Usually there's an independent income that enables these lean, mean consumption machines to be in it for the fun, the glamour, and the sample sales. It is a closed world. A few of the FOEs surface in the gossip columns or open boutiques, but for the most part their names are unknown outside the magic circle, certainly to someone like me to whom they see no reason to introduce themselves. No one, with the exception of Carrie Bradshaw, a fictional construct, can support a serious shoe habit and an endless round of drinks, lunches, and dinners on a journalist's income. Attaining the requisite standard of physical perfection means keeping up a punishing schedule of manicures, pedicures, highlighting, Pilates, waxing, facials, eyebrow threading, and more esoteric treatments that leave very little time for anything else.
Job titles can be misleading.
There are some contributing editors or assistant stylists who are in it only for the prestige and coolness factor. And although most senior jobs really require you to produce, some are filled by people whose relentless rise owes at least as much to connections as to talent, though their impregnable self-satisfaction indicates this possibility has never crossed their minds. For an FOE, any practicality is purely incidental. In fact, the less practical your accessories, the greater their cachet. This is particularly true of shoes.