To the outsider, the bi-annual fashion weeks perhaps look like a lot of glamorous fuss about nothing: lots of beautiful but expensive clothes on some woeful-looking models presented to row upon row of stony-faced press and buyers.
But the reality is that for all those concerned – from the make-up artists backstage to the photographers and the model agents frantically making plans, it is an extremely stressful period where everyone wishes that the hours in each day could be miraculously doubled.
Style bible Dazed has attempted to discover just who works the hardest during the five-day catwalk marathon that is London Fashion Week by hooking up anonymous industry insiders with wearable tech bracelets to track their activity. The magazine asked a make-up artist, freelance writer, photographer, designer and intern to wear a subtle Jawbone UP3 bracelet during the shows to monitor their sleep patterns and gather data about their activity (particularly number of steps taken), nutrition and heart rate.
The experiment doesn’t claim to be scientific in that only one person from each profession was monitored, but does reveal just who was the most frazzled – and it wasn’t the star of the show, the designer. In fact, the event planner making the show a reality averaged the least sleep during the course of the week, averaging four hours and 44 minutes a night, and taking an average of 10,000 steps a day. On one day - most likely the day of the show - the event planner took 19,500 steps and on one night they didn’t sleep at all.
“I think everyone is pretty exhausted, regardless of the work they do,” the participant told Dazed. “Everyone has super-long hours and if people say they don’t feel the pressure during the shows they’re either lying or they’re some weird human specimen I have yet to meet. For designers, fashion week is obviously extra emotional and exhausting. I think we sometimes forget that they’ve worked for months on something and then it’s over so quickly and people either love it or dismiss it.”
Dazed’s study revealed that the designer enjoyed the most sleep, averaging just over eight hours a night, while the intern, who hinted at working on a fashion editorial website, managed just five hours and forty-five minutes per night.
Of course, the study omits additional key fashion week players such as models, stylists, agents, drivers and security staff – the people who without their contribution, fashion week just wouldn’t be a reality.
So, if you’re considering a career in fashion or have friends that are in the business, consider that behind-the-scenes sleep deprivation is the real backdrop to all that glamour.
The activity broken down:
The designer
Average sleep: 8h 5m
Average steps: 9,275
The make-up artist
Average sleep: 7h 44m
Average steps: 14,581
The writer
Average sleep: 6h 46m
Average steps: 8,024
The photographer
Average sleep: 6h 38m
Average steps: 13,578
The editor
Average sleep: 5h 49m
Average steps: 11,987
The intern
Average sleep: 5h 47m
Average steps: 5,591
The event planner
Average sleep: 4h 44m
Average steps: 10,363
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