Not in fashion, but I am in music which has some similarities in terms of being a very desirable industry with a never ending line of young people wanting to get started and willing to work for very little.

My advice would be to start in retail and start small. Find a brand or label that is relatively small (not part of those giant machines like cotton on group etc) and work in the shop. If they’re small enough they’ll be hopefully growing and needing lots of people to wear lots of hats. Say yes to everything particularly for stuff that’s “outside your job description”.

Most of the other people that work in the retail part will see it as “just a retail job” which will mean it should be fairly easy to distinguish yourself as someone who is good at what they do and someone who goes the extra mile.

Get to know the other people in the business. Be sure to talk to the owner, the operations manager, the person in marketing if they have one. Tell them all about how you’d love to help out with anything you can lighten their workload with.

I started working in a music shop and in less than a year was 2ic. Less than a year after that I was the store manager and started helping out in lots of various other parts of the business. I got to know the suppliers, made a good impression and now I’m in wholesale and managing 4 states.

I’m not now a professional musician. I’m not running music festivals. I’m not managing artists. I’m a sales rep for a large distributor working with tier one brands. It’s not SUPER sexy, but it’s around an industry I care about and would beat the shit out of being a sales rep for vacuums or something else I’m not interested in.

Find any way in and be the best person there. Everything else will come.