Undecided between two fashion careers? Don’t leave one behind! This is how you can mix them up

In the recent consultations with the students of Break into the Fashion Industry and The Freelance Fashion Writer Boss, what has come quite often is having to decide between two passions and two different career options. The question is always something like: “I like [fashion career 1] and [fashion career 2] , how do I choose the one?”

I do always respond like this: “Mix them up”. Today, with many digital careers and the speed of our society, I don’t think that any of us should be tied to a single job title anymore if you do have more than one passion. And to be honest the thought of you having to give up one dream kills me. I’ll never be the person telling you that you can’t do anything. Because I’m confident that you can achieve whatever you want in life if you believe in yourself and are ready to do the work. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but you know the best things in life are never easy ;). Including having more than one job in this case. 

The old generation of people who started their career and did the same job, and probably stayed at the same company, for the entire life doesn’t exist anymore. 

People change roles and move from a company to the other on average every 3 years in fashion. It’s rare to find someone working in the same company for longer than 5 years. And what I find very interesting is that nowadays more and more people not only change their job quite often, but they have more than one job title that describes them in their Instagram bio and LinkedIn profile.  They are not just stylists, pr, fashion designers, editors: they are stylist and freelance writer, they are fashion directors and consultants, they are PR and brand founders…

Of course, there are still people who love their one job and are happy with it and want to do it for the rest of their life without the need for something more, but there are also many people who have multiple passions and so who are multihyphenate: with several roles.

To be able to pursue two career options at the same time, you have to be very organized, productive and also, of course, be willing to have less free time. If you do have a full-time job and want to launch your fashion brand or write fashion articles on the side, you’ll probably do it in the evenings and during the weekend, having so a packed schedule for all the days of the week.

Organizational and time management skills are essential for the multihyphenates to not burn out and also to be able to perform at the highest level at both. The multihyphenate in fact delivers the best work at both jobs.  

Of course, it’s impossible to have two full-time jobs at the same time as you can imagine, so if you have more than one passion, one of them should be done remotely as a freelancer and/or with flexible hours. If you can find both jobs with flexible hours than this is a jackpot as you can organize the time as you prefer. In general, unless both career options are freelance jobs or you work on your own, one of the two jobs involves working with other people and so you are fixed to the working hours of others. 

The career options that are more likely to get combined with another full-time job are:

• writing
• consulting (you can consult about PR, styling, marketing, art direction, business, social media… in general something you are specialized in)
  
• starting your own blog, podcast, brand
• photography

So every job: buyer, marketing, merchandising, pr, styling, finance, fashion design… can be combined with one of the options above as all of them are doable remotely and as a freelance. 

For example, stylists who might have more fixed hours when working with photographers, makeup artists and models for the shootings, if they also want to write for some fashion publications, they have to do so in the evenings, during the weekend, lunch break, or anytime they have a couple of hours in between shootings. 

Same for buyers, PRs, those who work in marketing or fashion designers who have a 9-5 job, to pursue a second career whether it is launching a fashion label, consulting, writing, starting a blog…they have to run it on the side.

Another option, less common than the previous one,  is to have both part-time jobs. So you could be working 2-3 days a job and the rest of the week at your second job or you could be working in the morning a job and in the afternoon a second one. 

This option is less common as in fashion, it is difficult to find part-time jobs that are not sales assistant jobs or internships. Most of the junior, medium and senior corporate jobs require your presence into the office full-time, so unless you are working as a freelance/consultant is more difficult.

So to sum up, if you have multiple passions and you want to get involved in more sides of the fashion industry, you can mix them up! It will require strong time management and organizational skills but if you manage to find a career option that is doable remotely and as a freelancer you can combine it even with a full-time job.

Combining more than one job is something you can explore at the beginning of your career when you want to understand what is made for you or even later when you just want to follow two different passions you have.

I want to hear from you! Comment below and let me know what career options you’d like to combine and if you are doing it already, how do you manage both👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻