What Happened to Fashion’s Entry Level Jobs?

Bless Martinez graduated from FIT in the spring of 2024 with the dream of building his own womenswear brand or landing a supply-chain role at a fashion company. Just over a year later, he’s considering a detour.

“I’ve thought about going into the food industry — getting a bar job, being a host,” said Martinez, who interned at Willy Chavarria’s label and now works as a sales associate at a womenswear retailer in New York.

Martinez sees hospitality as more than just a way to pay the bills: at a moment when entry-level roles are hard to come by in the fashion industry, a stint as a mixologist might be the next-best way to meet creatives, potential collaborators or even a future employer.

“You have to expand your horizons — not put all your eggs in one basket,” said Martinez, who continues to build his womenswear label Love & Time on the side.

Fashion has never been easy to break into, but the current job market has made the barriers to entry even greater. Unemployment among 23- to 27-year-olds rose to 4.6 percent in November, the highest rate in a decade outside of the pandemic. Underemployment — workers stuck in part-time roles or jobs below their skill level — is also at a multiyear high, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The main culprit is an uncertain economy, with businesses delaying hiring as they wait for clarity on tariffs, interest rates and consumer demand. At the same time, AI tools are absorbing much of the junior-level work that once fed entry pipelines. Both dynamics are reshaping hiring across the fashion industry, insiders say.

In this climate, recent graduates and early-career professionals are being pushed to rethink how they enter and advance in the fashion industry. Traditional strategies, from networking and circulating portfolios to taking a retail position, have gained new importance as a way to stand out in an AI-saturated market. So have “alternative pathways” — indirect, sometimes less glamorous routes into fashion via industries like finance or restaurants, said Daniel Peters, a brand and marketing specialist and founder of Minority Report Group, which supports young, diverse fashion talent.

“As much as you have that North Star that you’re working towards, what are the other steps that you can take to get there?” Peters said. “Nothing is saying that North Star is unattainable. But there is an opportunity to carve out a path that’s still connected to it.”

Finding an ‘In’

In fashion, detours don’t always look like detours. An alternative pathway might be a shift into a different part of the industry — a move that can redefine the dream job rather than defer it.

As a junior studying fashion design at Virginia Commonwealth University, Katie Chierepko was focused on breaking into womenswear and applied for an internship with a brand she admired. She didn’t get the womenswear role, but after following up about other opportunities, the company offered her a position in childrenswear instead — a category she hadn’t considered but quickly grew to like, setting her on a new career path.

When she entered the job market after graduating in 2025, she had something many of her peers didn’t: experience in a less crowded corner of the industry. She landed a full-time role as an assistant childrenswear designer within six months.

“The job market was intimidating,” Chierepko said. “But … everyone wants to be in womenswear. That market is tough, and the experience a lot of companies want doesn’t always match the pay.”

For others, the decision to adjust course starts even earlier.

Marie Griffin, founder of the communications agency Griffin, who coaches college students on how to stand out in a saturated job market, said that across the 60-plus colleges and universities she’s visited she’s seeing a growing number of students majoring in fields like finance or architecture with the explicit aim of eventually working in fashion.

“The most interesting thing I find from students today is they’re being creative in how they’re going about this interest in fashion,” she said. “They’re not only looking at fashion as [only] design or merchandising. They see there’s not just one road.”

Where the Opportunities Are

Fashion’s job market isn’t frozen. A scan of The Business of Fashion’s Careers platform shows brands from Cos to Hugo Boss recruiting merchandisers, and Vetements and Lululemon hiring product developers.

But by far the largest share of openings is in retail: more than 670 roles, compared with roughly 100 design vacancies as of mid-January, with companies including Tiffany & Co., Zara and Pandora looking to staff store and regional leadership positions. Sales and business development roles are a close second with close to 300 openings.

It’s those less glamorous roles that candidates may need to reconsider as a jumping off point, said Peters who cut his teeth on the sales floors of Burberry, H&M and Selfridges in the early to mid-aughts.

“People who want to or aspire to be in fashion shouldn’t turn their nose up at retail,” he said. “There is a great deal to take from the skills you [develop] in stores … communication, understanding the value proposition, fabrication, pricing and how the consumer actually shops.”

Still, the leap from the sales floor to corporate or coveted design roles is harder to chart than it once was. The store-to-C-suite pipeline is less visible in fashion today, though some insiders say it could regain relevance as AI reshapes junior work. There are already some exceptions: Aritzia chief executive Jennifer Wong began as a sales associate in 1987 before rising through the company’s ranks to the very top in 2022.

To make it work, job seekers have to treat retail roles as true stepping stones — not just part-time jobs running the cash register.

“This only works if you use it to your advantage and build relationships,” Peters said.

Back to Basics

The brutal job market is also bringing a renewed focus on the fundamentals. Old-fashioned skills — like communication and relationship-building — are starting to matter more again, especially as AI competes for the same entry-level roles.

Chierepko credits some old-school moves with helping her make early connections, including cold-DMing industry insiders on LinkedIn to ask for virtual or in-person coffees. When she did land a job interview, she said she approached it with curiosity rather than anxiety, keeping in mind that she was evaluating the company as much as it was evaluating her.

“I didn’t think about it as interviewing for a specific role,” she said. “I just had an opportunity to talk about the stuff that I’ve made and what I care about with someone else who cares about the same things.”

She also did something that Peters and other career coaches say is increasingly rare: she brought a physical copy of her portfolio to the interview, rather than relying solely on links and QR codes.

“We’re so heavily reliant on Instagram as our calling card,” Peters said. “Be thoughtful about how you’re showcasing you and your work.”

Networking and building relationships with mentors are also rising to the top of the recent-grad checklist, Griffin said.

“Ultimately, it always comes down to communication,” she said.

An Industry Reality Check

Still, even strong candidates face structural hurdles.

Megha Saraf, who graduated from London College of Fashion in September with a degree in fashion marketing and sustainability, has submitted hundreds of applications. Like many of her peers, she’s run into automated résumé-screening tools that filter out viable candidates based on keywords, as well as AI-led interviews that stretch through multiple rounds before a human recruiter enters the process.

“They don’t even ask you for your portfolio,” she said. “So how do you justify yourself?”

With digital marketing as her long-term goal, Saraf said she would have jumped at an entry-level copywriting role — but believes those positions have thinned as generative AI tools take on more content work.

As candidates adapt, some experts say fashion firms need to evolve too.

“[It’s important] for companies to be listening,” said Griffin. “What can they learn from this group? Maybe [someone] is not on paper who we would expect [but] … there’s something that this person is bringing, and they’re bringing it with strength, conviction and passion.”