When creative director and perfumer Michał Gilbert Lach welcomed triplets with his husband Marcin Łaski earlier this year, the news was so rare that it made headlines in their native Poland: “It was discussed by major local newspapers and trending gossip sites,” Lach says. Having shared his family’s journey on social media before, this representation is important to him: “It sparked conversations around queer parenthood. The more this topic is discussed, normalised and showcased, the more attitudes will evolve.” The stories of Jacquemus and Lach raise a key question. Does our industry – one with a fairly diverse workforce (at least in gender and sexual identity) – even have room for professionals longing to become parents this way? After all, we know fashion jobs are notoriously underpaid and precarious. Many demand immense devotion. This doesn’t match with the legal documents, spreadsheets, last-minute transatlantic flights or hefty price tags that often come with starting a family through surrogacy, adoption or other less fun ways.
Through research and interviews with industry professionals, we can conclude those in fashion are pressured to choose between having a career and having a family. That’s indisputable, but true for some more than others. Back in 1990, Lisa Lovatt-Smith (then fashion editor of Spanish Vogue) became the foster mom of a five-year-old girl, Sabrina. “Perhaps, the industry was more child-friendly then,” she says. Since Lovatt-Smith doesn’t work in the industry anymore (now a writer and children’s rights advocate), she caught up with Michael Philouze, men’s fashion editor at Vogue, before speaking with us. “Michael was my assistant at the time. So I wanted to ask him about the work-life balance then versus now,” she says. “We talked about how, before digital, you had to go out to look for inspiration. It was okay to be absent because it meant you were researching or going to meetings. I used to go to the Café de Flore with Sabrina and Karl [Lagerfeld] daily. She would just draw on their paper napkins while we were planning a shoot.” It’s a romantic picture. But, deep into its digital age, fashion’s reality is characterised by late nights, long office hours, and the expectations that employees are ‘always on’.
Starting a family – whether through surrogacy, foster care or adoption – is a natural and human process: one that requires planning, sure, but will never acquiesce to your fashion schedule. That’s why robust parental leave policies are so important.
Lach explains that researching and planning the surrogacy journey took him and his husband several years. “Initially, managing [this] alongside my duties as creative director was quite seamless,” he says. “But just a week before the launch of my latest perfume composition, amidst finalising the campaign with my team, we received a call that our surrogate had gone into labour, at just 25 weeks and five days.” As Lach boarded a last-minute flight from Florida, where he and his husband lived, to Texas, where their surrogate was based, their triplets were born, more than three months prematurely. Lach describes the subsequent three months as “an emotional rollercoaster of intense neonatal care, a blend of joy and anxiety,” requiring him to step back and prioritise his children over his career. After 81 days in neonatal intensive care, his babies are now healthy and living at home. “While I’m not back to working full-time, I am finding a balance that allows me to care for my triplets while engaging with my team and slowly increasing my professional commitments.”
“Parental leave is a big problem. Both in the US and Europe, it’s discretionary” – Ron Poole-Dayan
This is all to say that, starting a family – whether through surrogacy, foster care or adoption – is a natural and human process: one that requires planning, sure, but will never acquiesce to your fashion schedule. That’s why robust parental leave policies are so important. But, according to Ron Poole-Dayan, the founder and executive director of advocacy organisation Men Having Babies, these policies tend to be incredibly vague for parents who start their family via surrogacy, adoption or platonic co-parenthood – and even more so if you’re queer. “Parental leave is a big problem. Both in the US and Europe, it’s discretionary,” he says. When starting a family with the help of a surrogate, for example, getting your parental rights recognised is a long and legally complicated process – one that often extends months beyond the birth of your child. Meanwhile, most countries only recognise two parents per child. Meaning that, if you start a multi-parent family, not every parent will be legally recognised as such. So, how can you get parental leave if you’re not “legally” a parent yet? Thankfully, parental leave policies are – cautiously – becoming more inclusive. As of 2020, Kering offers 14 weeks of paid parental leave to biological and adoptive parents worldwide. Chanel does the same for employees welcoming a child by birth, surrogacy or adoption.
“I have this memory of Anna [Wintour], crying in the office at seven in the evening. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she wanted to see her children.” – Lisa Lovatt-Smith
Still, having a child is a lifetime commitment. Lovatt-Smith started fostering a five-year-old, not a newborn. She still had to set boundaries – such as leaving the office at five o’clock (only to continue work after Sabrina went to sleep) or refusing international trips – for the sake of her daughter. And she could, because of her seniority. “I was privileged because of my position in the fashion business. I don’t know what would’ve happened had I tried to adopt [earlier],” she says. When you’re balancing two roles that require total dedication, that of a fashion professional and a parent, boundaries always equal sacrifice. Can you ever win? “I had previously worked in the office with Anna Wintour, as her photographic director,” Lovatt-Smith remembers. “I have this memory of Anna, crying in the office at seven in the evening. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she wanted to see her children.”
The fashion industry rarely has space for parents prioritising their children over work. And what little space there is, tends to be reserved exclusively for birthing mothers. In part, this makes sense. If the physical demands of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding don’t get respect from an employer, what will? But there’s bias at play too: Subconscious expectations about who should prioritise parenthood over their fashion career, and who shouldn’t. Some mothers see their careers plateau because their house’s HR departments unfairly assume parenthood will distract them. On the other hand, (aspiring) non-birthing parents – and especially queer fathers – are unfairly assumed to prioritise their careers over kids. “We’re expected to work, travel, buy antique furniture and party,” says Poole-Dayan. “But we’re not expected to have children.”
Lovatt-Smith faced plenty of bias from the industry, too. “My editor in chief at the time – who shall remain nameless, but it wasn’t Anna [Wintour] – told me I was mad, that I was making the biggest mistake of my life,” she says. “People generally couldn’t understand why I did this. There was a lot of racism around it too, because Sabrina isn’t white.”
Lovatt-Smith spent some years in foster care herself. At age 23, she was already a well-earning and respected Vogue editor (which was special, even in the 90s). That’s when she met Sabrina, somewhat by chance rather than meticulous planning. Sabrina lived in Lovatt-Smith’s neighbourhood and the two became friends. Shortly after, when hearing that Sabrina needed a foster family, it was this pre-existing bond that made it happen: “I had to go to family court every three months. After seven years, they gave me the adoption. And all this time she lived with me.”
In the cases of adoption and surrogacy, it’s often other people who get to decide whether you get to start a family. Does the precariousness of a fashion career lower your chances of becoming a parent? According to Poole-Dayan, the prerequisites for becoming a parent via surrogacy are reasonable, on paper. “It still depends on the agency. But we don’t think that any professional should decide who deserves to have a child.” Families-to-be can expect a criminal background check, which is mainly in place to protect the surrogate. Ethical guidelines also state that, for a family to qualify, there has to be a (medical) need for a surrogate. Most commonly, this is the case for cisgender women with fertility challenges or queer couples where neither partner can carry a baby. If an aspiring parent could, medically speaking, be pregnant, they might not qualify for surrogacy. That seems fair, but according to Poole-Dayan, some grey areas are up for debate. He mentions professional dancers or models, who sometimes have to choose between a pregnancy and their career.
Starting a family via surrogacy is expensive, too. In the US, where both ‘altruistic’ and ‘compensated’ surrogacy is legal, the costs for queer couples are often much higher than those for straight couples: “People can get medical insurance when they’re diagnosed with medical infertility,” Poole-Dayan says. “We could never get the same insurance because queer couples aren’t considered to be infertile.” Meanwhile, throughout most of Europe, surrogacy is either outlawed or nearly impossible to access – especially forms where the surrogate isn’t a friend or acquaintance of the parents-to-be (aka compensated surrogacy). “In Poland, such a process isn’t possible,” Lach says. That’s why Lach and his husband moved from their native home to the US. Other Europe-based couples wanting to start a family via surrogacy often have to travel or relocate to the US too, which significantly adds to the costs. And with fashion salaries being notoriously low, surrogacy simply isn’t an option for most of fashion’s workforce.
“When people want to build a family, they might be incentivised to leave a job for a place with better benefits.” – Ron Poole-Dayan
Granted, insurance rules are changing too. Organisations like MHB offer financial assistance, and there’s a growing number of employers who (partially) cover IVF or surrogacy for their employees, some of which can be found in a database on MHB’s website. For now, the only workplace listed in the fashion section is Chanel. “As far as the fashion industry is concerned, I’m sure there is a need to attract and retain talent,” Poole-Dayan adds. “When people want to build a family, they might be incentivised to leave a job for a place with better benefits.”
Lovatt-Smith agrees that the fashion industry needs to take steps to accommodate all kinds of families. For her, as a single, adoptive mother, it was crucial to weave together her roles of fashion editor and parent. This meant taking Sabrina to shoots and work meetings, a more fluid work/life balance compared to the rigid boundaries preached by today’s How She Gets It Done-type of tales. “Sabrina and me, we just had a life together, and that life was fashion,” she says. When asked about her role models, she mentions her old friend and Missoni’s creative director, Angela Missoni: “Angela has three kids, who she involved a lot in her life. I was quite influenced by the idea of taking your kids everywhere, doing everything with your kids. Angela was all about that too.”
In other words, the fashion industry needs to lift the veil that separates parenthood – in its myriad ways – and work. This goes beyond a fashion shoot welcoming the child of a single, adoptive mother, although that’s a great step. Inclusive parental leave, financial support for aspiring parents and bias training for HR departments are tangible improvements all fashion businesses should embrace. Because, as Lovatt-Smith puts it, “There are more ways of being a parent.”
You can’t separate fashion from the creative contributions of those who challenge gender norms, heteronormativity or nuclear family structures… All these designers, editors, stylists, hair and beauty artists, models, photographers and other professionals have poured parts of themselves into their work. “My company and perfumes are also like children, but different ones,” Lach finishes. He’s not alone in making that comparison. And the fashion industry has cashed in on that. So, it’s time for the industry to adequately support its professionals who want to start families of their own – in any way possible.
