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The Glamour Girl's Guide to Life
NEW YORK -- When Holli McCuistion gets dressed in the morning, she rummages through the racks of Ralph Lauren clothes in the closets of her apartment near Park Avenue to pull together just the right outfit -- one that has been preapproved.
At the beginning of each season, Ms. McCuistion, who works as a saleswoman at the Polo Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue and 72nd Street, has to bring in her wardrobe, model each outfit for her managers, pose for Polaroids, and then wait for approval of her chosen combinations of the designer's clothes.
If she wears an unapproved outfit to work, she will be asked to buy something else to wear from the store (and will receive a demerit in her personnel file).
Ms. McCuistion, 33, who moved to Manhattan from Houston several years ago, doesn't mind the strict dress code. Nor does she object that she must wear her long brown hair in what the company considers a "clean-cut" style, or that she had to buy thousands of dollars' worth of Ralph Lauren clothes for a job that started at $8 an hour.
She loves her work, in part because she is surrounded by people just like her, she says. They, too, needed unimpeachable references and had to submit to five job interviews, almost like being admitted to a private club or sorority.
Although she works long hours, she is invited to fashion parties and meets people from across the world, the kind of customers who order the entire line of Ralph Lauren cruise wear without trying it on and invite her to their country homes in Europe (she declines).
Welcome to the world of glamour jobs -- high-profile, low-paying positions traditionally held by young female English or art-history majors, who set out each day in fashionable wardrobes for midtown offices or Seventh Avenue showrooms -- but don't stick around long, because there's always a cocktail party or a crowded restaurant to run off to.
They work for image-conscious employers like women's magazines, auction houses, fashion designers, and public relations companies.
The job requirements: an attractive appearance, impeccable grooming and, preferably, a private-school education.
The salary: parentally subsidized, at least in many cases.
"These are jobs for people who are bright, attractive and well educated," said Charles Scribner III, an editor at the book-publishing company founded by his grandfather, where glamour jobs were once plentiful; but they are now more likely to be found in professions that are, well, more glamorous. "You have to know when you see a reference to 'crayon' that it's French for 'pencil' and not a reference to kindergarten," he added.
In some circles, glamour jobs are thought to be the only jobs worth having because of their opportunities for making the "right" friends and for meeting a suitable (read "wealthy") mate.
"If you were a talented young girl fresh out of college, where would you go -- to a bank or financial institution, or Vogue, where you're part of a bigger picture?" asked Nadine Johnson, a public relations agent who represents Louis Vuitton and Tatler magazine. "They're involved with the shiny world of beauty, fashion and show biz. They think they are going to meet someone amazing that is going to take them away on a white horse."
The poster child of glamour jobs, the young woman for whom the system worked perfectly, is Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, who came down from Greenwich, Conn., to become a celebrity dresser in the Calvin Klein showroom, rose to publicity director and married John F. Kennedy Jr.
Another Cinderella is Julia Koch, a former $200-a-week assistant to the designer Adolfo, who married one of America's richest men, David Koch, and has become an East Side social figure.
"Those are very desirable jobs for high-class young ladies," Koch said. "The environment is wonderful. They deal with very wealthy and socially prominent people in the community.
"You know, I went out with a lot of them over the years," he added. Besides his wife, Koch said he dated such former glamour-job holders as Carolyne Roehm, who worked for Oscar de la Renta, and Blaine Beard, now Blaine Trump, who "was one of the front girls at Christie's."
"See, these women have great skills and talent and a lot of ability," said Koch, the executive vice president of Koch Industries, who plans to move in June with his wife to the former Fifth Avenue apartment of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. "They have the right social skills, savoir-faire and intelligence."
Not every glamour-job holder is focused on marrying well. Many have serious career ambitions, aspiring to run magazines or their own publicity companies. But whether marriage is a principal goal or merely a hazy possibility in an uncharted future, nearly all say that the prospect of a stimulating social life is a key appeal of the job.
(As for young men, there seems to be no equivalent to the glamour job -- what was known a generation or two ago as a bluestocking job. Young men with similar backgrounds and aspirations go to work on Wall Street, or into the professions.)
The entry-level glamour job, for those just out of college, is often an unpaid internship. With luck (and a nice wardrobe) it will evolve into a staff position. One particular hurdle, widely dreaded in Manhattan's private-school circles. is the 50-word-per-minute typing test required for low-level jobs like editorial assistant at Conde Nast, the publisher of Mademoiselle, Glamour, Allure and Vogue.
Working at Conde Nast is about "how many Hermes scarves you have and how on earth you can pass that typing test," said one woman, 26, a prep-school graduate who failed the test three times and is a magazine editor for a different company. "Who took typing? That was for secretaries."
Luckily for Alexandra Kotur, 28, a features associate at Vogue, she was able to skip the typing test. After 13 years at Chapin, the all-girls private school on the Upper East Side, then college at Columbia University and Middlebury College, she decided to intern in the publicity department of Polo Ralph Lauren, where her older sister, Fiona, was already working.
After that, she got a job as an assistant to the fashion director at British GQ, and three years later, when she applied to Vogue, she breezed right in.
Ms. Kotur's job consists of writing, suggesting story ideas and attending parties, movie premieres and fashion shows. "Oh, God, it's black-tie," she said when she realized she had to change twice during the course of the evening last Tuesday. "The secret, you know, is tuxedo pants. And in the winter a cashmere wrap."
For day, Ms. Kotur wears Chanel like a school uniform -- bags, loafers, cropped jackets and basic black pants. On the way to breakfast from her Upper East Side apartment the other day, which is one building over from where she grew up and where her parents still live, she talked enthusiastically about her job. She had just returned from a weekend of Oscar parties in Los Angeles.
She said: "I go to parties. Talk to people. Spot trends. Leave when I want to. I have no idea what each day will bring. One day I could be in someone's home on a photo shoot, the next night I'm talking to Minnie Driver and Sigourney Weaver."
Though such jobs may be glamorous, the workload is often heavy and salaries are low. Starting staff positions begin at around $20,000, but to live the glamour-job lifestyle -- fabulous wardrobe, Upper East Side apartment, lots of late-night taxi rides -- requires at least $50,000 to $60,000, those with the jobs say.
Many are subsidized by parents. Those who are not cleverly learn to live a champagne lifestyle on a budget. They buy from designers like Hermes at steep discounts during private sales, to which they're invited by friends who work for the houses. Women's-magazine editors acquire nearly their entire wardrobe -- shoes, suits, bags, jewelry -- at wholesale directly from designers' showrooms.
With rents on the Upper East Side -- the only neighborhood where glamour-job holders would dream of living -- among the city's highest, many live with roommates in two- and three-bedroom rentals. Sometimes their parents buy them apartments.
Paul Wilmot has been at the nexus of the glamour-job universe for two decades. He was Ms. Bessette-Kennedy's boss in the publicity department at Calvin Klein and later was in charge of publicity for Conde Nast before starting his own company last year, Paul Wilmot Communications. He has seen his own niche, fashion publicity, become one of the newest glamour jobs.
"I can't believe the choice of well-educated young people I have to hire," he said. "They are very sophisticated, especially in their social skills. They've gone to the best schools. They're well traveled and speak several languages."
Many, he said, are friends' children, whom he hired "because I know that they were brought up the right way."
Kate Kernan, 24, who works for Wilmot, got an interview because her parents knew the parents of one of Wilmot's two partners, Ridgley Brode. "This was my first interview and my first job out of school," said Ms. Kernan, who grew up in Bedford, N.Y., and went to Tabor Academy in Massachusetts and Hamilton College. "I can't believe my life," she said, sitting at a round table with a white orchid in the middle at the agency's offices on Sixth Avenue near 16th Street.
Ms. Kernan entices actors like Jack Nicholson to attend the Oscars in clothes made by Cerruti, a client, and seats guests at fashion shows for designers like Oscar de la Renta. The entire 13-member agency takes yoga classes together on Wednesdays.
There seem to be only two degrees of separation between all the glamour-job holders in Manhattan. Ms. Kotur of Vogue remembers going on play dates at Ms. Brode's house. Another Wilmot agency employee, Samantha Phipps, has a sister, Lilly, who works at Sotheby's.
Ah, Sotheby's. In the words of Cornelia Guest, author of "The Debutante's Guide to Life" (Ballantyne, 1986), Sotheby's is one of "the ultimate socially acceptable jobs."
Hilary Humphrey, 30, who works in the jewelry department there, said she never really thought of it that way. As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she applied to work at the auction house, and with the help of a friend who had worked there the year before, she landed an interview and an internship.
"I think of the art market as being set in New York, and I knew it would be a wonderful life here," she said, sitting in front of a tray of antique diamond earrings and gold bracelets.
Serena Boardman, also in the jewelry department, knocked on the door and offered sandwiches from Sant Ambroeus. "There are 900," she said. "Please have some."
The atmosphere of Sotheby's is reminiscent of nothing so much as a college sorority, populated by women with preppy wardrobes and perfect manners.
Although Ms. Humphrey knew little about jewelry when she started, she now has a gemological degree and helps put together sales, catalogs and exhibitions. She takes her job seriously and has much responsibility, but she says she can't quite believe she is still at the auction house, still living in New York after seven years.
"It's confusing," she said.
The unwritten age limit for glamour jobs is 35, by which time many women expect to be comfortably married. Parents who subsidize their daughters often announce that the money is running out and it is time to come home, glamour-job holders say.
A few rise to the top, becoming executive editors of magazines or heads of divisions at the auction houses, pursuing longtime careers, but they are a minority. One glamour-job holder at Sotheby's said she and her colleagues cringe at being labeled "a lifer." "That's when the job becomes a whole different thing," she said.
For those who marry and begin families, some return to work after a first child, but after the second, they often retire to become full-time mothers.
Years later, when their children are grown, or perhaps after a divorce, they may return to work, selling real estate or working as contributing editors at magazines. The luxury-property divisions of Sotheby's and Christie's are populated by many second-time glamour-job holders, often in their 40s or 50s, using lifelong connections to bring in listings of multimillion-dollar properties. But that is a different article.
By MONIQUE P. YAZIGI [Sunday, April 5, 1998 Copyright 1998 The New York Times
