoe cover over his Gucci loafer to protect the photography studio floor and keep it clean
LOLA RABAN; STYLING: VIRGINIE BENARROCH
The fashion assistant Cari Lima; and a lift crammed with suitcases of clothes for a shoot
LOLA RABAN; STYLING: VIRGINIE BENARROCH
Still, don’t let the anonymity of the (good) fashion assistant fool you — they are essential to the entire ecosystem. If they were to vanish overnight, well, that is a dystopian comedy I’d pay good money to see. It’s not a corner office but the fashion cupboard, where new-season samples are stored for shoots and pep talks are dished out, that is a magazine’s nerve centre. Good bosses know that.
“Fashion assistants are such a vital part of the industry,” says Katie Shillingford, the fashion director of AnOther Magazine. “It’s a cliché but it’s so much about a team, and assistants are the glue. They are the backbone of a shoot, not only organising all the call-ins, shipments, returns, making sure the clothes are presented perfectly, but also, for me, a moral support, a creative sounding board.”
“Finding a strong one takes work,” agrees Jeanie Annan-Lewin, a creative consultant. “They keep my shoots and shows going. They sharpen ideas. They push me forward.”
And what are the non-negotiables of a normal person who’s an exceptional assistant, then? “Endurance,” Benarroch says. “And good jokes.”
Assistants by Virginie Benarroch and Lola Raban (Exhibition Studio £52), exhibition-magazine.com