Lifestyle Cocktails with Nile Rodgers. Backstage giggles with Susan Sarandon. Rails of free designer dresses.
And attending London Fashion Week because an editor couldn’t be seen sitting in the second row. Within a week, I knew this was no ordinary job. At 21, I’d just graduated from the University of Bristol with a degree in English when I landed the role of publicity assistant in the Condé Nast press office.
I’d done a few PR internships as a student, including one lasting two months at a boutique fashion PR company that, in hindsight, felt like exploitation. Then there were several internships at newspapers and magazines in addition to a three-week placement at British Vogue where three interns famously shared two chairs – I’m still very good friends with one of those interns, almost a decade later. But that was the extent of my experience.
And none of it prepared me for the world I was about to be catapulted into. One electrified by the kind of high-octane glamour I’d only ever seen in The Devil Wears Prada . I’d stay for one year, from 2015 to 2016, and looking back, it was one of the wildest and best years of my life.
It’s also what helped to inspire the plot of my debut novel, Gold Rush . But I’ll get to that. The press office of a company like Condé Nast is, in many ways, its beating heart.
At least it was when I worked there. If anyone wanted to speak to one of the editors, it had to go through us. If something went wrong that could affect the c.
