Passion, chance, preoccupation of the moment, suggestion of a professor… Each researcher finds his subject in his own way. For Giulia Mensitieri, it was a meeting that was the catalyst, like a match triggering a great fire. This led to a thesis carried out at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) then The best job in the world (La Découverte, 2018), one of the most enlightening books for understanding how the fashion system works and how it works at the start of the 21st century.e century.
The meeting took place in 2011 in a Parisian café, Chez Jeannette. Mia (a pseudonym), stylist, roommate of a friend, is whimsical, charming, snobbish – ” character “. Her demanding job consists of assembling clothes with taste to give allure to silhouettes photographed for brands or magazines: Mia explains it to her, in “Prada clutch, jeans, hoodie and Chanel shoes”, describes the anthropologist in his book. Yet she hears him claim 2 euros to a friend around the table so that he can pay for his beer. Then refuse to pick up her phone: she knows that at the end of the line Bouygues will threaten to cut her the line if she does not urgently reimburse her “273 euros of debt”…
Precipitated from capitalism
From this quasi-duplication of personality, haughty stylist in luxury clothes versus resourceful, anxious and broke, Giulia Mensitieri made the starting point of her investigation. A dive into the back kitchens of fashion where we meet dozens of workers admired for their position but precarious. Photographers “in the ditch”penniless, paid stylists “barely more than the minimum wage” while they contribute to a house generating several billion euros in turnover, unpaid interns with flexible hours and work at will… These “little hands” capable of combining designer bags and unpaid rents, have become his big business.
“We were, with our symbolic status, the capital of the city, but I could see that we were all struggling in our cramped apartments, looking for odd jobs. » Giulia Mensitieri
Already, for months, the one who has until now devoted a memoir to the anthropological study of the La Condesa district, in Mexico City, had a presentiment that this gap between enviable status and acrobatic ends of the month constituted a track. “I had friends who were photographers, actors, architects, journalists, and Paris seemed to be changing to suit the population we represented, she recalls in the living room of her Brussels apartment. We saw the development of organic products, bicycles, wine merchants. We were, with our symbolic status, the capital of the city, but I could see that we were all struggling in our cramped apartments, looking for odd jobs. »
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