Steinhardt junior Daniella Leonzo has opened the door to a career in fashion and public relations. This semester, the Media, Culture, and Communication student balances classes, an internship with local fashion PR firm Lindsey Media and a retail job at Calvin Klein — a combination that now crescendos in intensity during New York Fashion Week.

“Freshman year, I went to a panel about public relations, and most of the PR professionals there were actually in fashion,” Leonzo said. “So I got to meet Lindsey [Solomon], and the following year, one of the MCC advisors sent out something about how Lindsey needed Fashion Week interns.”

NYFW, whose Fall/Winter 2026 season began on Wednesday, relies on interns for many tasks that make the shows possible, including assisting stylists, working front of house and helping production behind-the-scenes. Leonzo has been working at Lindsey Media since fall 2024. During NYFW, she keeps busy as she creates lookbooks, prepares showrooms and works on press pulls — gathering pieces of clothing to send to clients for media purposes. 

“While I get to work on fun press pulls, I also enjoy the analyst portion of it where I have to make sure each piece from our showroom is available before the week of NYFW,” Leonzo wrote to WSN. “The designer will send us PDFs of each piece and my job is to record what we have in house to let them know what we need from their end, what we don’t have in case anything is lost and new products that we’ll get from them later once their collection is done.”

The showrooms Leonzo is responsible for setting up are visited every day by 10 or more stylists trying to pull items they’ll use to dress their clients. Lindsey Media works with the stylists of celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Halsey and Cara Delevingne — who recently wore Wiederhoeft, one of the firm’s clients. These showrooms typically contain 10 racks with different pieces, alongside three tables of jewelry, all of which come from the designers a firm represents with, according to Leonzo. 

“It’s always something new, which is super exciting because Lindsey chooses which interns can work with a stylist on a pull,” Leonzo wrote. “It’s typically not too complicated, especially when they come in to personally look through everything. The stylists for A-List celebs will normally email us to upload photos. Whatever they like, we’ll personally deliver to their hotel the day of a fitting.”

For Leonzo, connections have played a large role not only in her career growth, but also as part of her work as an intern. As the point of contact for NYFW shows, Leonzo is tasked with inviting relevant professionals to the runway and keeping track of who’s attending which shows.

“We’re trying to get every single name that we can think of: editors, writers, designers,” Leonzo said. “It’s really important to do your research on the people that you’re inviting and who you’re going to meet. It’s kind of like that one scene in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ where they’re at the gala and both the assistants had to do their research on everyone who was invited, because they have to make it sound like they knew who they were talking to.” 

Leonzo, now in her second year at the firm, has now had the opportunity to train newer interns, an experience that’s connected her to students from across the country. Despite, or perhaps because of, her busy days and long hours, Leonzo sees the internship as a stepping stone for her future, at NYFW and beyond.

“I know I’m going to get rewarded soon — maybe not now, but with time, I’m getting the experience I need,” Leonzo said. “That’s super important, because it’s with that experience that I’m gonna do something a lot bigger in the future.”

Contact Shreeya Goyal at [email protected].