Happy Halloween!
This is my first Halloween in a while not leaving the house in a costume, but I still dressed up because why not, you know? I don’t wear makeup or do my hair that often, so it was fun to get to get fancy and be someone else for a while.
Because I didn’t want to go out and buy a costume when I wouldn’t really be doing anything in it, I DIY’d this year, and I chose to dress as Rachel Green, iconic 90s queen and member of the Friends gang. I was mostly inspired by my new haircut which is similar to The Rachel and by the 1990s skirt I just thrifted, but after choosing my Halloween identity I realized that I identify with her. She’s going through her twenties working her way into the fashion industry, and that’s one of the paths I might choose.
Rachel’s professional journey is how I see my 20s going and how I think they end up going for a lot of people. In honor of my costume this year, I want to go through some of Rachel’s most relatable plot points and express my appreciation for a character that actually has a true-to-life professional story.
If you haven’t seen Friends, beware: this post contains spoilers!
She begins a new life.
Before Rachel leaves Barry and moves in with Monica, she has a life all laid out for her with money and security. Then, she realizes she wants her life to be different and chooses to start over in New York with a new group of friends. She leaves her past behind and embarks on a completely new adventure that has no certain outcome. This is the place that I feel that I’m currently in.
College, Buffalo, and Reading all represented security for me. They were familiar, safe, and all big pieces of my growth from a child into a young adult. Leaving the comfort of friends and known places to come to Phoenix where I had no job leads, no friends, and no plan was exciting but scary, and that’s how Rachel feels, too.
She starts with a job that she is not passionate about.
When Rachel moves in with Monica, she cuts herself off from her parents’ money and starts work as a waitress. As she was going to marry a wealthy orthodontist, she didn’t have many career plans before her move to New York. While she figures out what she wants to do, she works as a waitress in the group’s choice coffee house, Central Perk.
After college, sometimes you have to work in a field you don’t ultimately want to end up in just to have some money coming in. I’m freelance writing right now and really liking it, but I might have to get another job that isn’t necessarily my passion just to save up some funds like Rachel does.
She pays her dues.
It’s very rare to get your dream job right out of the gate, and we see that in Rachel’s story. Her first fashion job involves her getting coffee, untangling coat hangers, and assisting an arthritic seamstress. Not exactly what she had in mind when she said she wanted to work in fashion. Thankfully, she’s patient and works through her grievances because it leads her to much better work in the future.
She moves up.
After a chance encounter with a higher-up at Bloomgindale’s, Rachel gets hired there and is one step closer to her dream of working for a designer or a buyer.
At this stage, she’s still an assistant, but now is not just helping elderly women walk to the bathroom like she did at her previous job. She’s working in the field she’s interested in, but is still essentially on the bottom of the totem pole.
She experiences professional setbacks.
After working as an assistant at Bloomingdale’s for some time, her department gets shut down and Rachel is made a personal shopper in the store, a step down from her assistant position. She sticks with the job through this and looks at the positives of the position, which is something we can all learn from, even though in her case the positives including flirting with her handsome client. Regardless, not everything will go your way, but finding the good in something can help make it better.
Another setback for Rachel is her horrible interview at Ralph Lauren, during which she has multiple embarrassing faux pas including accidentally kissing her interviewer. Luckily for her, she ends up getting the job, but that doesn’t always happen. Obviously I’m new to the professional game here and don’t have top-notch interviewing advice, but I will say that from the interviews I have been on, I think bad interviews just happen sometimes. It’s important to just try to accept them and not let them throw you off your game.
She earns a great job at a great company.
Although we don’t really know how long Rachel works at Ralph Lauren, it is clear that she is there for a while and seems to really enjoy it. She’s excited to go back to work after her maternity leave and she even has her own assistant. Let’s take a moment to reflect back on those years where she was untangling hangers, and appreciate that she now has her own assistant. Pretty cool.
Overall, I think Rachel’s career path is really interesting and just inspiring. She goes from basically where I am now with no plan and a fresh start to making a name for herself in the fashion industry and doing a job she loves. That’s what I hope for myself, in the fashion industry or otherwise. In Season 1 Episode 1, Rachel has no idea how magical her life is going to turn out to be, and it makes me happy to think that’s exactly where I am now. Rachel Green, take the wheel.
Taking My Twenties 