Ever wondered what it would be like to intern for one of your favorite magazines? My friend Sydney Bergeron is currently living out that daydream as a digital editorial intern for Nylon. As an aspiring fashion designer, she not only is getting the ever-glamourous experience of working in fashion, but she is also developing a name for herself within the fashion and editorial world. She was even able to take over Nylon’s Snapchat to show her tutorial on how to make flower petal eyelashes! I asked Sydney how she would feel about being interviewed about her internship and she was more than happy to provide us all with her daily schedule, tips and overall advice on how to land that perfect fashion internship!
Photographer credit: Sydney Bergeron
How to get the internship:
“The fashion industry is largely about who you know. I got my interview for my first internship because the director at my high school had worked with my boss, and my neighbor volunteered with her. The internship turned into a job because I worked hard at it, which I was able to do because of the support I had. This was my first experience with networking, and how I learned the importance of networking. You have to keep in touch with everyone who has ever helped you and might ever help you again if you want to advance in the industry, but you have to be sincere about it. It’s all about building and maintaining relationships. Never burn any bridges. The world is remarkably small, and the fashion industry is even smaller, and people talk. Give them good things to talk about.”
A typical day as a Nylon intern:
“I start my day by logging out of my personal account and logging into my Nylon account on my laptop, which is a method my tech supervisor at the New York Neo-Futurists recommended to me–to keep a separate account for work than from personal, so your account isn’t full of distractions. The main way I spend my time at work is doing news sweeps. What I do is I read websites and find information that our audience would be interested in reading, and I send lists to my supervisors throughout the day. This news ranges from new beauty releases to political updates to celebrities doing random entertaining things (my personal favorite random celebrity news story that I got to write was about that time Kanye hitched a ride with a pap. #goals), etc. I also search for content on my Twitter and Facebook dashboards, and sometimes the Apple news app. Throughout the day, my supervisors will ask me to write about a news story, or build an 8@8 post. The other main responsibility is transcribing interviews. This task is the most tedious, but it’s also really interesting because you get to hear interviews before anyone else, and get to hear the off-the-record comments that are in the recording but can’t be printed. Sometimes my day will have something out of the ordinary. On rare occasions, there’s an errand I’m asked to run. Sometimes one of my supervisors will ask me to write the lineup (in layman’s terms, what we will be posting throughout the day, and the time of each post) on the whiteboard. Sometimes I get to have a more visible presence, aka you can see my face. Once I was asked to model for a video, and once I was photographed for their Instagram because they like my hair. I also pitched a beauty tutorial that I got to record for the Nylon Snapchat, so that was super fun!”
Photographer credit: Maggie Mather
How to make yourself stand out from other interns:
“Always be willing to help, and to do extra. Be willing to do coffee runs, and don’t complain about running errands. If you do a good job with the menial tasks and always volunteer to do more, you’ll start getting more important (and fun) responsibilities. Treat your internship like a career, not just a temporary job. And I know this sounds super cliché, but be yourself. People can tell when you’re pretending to be something you’re not. Also, if you don’t know how to do something, either quickly figure out how to correctly do it by yourself, or ask. Don’t just timidly stand there, afraid to ask a question.”
Life lessons gained:
“Fashion (and life, for that matter) is a team sport. This is something I already knew, but was strongly reinforced at Nylon. Most companies have a face–one designer whose name is on the label, or super-important editor-in-chief–but there’s always a team. Nylon is all about the team. There isn’t one particular person as the face of the company. Everyone is the face. That’s how it should be.”
Sydney and I hope that with some of these tips and tricks you will be able to take your career in the fashion world to the next level and achieve all you can!
To keep up with Syndey, you can find her here and here!
Also check out her articles for Nylon here!
Photographer credit for portrait: Gabriel Brandt