Conde Nast intern: 'I cried myself to sleep at night'

THEY work until 11pm, lug 20-kilogram bags and get scolded constantly. Yet a Vogue internship is the most coveted, unpaid job.

Matthew Leib and Lauren Ballinger are suing Conde Nast.

THEY work until 11 at night, lug 20-kilogram garment bags throughout the city and get scolded for not adhering tape to mood boards correctly. And yet being a Conde Nast intern remains one of the most coveted, sought-after unpaid jobs in town.

#Interns Aw... Condé Nast can't use slave labor to pad their bottom line.

— Zauberer (@DieZauberer) October 23, 2013

To an aspiring media-ite, a Conde internship is a stiletto stacked in prestige, wrapped in promises of opportunity. It is a fancy incubator for future media power players: Fashion designer Whitney Port, author Lauren Conrad and beauty blogger Emily Weiss all got their start interning at the media mammoth.

Devil Wears Prada Imperious fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) dumps her coat on the desk of new assistant Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway).

Lisa Denmark, 22, who interned at Vogue last summer and found her 10-plus-hour days there "belittling," thinks it's a blessing that the program's being shuttered.

"To hear that the internship program ended, it wasn't very heartbreaking to me," says Denmark, who currently works in marketing in New York.

"I don't think Conde Nast, or Vogue, for that matter, is something that should really be on someone's list anyway."

Denmark snagged her coveted unpaid internship at Vogue when she graduated from Florida State University last December.

She calls it "one of the worst internships I've ever had."

Lisa (centre) says she cried herself to sleep while interning at Conde Nast.

Denmark, who quit after two months, says her days were spent running personal errands for editors, including picking up dry cleaning or, in one case, a boss' juice from the other side of New York.

"I cried myself to sleep at least three nights a week," she continues.

"It's not because I didn't have the tough bones," Ms Denmark clarifies, "it was because I would be scolded for not putting the tape on the mood boards correctly ... if it stuck out a little or if there was a little bump in the corner of it, or if it wasn't to their liking, I got in trouble."

So many people sad that Conde Nast will never get the chance to exploit them.

— Alex Abad-Santos (@alex_abads) October 23, 2013

"Vogue was the only one I had my heart [set] on. It was such a coveted role. The top of the top. The No. 1 thing you could possibly get," says Denmark.

"And I didn't really learn anything on the editorial side. I didn't take anything out of it. I just spent most of my days from 8am until 8pm, just running errands and grabbing people lunches ... I felt belittled."

Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour. Picture: AP

Another former Conde intern, who worked for three different publications within the company, starting in 2008, was elated when he got tapped to work in the fashion department at a top mag.

The now 25-year-old fashion intern, who asked to remain nameless because he still works in the industry, said his unpaid compatriots "dropped off like flies".

Perks of being a Condé Nast intern: free copies of @voguemagazine the day it comes out. pic.twitter.com/P2ooK8OICF

— Lauren Maxwell (@MsLaurenMaxwell) July 15, 2013

He spent hours researching and delivering a "chic breakfast tray" to one editor in Brooklyn - only to realise it was for the woman's house party, and not a photo shoot as he had assumed.

Despite the downfalls of the program, he says it gave him the thick skin he needed to acclimate to NYC life.

"If you want to work in fashion, it's important to understand that it's not all glamour. And we definitely learned that at Conde," he said.

Matthew Leib and Lauren Ballinger are suing Conde Nast.

Last month, Conde Nast announced it was terminating its internship program. Starting in 2014, Conde publications including Vogue, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair will no longer give students the opportunity to toil in their hallowed halls.

The bold decision came on the heels of a lawsuit filed in June 2012 by two former Conde interns: Matthew Leib, who interned at The New Yorker in 2009 and 2010, and Lauren Ballinger, who worked at W magazine in 2009.

+ corporations like Conde Nast. They've been exploiting interns for years, and I'm glad someone stood up & said enough. @theREDDbandit

— Evette Dionne (@EvetteDionne) October 23, 2013

The two sued the media conglomerate for failing to pay them minimum wage, claiming that their measly stipend amounted to less than $1 an hour for their unpaid internships.

"The Federal Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law do not allow employers to allow workers to work for free even if the workers give their consent," says Leib and Ballinger's attorney, Rachel Bien at Outten & Golden.

Conde refused to comment on the pending lawsuit.

Read more at the New York Post.

Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue.