Pay Me Like a Fashion Girl

A salary scandal, a brow brand in freefall, and the fashion retailer struggling to stay alive

🌶 THE GIST OF IT

Welcome to your biweekly roundup of all the contemporary cool girl news that’s fit to print. We’re breaking down the fashion industry’s open secret, the fall of a cult-beloved retail brand and so much more.

Also inside: how tinned fish got its groove back and a book about asking for what you want that will have you in disbelief til the very last page.

Let’s go.

💸 “It’s Giving...Experience”

The $55K Fashion Job Listing That Set the Internet Off

photo c/o Complex

When Recho Omondi — host of The Cutting Room Floor podcast — posted a job listing offering a $55K annual salary for a full-time role at her brand, fashion’s corner of the internet had big feelings. The job required in person work 5 days a week, with a heavy emphasis on personal assistant, admin and studio coordinator work — essentially 3 jobs in 1 for just enough to scrape by in NYC if you really like eating at the hotdog stand. Omondi defended the salary, citing the grind of independent media. But for many creatives, the listing hit a nerve. Why does fashion, an industry that sells luxury, still operate on survival wages behind the scenes? And more specifically — how can the champion of ‘pay what it’s worth’ podcasting feel so smug about lowballing a new hire?

This isn’t just about one job post — it’s about an industry-wide normalization of underpayment in exchange for “exposure” or proximity to coolness. Fashion has long thrived on the unspoken rule that to make it, you have to eat dirt first — but Gen Z and Millennial creatives aren’t buying it anymore. With inflation rising and conversations about wealth inequality reaching the runway, fair compensation isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a baseline. And frankly, if your brand is built on aesthetic excellence and intellectual discourse, shouldn't that extend to how you pay your team?

Shameless plug — my TikTok post about this can be found here

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📉 SSENSE & Sensibility

SSENSE Files for Bankruptcy — What’s Fashion’s New Business Model?

SSENSE, the Montreal-based e-comm darling that made indie luxury shopping feel like an aesthetic experience, has filed for bankruptcy. Despite a massive cultural footprint — it was the place to buy Wales Bonner, Margiela Tabis, and obscure Korean designers — the business couldn’t keep pace with its ambitions. The problem? A mixed one: U.S. tariffs that are strangling profits, a lender eager to pull the plug, and a digital retail environment that trained the customer to only buy on sale. You can’t disrupt an industry if your burn rate is doing the actual burning.

The fall of SSENSE points to a larger reckoning in fashion retail. Moving forward, fashion businesses may need to return to a slower, steadier model that prioritizes margin over market share. In other words: it’s time to grow smart, not just big. And also, be very slow to move into brick and mortar retail just for the prestige of saying your brand has a ‘flagship’.

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💄 Anastasia’s Arch Is Falling

ABH Might Be the Next Beauty Brand to Go Bust

Anastasia Beverly Hills, the brand that quite literally shaped the Instagram brow era, is rumored to be in financial trouble. Once a ride-or-die label for beauty YouTubers and Sephora stans alike, ABH has seen declining sales and cultural relevance over the past few years. A recent delinquent payment to creditors after a forbearance agreement has led the company’s credit rating to drop to a shockingly low ‘D’ grade. Their attempt to pivot with buzzy palettes and celebrity collabs didn’t quite hit — and now, with Morphe, Becca, and Bite Beauty already shuttered or absorbed, the question is whether ABH can escape the same fate.

The beauty industry is experiencing a correction. After years of growth driven by influencers and fast product cycles, consumer behavior is shifting. Gen Z is skeptical of influencer hype, less loyal to brands, and increasingly values function over flash. That’s not great news for legacy brands whose entire identity was built on virality and trend-based launches. ABH still has a strong name and a few iconic SKUs, but if the brand doesn’t restructure soon, it might become the latest cautionary tale in a saturated, post-glow-up industry. And this might be a cautionary tale about assuming your kids are the natural successors to your business.

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✂️ The Forgotten First

An interview from SHOWstudio recently surfaced, featuring a fellow who claims to have been Bottega Veneta’s first ready-to-wear designer — only to be entirely omitted from the brand’s official archives. The omission isn't just a footnote; it’s a pattern. Bottega’s sleek rebranding and cultural resurgence have been widely celebrated — but at what cost, and whose contributions are being conveniently forgotten?

The fashion industry has made a lot of noise about inclusion in recent years, but meaningful representation goes beyond casting or seasonal “diversity” campaigns. It’s about giving credit — publicly, historically, and with integrity. As Bottega continues to thrive under Matthieu Blazy, the brand owes its full story — not a selectively edited one. If fashion truly wants to evolve, then reckoning with its past- including who it’s erased— is not optional. It's necessary.

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📚 TT BOOK REC: ENTITLEMENT

In the uneven glow of Manhattan’s gilded guilt, Rumaan Alam’s Entitlement unfurls as a psychological thriller disguised as a chilly moral fable. Set in the summer of 2014, the novel follows Brooke Orr, a 33-year-old Black woman raised by a white, liberal single mother, who lands a job at the Jaffee Foundation — a philanthropic shell for an octogenarian billionaire’s ambition to give away his fortune. Proximity to wealth seduces Brooke: fancy dinners, art shows, career windfalls, and the intoxicating promise that money equals meaning.

But as the reader tracks Brooke’s descent, we see just how fast being “deserving” morphs into entitlement. The narrative unfolds like a careful dissection of aspiration, envy, and the corrosive pull of wealth dressed as virtue. With taut prose and mounting dread, Alam offers a warning: sometimes, the real danger isn't in the world breaking down — it’s in how we break ourselves trying to get in.

Read it because: if The Great Gatsby met American Psycho in a subway car, and both were invited to dinner at the Hamptons — Entitlement would show up as the quietly unsettling host, making you question whether the real villain is glitz or greed.

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🧠 CULTURE CANDY (links to make you cool to talk to)

1. AI as Your Intern? Creators Say Yes. -Influencers are giving AI the boring tasks so they can get back to being brilliant. Efficient or the slow burn to a smooth brain?

2. Beauty’s New Frontier? Professional sports. -This deep dive explores how WNBA stars and Topicals are redefining brand deals for a new kind of audience.

3. Fishwife Is the It-Girl of Tinned Fish. -Becca Millstein’s DTC seafood brand is a case study in branding with flavor.

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🖤 UNTIL NEXT TIME...

The fashion girls are unionizing, the beauty girls are pivoting, and the finance bros are branding themselves on TikTok. You? You’re watching it all and moving gracefully.

xx Jenn,
Thoughtful Threads
Your URL safe space for good taste and smart takes

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