Fashionably Late. Olivia Goldsmith
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right and what didn’t could make or break a design.
Yet you never saw poor Susan in a show. She just didn’t have the look and never had. Poor Tangela had perfect proportions but lacked the look. She could make a good living as a fitting model, but she wanted more.
Runway models (who sometimes were also used in showrooms) didn’t have to have quite such perfect proportions, but they had to be attractive, young, and with a look or attitude that put them across. Karen had learned from shows how important it was to have the right girls. The right girls could make magic – they could make bad designs look good and old things look new. That’s why the hot models could get the money they asked for.
Karen looked at her niece appraisingly. Maybe she’d do as a fitting model. She’d have Mrs Cruz measure her. Stephanie had no confidence, no attitude, but she might make a good fitting model. Maybe it wasn’t just guilt, charity, and nepotism that had brought Karen to hire her: the girl might be useful. But what in the world would Karen do with her now? On her first morning, shouldn’t her aunt take Stephanie out for breakfast or, at the very least, give her a tour? But Karen simply didn’t have the time. She looked at her watch. She’d already lost more than an hour of prime design time. She paused. Maybe Janet was in. She buzzed her secretary and gratefully smiled when Janet’s thick, nasal voice came in over the intercom. ‘Could you come in here?’ she asked, and smiled up at Stephanie.
Janet came in behind the girl.
‘Stephie, you know Janet, don’t you? Janet, schedule half an hour with Stephie for later in the morning. Could you take her now and show her around? Then bring her in to Mrs Cruz to have her measurements taken.’ Very casually, Karen added, ‘Maybe you’ll help out in the fitting room. Is that okay, Stephie?’
The girl nodded, her eyes big. Karen smiled. ‘You’ll just spend the morning in the showroom and the afternoon watching me work with Tangela. She’ll explain a lot about what we do. Okay?’ Stephanie nodded her head again and Janet ushered her out.
Now, Karen stared at the ruined pages on the pads in front of her. She tore them off, threw them away, and closed her eyes for a moment. She picked up the pencil and stared at the pads again. She knew it. Nothing. She waited. Still nothing came.
She had developed, over the years, a handful of tricks to corral inspiration. She’d thumb through fashion books or collections of paintings. (She’d used lots of Renaissance dress ideas.) Or she’d walk – sometimes for dozens and dozens of blocks – and stare at what people wore and how they wore it. (The awful was sometimes more inspiring than the good. People’s mistakes were interesting to Karen.) Or she’d go to her exercise class – somehow when she got her body moving she’d connect with a different part of her brain and images simply formed. Or she’d go to her own closet. Not to see what she had, but to see what she lacked. It was difficult, of course, to fill in the negative space. To imagine what she needed rather than what she had. She’d found that was the key to an important piece of clothing: the long jean skirt that she had created five years ago came from her staring into the closet and it had become a classic. So had the tent dress with the matching ten-pocket vest. And all her signature stuff in sweatshirt material. If all else failed, sometimes she’d go on shopping jaunts with Defina. They’d do a lot of looking, a lot of talking to sales clerks, and a lot of watching the other shoppers.
Maybe that’s what she could use today to get a kick start on her creativity. She hadn’t slept for hours after the argument with Jeffrey, and she already felt tired, as if the day was almost over. She couldn’t just drag herself through it, either. She had the meeting with NormCo to prepare for, and the ever-present pressure of the new collection and the Paris show. Plus a trunk show coming up in Chicago and dinner this week with a reporter from Women’s Wear. Worst of all was the major interview on the television show. That Elle Halle thing. Karen had already sweated out a segment on a Barbara Walters special, but this was an hour-long show! It was Mercedes’s idea of following up on the Oakley Award. Oy vey!
Janet, who was young and still in awe of Karen, was bustling around outside her door. Now the girl knocked and stuck her head in.
‘I just wanted to remind you that Mrs Paradise and Elise Elliot are coming in again today.’
Shit! Elise Elliot, a great star during the Audrey Hepburn era, had made a huge comeback in the critically acclaimed work of director Larry Cochran. Now they were to be married. That he was almost thirty years younger than the bride caused a great deal of talk both in Hollywood and in New York, towns that had seen everything. Now, after years of living and working together, Larry had joshed that he was going to make an honest woman out of Elise. She – a newsmaker for two generations – knew the event would be a circus for every photographer and cameraman that could crawl out of the woodwork.
She had come to Karen for help and it wasn’t easy to give. Elise Elliot knew all there was to know about clothes and was used to getting her way. Though wealthy, she still watched every penny. And she, as all great beauties, mourned the fading of her looks, the softening of her face, and was attempting perfection one last time. She’d been driving Karen crazy with the fittings.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Every time Karen used any expletive, Janet – a nice Catholic girl from the Bronx – cringed. But the other inheritance from Janet’s parochial school upbringing was that she was the only kid under thirty who could spell – the nuns were good for teaching something other than guilt. They had also instilled in Janet the ability to cope with Karen’s ever-changing schedule. Yes, the sisters at Our Lady of the Bleeding Ulcers had prepared Janet well. They’d prepared Janet to take aggravation.
‘Do you want me to reschedule?’ Janet asked. ‘I told them it was tentative. They said they were flexible.’
That was a lie. Elise Elliot was as flexible as a cement block. A sophisticated, charming, slim, and beautiful cement block, but a cement block all the same. ‘No,’ Karen told Janet. After all, you couldn’t reschedule a legend. Elise Elliot had been a movie star for close to thirty years. Karen’s designs would get great coverage, guaranteed to make ‘Star Tracks’ in People magazine, but the whole thing had become a pain in Karen’s ass, and if Annie Paradise, the writer, hadn’t asked, Karen would never have done it. But Annie had recommended Ernesta to her, and Karen was so grateful, she’d do almost anything to oblige.
‘You know that the camera crew is coming this afternoon.’
It was too much! Jesus, when did it start to get easy? ‘No. I didn’t know that. I thought they finished up everything but my interview with Elle Halle. I thought yesterday’s taping of Jeffrey was the end of that.’
‘They say they just want some background. You know, the showroom and the workroom. Maybe one more fitting.’
‘Goddamnit!’ Karen couldn’t tell them no, either. Why was it that the bigger she got the less control she seemed to have? ‘Tell Mercedes to handle them. They always create chaos. Tell them I am not available.’
‘Okay. Okay.’ Janet backed away.
She had to get out of the office, Karen decided. She would clear her desk, then hope that Defina got into a better mood, and the two of them could schlep around to Saks or maybe they’d call a car and go all the way to Paramus. Karen preferred to shop the suburban malls than the less reality-based New York stores. She got more ideas there, somehow. For now, she’d give up on ideas. Karen gathered the pads together and was just dumping them into the wide, flat drawer where she stored them when Jeffrey walked into the room. ‘Hi, honey,’ he greeted her cheerfully.
Karen blinked in surprise. Men killed her. They really did. Didn’t he have a clue? She was still upset by their talk last night. Hurt and disappointed. And she was angry about this withholding tax business. She’d told him not to do that again. Jeffrey had pushed her to expand the company, but he’d assured her they’d have enough backing to do it. This was one more thing to make her crazy, but if she got into now they’d have another fight and she hadn’t gotten over last night yet.
How come he was acting as if nothing had happened? Didn’t he understand