I once worked in a mysterious cupboard at The Scotsman's huge Edinburgh building
I spent many hours in the basement
It’s still in cinemas, but I haven’t been to see The Devil Wears Prada 2.
To be honest, I didn’t even watch the first film. It’s too close to the bone for me.
That’s because I was once an Andrea Sachs - the character played by Anne Hathaway - of sorts. Except it wasn’t Runway/Vogue I was working for, it was my current employer.
You see, back in the early Noughties, The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday still had fashion pages and a fashion editor, plus two fat magazines to fill (and sometimes more).
They would often run style stories of fun and frippery.
I remember one journalist was dispatched to write an experiential feature about walking up the cobbles of the Royal Mile in Vivienne Westwood’s latest vertiginous wibbly-wobbly platform shoes. They were not unlike the ones that Naomi Campbell had fallen in, while walking the catwalk in 1993. The writer’s ankles survived. The tourists got a good laugh.
When I started working at the paper, it’d just been six months since the team had moved from the original Edwardian building, now occupied by The Scotsman Hotel, on Edinburgh’s North Bridge.
I was gutted to miss the chance to work in that beautiful maze-like behemoth.
Instead, we were in a rather smart and modern building, where Rockstar North is now situated, down at the bottom of Holyrood Road, by the Scottish Parliament.
It still smelled of new carpets. There was a very good canteen, where you could get a decent baked potato and enjoy the bucolic views of Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Park.
I was a very keen twentysomething work experience person, who later became an exhausted editorial assistant.
And, yes, there were a few Miranda Priestly types who worked here. I was always being recruited to book restaurants, open parcels, or being dispatched to get someone an extra hot mocca-chocco-latte. There were even requests for water, tampons and, once, a pair of white medical clogs. Don’t ask.
It reminded me of being at primary school, when the head teacher, while sipping her afternoon Irish coffee, would dispatch me to get her messages from the local Spar. She’d usually need bleach or matches, or something equally child inappropriate. I have always been a soft touch.
My other slightly less menial jobs included creating the fashion pages. It was a very different time. Influencers didn’t exist. They weren’t even born yet.
Print was still quite influential, when it came to shopping habits. However, as brands didn’t yet have many photographs of their stock that they could send me, I’d have to go into town, and physically choose clothes for our pages. Sounds like fun. It was not. I bought myself a little granny wheelie shopping trolley to save exacerbating my mild scoliosis.
I’d use a taxi chit to get me to Princes Street, then go round Topshop, get totally lost in Jenners, then try Cruise, Corniche, House of Fraser, and others, always searching for an elusive manager who’d let me borrow clothes and accessories to take back to the office.
These pieces would have to fit the trend theme or celebrity “get the look”. There were features called “We’re mad about…” and “What to buy now”.
It could be monochrome (so difficult to photograph those white things), boho (I had so many readers’ letters asking what this word meant), sandals, sequins, oversized shades, blazers, we did it all. Florals, too. I know, groundbreaking.
I’d come back to the office with a full trolley, and about eight bags of stuff, with my face red and a sore back. On arrival, I’d go straight to the lift, because I knew what would happen if I bumped into colleagues. It was a busy open plan office, and there was nowhere to hide.
“You’ve had a nice afternoon”, “It’s alright for some”, “Been shopping, have we?”
Ha, ha, HA.
I’d head down, like a fashion Batman, into the depths of The Scotsman building, beside the carpark, where there was a small and quiet locked room that only a handful of us knew about. MY broom cupboard.
It was used for taking byline pictures, with a white backdrop and photography equipment. There was a mess of files and other detritus, and a secure fashion cupboard for our spoils.
Also, an ironing board and a leaky iron. It is here that I spent many hours smoothing out creases so that items were ready to be photographed with my little ancient digital camera. Occasionally, I’d recruit a proper photographer if they didn’t have any other more important jobs on.
So, they say that the fashion industry is glamorous. Not for me. I was a style mole, in this dark and cool windowless room. At least nobody could find me, and ask me to do a coffee or clog run.
I’d photograph the items flat, then cut them out digitally using something akin to Photoshop, so they could be placed on the page by a designer.
We rarely did actual location fashion shoots with models, though I do remember a windy one beside the zebra enclosure at the zoo.
Anyway, my basement visits went on for years, until brands got up to speed with images, and I could rely on those instead. Then, the fashion pages gradually dwindled to nothing.
I recently moved house and gave that trusty granny trolley to a charity shop. What sights it has seen.
Probably the most glamorous thing it does these days is go to Lidl. Same here, my old friend, same here.
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