Unpaid intern quit fashion after Kimmy Schmidt parody song
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- The author worked unpaid internships at London fashion magazines for 18 months in 2016-2017, including at "one of the biggest fashion magazines" they had "grown up worshipping," while living in £12-a-night hostels and sleeping in a triple bunk
- To cover the hostel bill, they worked 9am-5pm unpaid in the office and then side gigs from 7pm to 2am — flyering for gyms and manning the door of a strip club — eating peanut butter sandwiches for dinner and relying on the hostel's free breakfast as their only hot meal
- After a fashion PR firm they had interned at publicly told the office they were "homeless," their boss handed them £100 in cash and called them "so brave" — the same boss who paid them in "experience" and "exposure"
- One day their only pair of shoes, silver glittery New Look ballet pumps, fell apart; they hid in the office's fashion closet and taped them back together while surrounded by designer heels
- At 3am in the hostel, watching the episode "Kimmy Gives Up!" — in which a character sings the Annie parody "Just Go On" — prompted the author to quit the next day, telling their boss they had run out of money and "couldn't work for free any more"
- The boss was "unbothered" and made clear the author was "utterly replaceable"; afterward the author built a career in film and TV, mainly comedies, and still listens to "Just Go On" when weighing whether to stay or leave
Why it matters: The essay crystallizes the human cost of unpaid fashion-industty labor: an 18-month stretch with no wages, £12-a-night hostel living, public humiliation by a PR firm, and shoes taped together in a fashion closet. It also frames quitting that pipeline not as failure but as the route to a sustainable TV comedy career.
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