Fashion Job Hunt

Scene from "Devil Wears Prada"

Every pretty girl with great taste wants to work in fashion. From everyone who likes to dress themselves to shopaholic want fabulous jobs which they could get all the perks from. I, for one thought as myself that way. Despite graduating from university and working as an accountant at a Real Estate office, I still wanted to work in fashion industry. After all those years of itty bitty retail positions, I still want to work in fashion. I have held a nice, stable, salary-based job, but I am challenging myself to jump into the pool of applicants of the fashion industry job pool. I thought working for fashion was frivolous, empty-headed, obsessive and down-right snobby. People who still think fashion is dictated and think fashion is everything oh-so-serious are over their heads. What I want to do is to educate, inform the public of what are on trend and offer them choice from a wide variety of selection of style. It's never the question of "What's on trend?" but what ARE the things that are weather, region-appropriate and still look fashionable? There's never THE ONE trend, even in fashion magazines, they feature multiple trends to showcase imaginations and talents of designers. 

To be able to influence the business of fashion industry, I realized that working as a sales associate is never-ever going to help (well unless you know someone who's really really on top of the ladder). I find increasingly that companies do not want to hire from within or if they do in some cases, one would have to work way longer to achieve the same goal. To be considered a promotion, from sales associate to an employee of a head office, they would have been working for that company at least for couple years and by that time, their wage has gone up so in order to promote someone, they would have to hire them on a higher wage rather than hiring someone outside the company who will do the same job for way less money (because job hunting is a bitch). It's just the way the world works. So I decided to quit being a sales associate and try to apply for influential position (such as an assistant buyer). 

Now, as a possessor of soft skills (client service, administrative skills, interpersonal skills) rather than having a software engineer skills, it gets difficult to stand out of all the people who have soft skills. A buyer, according to many career sites of Forever 21, Ross and etc, a buyer does not have to possess any required licenses or particular degree. Many of buyer postings are skills such as mathematical skills (% of sales, profit margins, etc. which you will know if you graduated from high school), negotiation skills and leadership skills. These skills are learned and can be trained on the job site. So with a little bit of experience, anyone can be a buyer. This makes the competition much much larger. Everyone will want to apply for this job. Furthermore, a lot of apparel industry head offices are in LA and New York, which makes the application pool a whole lot bigger. As a Canadian, I am in peril. 

I have applied to FIDM (Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising) in LA to see if with the program there, I could be considered, mildy considered for a job in the US. I completed my entrance project and got accepted. My only concern is the program costs $30,000 for an associates degree which is more costly than my Bachelor's degree. I am in a quandary. Will this program get me ahead? Will it be worth it in this economic state? I really do not want to become a slave (unpaid intern) or a minimum-wage sales associate in a fashion industry after I do this program.