Landing Your Dream Fashion Internship: A Comprehensive Guide

The world of fashion is vast and multifaceted, offering a plethora of exciting career paths. For students considering a future in this dynamic industry, fashion internships provide invaluable hands-on experience and a crucial stepping stone toward achieving their professional goals. An internship is a great way to start exploring these different pathways.

Why Pursue a Fashion Internship?

While not always mandatory, internships are highly recommended for fashion majors. They offer unique opportunities for growth, networking, and gaining a comprehensive understanding of the industry. Internships provide a chance to immerse yourself in the world of fashion, giving you a look at everything from potential career paths to learning about your company’s supply chain, ad strategy, and other behind-the-scenes knowledge. It can give you a chance to immerse yourself in the world of fashion, giving you a look at everything from potential career paths to learning about your company’s supply chain, ad strategy, and other behind-the-scenes knowledge.

Finding the Right Internship

With a major that has so many career options, choosing to study fashion gives you many types of internships to consider. Whether you want to apply your design skills, writing skills, or business strategy skills, there are many ways to break into the fashion industry.

Where to Look

Fashion internships for college students can be found in a wide range of companies and industries. Even companies that don’t have a main focus on fashion are looking for interns in design, marketing, and strategy roles. Focus on the skills you want to learn, and be open minded about internship options.

You can research employers in the fashion field on Handshake by using the Handshake employer search feature and filtering by “Industry.”

If your favorite brand doesn't have an intern program, don't despair.

When to Start

As with all competitive internships, start looking early, in January or February for a summer internship.

Networking

Networking can help you get a coveted internship. Look for alumni of your school who work in the fashion industry (your career center may be able to connect you), and ask them for an informational interview.

Paid vs. Unpaid Internships

Many internships in the fashion industry are unpaid, or pay a set stipend. Consider whether you can afford to take an unpaid internship. If you need a paid role, get creative. What skills do you want to develop? Find an internship that helps you deepen the skills you'd need to work in the fashion industry.

Ensuring a Valuable Experience

We recommend researching internship opportunities to make sure you'll gain new skills, since fashion internships can vary widely in their day to day tasks. Search for other interns' reviews online to find out more the experience you're signing up for.

Read also: Landing a Dream Role

Diverse Career Paths for Fashion Majors

A fashion degree opens doors to a wide array of careers. Here's a glimpse into some of the exciting possibilities:

Fashion Designer: Fashion designers create clothing, accessories, footwear using artist talent, proper training, and a meticulous eye. Companies you can apply to: Abercrombie & Fitch, Red Bull, Partizan Entertainment. Average pay: $73,790
Editor: Editors revise and prepare materials to be published in print and digital media. They often work at newspapers, magazine publications, book publishing houses, and media networks. Average pay: $33,280
Journalist: Journalists come up with ideas, interview experts, and write stories that are current and relevant to readers. Average pay (can vary based on location, employer, and and topic expertise): $30,000
Copywriter: Copywriters are in charge of writing compelling content both for a company’s internal and external communications. Their tasks can range from blog content to social media to ad copy, and much more. Average pay: $63,000
Purchasing Agent: Purchasing, merchandising, and procurement agents--also known as buyers--select suppliers and merchandise for a company to resell at the wholesale or retail level. By negotiating contracts and evaluating multiple vendors, they are responsible for providing the best quality products for the company they are buying for and work in industries such as apparel, food and beverage, and consumer packaged goods. Average pay: $50,000
Photographer: Fashion photographers can help select locations and backdrops for photos, set up lighting, and take the shots. They might photograph models, clothing, or accessories for magazines, catalogs, advertising, or social media. They need to have great editing skills as well. A photographer can work for an agency or be a freelancer. Average pay (varies a lot based on experience and type of work): $44,000
Art Director: Art directors oversee the vision and execution of said vision for industries such as magazines, television, or specific products. This is a management role that requires excellent leadership and people skills in addition to creativity and vision. Average pay: $94,220

Fashion journalism is now a broad term that can cover anything from writing for print and digital to creating podcasts, video and social content. As a journalist, you might specialize in features, interviews or trend stories, and when take into account the huge number of media outlets that cover fashion, it’s clear there are many different routes you could take. As well as being a strong writer who’s full of ideas and able to think critically, being digitally savvy is essential (it’s rare to find a journalism role these days that doesn’t have a digital aspect). A head for numbers is also useful, as many journalists spend a lot of time analysing SEO data in order to plan content that will drive online traffic. Interpersonal skills are desirable as you will often be dealing with people, be they interviewees or public relations teams. It goes without saying that to be a fashion journalist you need to be up to date with the latest developments in the industry, and have an understanding of fashion history. But it’s also vital to be informed about what’s going on outside fashion, too, in terms of culture, society, economics and the arts. This will not only help you put trends into context, it will also make you a stronger writer. Relevant BA and MA degrees are frequently sought by employers. Subjects such as English Literature or History of Art are helpful, and more specialized degrees such as Vogue College’s BA (Hons) Fashion Communication & Industry Practice and MA Fashion Journalism & Editorial Direction will set you on a strong footing. Some of the most successful fashion journalists are are those that have a specialist subject. What aspect of fashion are you most interested in? Fashion business? Street style? Catwalk trends? Sustainability? Beauty? Developing expertise in a particular topic is likely to set you apart from the crowd. Most potential employers will expect to see examples of your past work. This might seem impossible if you haven’t yet been published anywhere - but this shouldn’t stand in your way. The fact is, the best way to start out as a fashion journalist is just to start. Set up a site, blog or channel, and populate it with your own content that demonstrates your skill and fashion knowledge. Sharing your work can help you gain visibility and establish your voice, and potentially even lead to a full-time blogging career, should that be what you want. Though it’s great to be ambitious, not all fledgling fashion journalists can score their very first jobs at Vogue. When starting out, it’s important to keep your eyes open for opportunities with lesser-known publications. Do your research on jobs and paid internships with indie magazines and niche sites, many of which are regularly seeking new talent.

Ace Your Application and Internship Experience

Resume and Profile Perfection

Before you get started on sending out applications, make sure that you have your resume up to date and have fully filled out all your Handshake profile details. With a complete profile, an impressive fashion internship is more attainable than ever. Recruiters are much more likely to message a student with a complete profile that says you want to work in fashion than an unfinished one.

Interview Success

When you do land your first interview, be it a virtual interview or in person, make sure to come prepared and dressed to impress. Review your resume and cover letter to make sure you have specific examples of your experience to share, from clubs or coursework. You can even schedule a mock interview with your university’s career center or, if you’re tight on time, ask a trusted friend to grill you on some common interview questions.

Networking During Your Internship

Once you’ve landed an internship in fashion and settled into the flow of day-to-day life at the office, start chatting with your coworkers. Whether they’re industry professionals or fellow interns, it’s important to treat them with equal respect. You never know what insights they could lend, or who could be a valuable connection down the line, five or ten years from now.

Read also: Internships in Fashion Law

Examples of Internship Programs

LIM College’s Fashion Media major empowers you to conceive and execute your creative vision and connect with diverse audiences. Based in the heart of New York City, our program offers a unique window of access into the media world. The Lexington Line, our student-run fashion and lifestyle magazine, is a print and digital publication that also has a social media presence. With opportunities to publish your work and build a portfolio, The Lexington Line can serve as a springboard for career success. Learn to tell engaging stories through writing, photography, and video with a bachelor’s in Fashion Media from LIM. Kick-start your career with us through one of our paid internship programs.

As an intern at H&M, you’ll contribute to operational tasks alongside your team, take ownership of your projects, and gain hands-on experience while being supported by mentors and colleagues.

Design Intern: Working in one of our product teams, you will be part of creating exceptional design and products that our customers will love. This is a great opportunity to learn about the design process and method, to gain hands-on work experience by working with design software, materials, color library, trims and prints. Explore the exciting and complex process of creating collections that will be sold and loved around the globe. This is a great chance to deepen your understanding of product development processes and methods, while gaining hands-on experience by supporting coordination between design, pattern making and planning, as well as handling samples and operational tasks from idea to final product.
Business Controlling Intern: This role is a unique combination of finance, salesmanship, leadership and business strategy. From day one, you will work on meaningful tasks that contribute to real insights and create tangible impact on the business. By working closely with the product team, you will turn insights and numbers into action, directly influencing sales, growth and buying decisions.
Data Engineer Intern: Working in one of our data product teams, you will learn from industry experts and build data solutions that power decisions and innovation at H&M. This is a great opportunity to learn about data engineering practices and methods, to gain hands-on experience working with data pipelines, cloud technologies, and modern tools like Python and SQL. You may also explore AI-driven opportunities as part of our data-driven transformation.

Submit your application including your CV. For the Business Controlling program, an online assessment required. If successful, you will be invited to a one-day virtual assessment center between February 16 and March 3. This will include a behavioral interview, and a case and competence interview.

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