I Want a Baby But I Work in Fashion (Part II)

Parenthood takes a village, but fashion is deeply individualistic.

“I’m not a parent yet. I’ve spent a lot of my life telling myself I didn’t want to be one,” creative director Domo Wells shared with us. Wells is not a parent yet, and among many other professionals, her fashion career plays a part in making this decision. “You can have everything but, not all at once,” a former manager and mother told her some years ago. In the first part of this two-part series, we explored how demands of frequent (or near-constant) travel, exhausting schedules, precarious freelance roles, or inflexible contracts are hostile towards parents— meaning the industry often presents its workers with an ultimatum between having a successful career or a family.

We have written many times about the condition of working hard to earn your place in an industry that is notoriously hard to get into. As Professor Angela McRobbie has told us, fashion students are trained to be deeply passionate about what they do “precisely because it [is] such a hard world to survive in.” It is the industry’s high walls that can lead the ones who make it in to develop an obsessive level of commitment to their work. As one womenswear director and mother shared with us: “In many creative fields, there is this romantic concept of the artist being fully devoted to their craft. And the business behind these creatives is exploiting this idea because they can get so much work done by so few people, as they are all willing to work [under] insane conditions in the name of their passion.” She continued: “We must understand the value of parenthood, education, the sacredness of a private and work-life balance, and healthcare” and, crucially, “shift our mindset from individualism to collectivism.”

In Part II, we explore our individual relationships with work to consider the responsibility and control we have over our life decisions. Additionaly, we seek practical advice on becoming a parent in the fashion industry.