Catwalk

by Deborah Gregory

  Suddenly, I feel embarrassed, but Zeus switches on his brilliant smile. “The fashion show must go on,” he declares, snapping his fingers.

  “I heard that,” Aphro seconds as we all head over to the dining room table to get down to Catwalk business.

  Zeus takes a black portfolio emblazoned with a zebra lightning bolt decal from his backpack.

  “Fabbie Tabby, time to start the meeting!” I yell.

  On cue, Fabbie hops onto the table and plops down. Boom and Caterina let out approving yelps, and two cameras zoom in for a close up on Fabbie’s whiskers.

  “I love the color contrast—turquoise and lime green,” I comment on Zeus’s skateboard graphics. “No animals in the mix?”

  “We’ll be getting to that,” Zeus says confidently.

  After we finish goospitating over Zeus’s portfolio, I pass around Xeroxes. “I need your input to create the Catwalk Credo, which will serve as guidelines. Here’s what I’ve scribbled so far.”

  I watch Zeus’s face as he reads my outline: “I dig that: ‘As an officially fierce member of the House of Pashmina, I solemnly swear to abide by the directions of my team leader, to represent my crew to the max, and to honor, respect, and uphold the Catwalk Credo.’ ”

  “We also have to make up a list of all the positions we need to fill for our house,” I continue.

  “Photographer,” Zeus says. “I mean, we should be documenting our whole Catwalk process along the way.”

  “Brillante,” coos Felinez.

  “I know somebody lethal—he’s in my visual display class,” Zeus lets on.

  “Explain?” Angora asks.

  “Lupo,” says Zeus, shoving a handful of pink popcorn into his mouth. “Lupo Saltimbocca. He’s hyped about becoming the next Francesco Scavullo. He’s outta sight.”

  “Got it,” I say, recognizing the name of the famous fashion photographer from the seventies. Scavullo was a star in the Vogue magazine stable back in the day. “Okay, so we’re gonna set up in Studio C for Tuesday from four to six for interviews. Please let Mr. ‘Salt in the boca’ know so he can be there or be square.”

  “Saltimbocca—it means ‘jump in the mouth,’ an expression to use when something is supa-tasty.” Zeus chuckles.

  “I heard that. Just what we need,” adds Aphro.

  “That reminds me,” I say. “Not everyone is down with our cause. So I think the flyer should put it right out there: ‘Only cat lovers need apply.’ ”

  “Let’s take a vote,” Angora seconds.

  “I’ve also written down the definition of feline fatale style—‘adorable and playful but fiercely clever, and pays homage to our catty companions regardless of sex.’ I mean gender,” I say, blushing.

  “Brillante!” Zeus says, imitating Felinez. “I’ll put a pink cat illustration on the left of the flyer.”

  “That’s outta sight!” I say, imitating Zeus.

  “Awright—let’s talk about models!” Aphro yells out.

  “We’re gonna need to sign up seventeen more models,” I say. “So far we’ve got three. And figure ten kids as guest models to open the show.”

  “One lead designer, one assistant designer,” adds Felinez, then explains to Zeus, “I’m the accessories designer, and Aphro’s the jewelry designer.”

  “What about Nole Canoli?” Zeus suggests.

  “Nole is down with Chandelier Spinelli,” I say pleasantly, since Ms. Lynx has warned us to “behave instead of beehive”—even though I’d like to sting Chandelier.

  “Maybe Ice Très—for the second designer?” adds Zeus, swinging his second fashion strike.

  Angora’s blue peepers rise above the rim of her cat’s-eye glasses, and I feel the gnawing disappointment from Ice Très’s dis full force. Not that I’m about to drop that tiddy right about now.

  In the meantime, Caterina has her own recipe for “reality” television. “How did Chandelier enlist the most talented designer at FI for her house?”

  Note to fashion self: Caterina’s khakis may not be “crisp,” but her behind-the-scenes snooping is bona fried.

  “Chandelier is a Gucci hoochie. Some people are impressed by that,” Aphro says, venting.

  “I, um, don’t think Nole Canoli is the only digable designer in school,” I offer feebly.

  Everyone looks at me like they’re waiting for me to drop the winning Lotto numbers.

  “Um, I think Diamond Tyler is purrworthy, too,” I add.

  “Oh, she’s the one stressed about her cat, right?” Zeus asks with concern.

  “Who don’t you like?” Caterina interjects.

  “Miss Jackson. She’s such a Fendi fiend,” Aphro blurts out.

  “What Aphrodite is trying to say is …,” I begin, pausing to formulate my thoughts.

  “She can runway, but she can’t hide!” Aphro says with a sneer.

  Boom chuckles, lightening the situation.

  “We have our own definition of what ‘fashion-forward’ is.” Now I decide to look directly into the camera. “Not everyone is down with that. There are competitors who would rather stick with the tried, even if it’s not true. We believe when it comes to fashion trends, sometimes you just have to drop it like it’s hot. Now drop that—boom!”

  Suddenly, there’s a loud rapping sound on the door. Everybody shrieks with laughter at the timing of the interruption. I shoot Angora a look, however, like It better be Ice Très. Much to my chagrin, however, the first face I see when I open the door is the sullen one of Mr. Darius. Amazingly, he is with a repairman, who is carrying a toolbox and a plunger.

  I usher them in like they’re dethroned royalty. “Kats and Kitties, this is Mr. Darius, my landlord.”

  Mr. Darius steps inside, and once he sees the cameras, his eyes start rolling like pool balls.

  “Don’t mind the film crew,” I say sweetly, regaining my nerve for Operation: Kitty Litter. “They’ve been filming the building, too! Isn’t that exciting?”

  Mr. Darius starts mumbling to the repairman, and they hurry to the bathroom. I follow them so that Boom, Jay, and Caterina will follow me.

  “The toilet’s broke and the hot water hasn’t been working,” I lament.

  Mr. Darius mumbles to me, “Please go.”

  I trot back to the living room and wait for Mr. Darius to come back with a prognosis, but he proceeds to leave in a hurry, without saying a word.

  “Mr. Darius, is the toilet fixed? Oh, did you see the crack in the ceiling?” I ask pleadingly.

  “No, no. My wife wait in car. She get angry, I keep her waiting,” he says, eager to get away from me.

  “Well, maybe she could come up,” I suggest. “Have some pink poporn?”

  Mr. Darius’s kernel of patience with my on-camera charade finally pops, causing him to let out a minor explosion in the hallway.

  “We have fizzies, too—ginger ale?” I squeak as he exits hastily down the hall. “See ya, Mr. Darius!” I say, shutting the door.

  “Bravo!” yelps Angora, clapping loudly. “That’s what I call effective Catwalk leadership skills!”

  Caterina grins at me, while Angora decides to turn the table, asking, “Who decides what footage you’re going to use?”

  “The network has final cut,” Caterina reveals.

  “Are you going to let the competing houses see each other’s footage to create more drama?” I ask.

  “They’ll see it when it airs,” Caterina says firmly.

  “Do you leak stuff to the media?” counters Angora.

  “We do send them footage, or ‘items,’ in the hope that they’ll give us some coverage,” Caterina admits.

  “What’s an item?” Felinez asks.

  “Newsworthy tidbits, like the stuff we read in the gossip column in Women’s Wear Daily or ‘Page Six’ in the New York Post,” Angora explains proudly. She is the fashion journalism major among us.

  “So, you mean there may be something printed about us in the newspaper?” I ask, getting excited.

  “Co
uld be. The news editors decide what they’ll print or air,” Caterina continues. “We’re gonna shoot a lot of footage—there’ll be plenty of opportunities for media coverage.” Then, in her clipped tone, Caterina commands: “Okay, how about some questions now?”

  “Abso-fre—” I say, then stop myself mid-word.

  “Pashmina, I sense there is tension between you and your sister, Chenille. Does she want to be in the House of Pashmina, too?”

  I gagulate at Caterina’s candor and start mumbling. “No, maybe she doesn’t, but she understands that I’m an, um, aspiring modelpreneur,” I say, diverting the drama from my cranky sister. My mother will skin me like a rabbit in a Maxmilian fur trap if I dis Chenille on camera.

  Luckily, Angora steps up to the fashion plate. “Not everybody is on board with our agenda. They just think we have it easy. But they don’t realize, if a model doesn’t plan her career carefully, she’ll have nothing more than some pretty pictures and a pocketful of poses when it’s all over, and there’s no greater fashion tragedy than a marked-down model.”

  Caterina instructs the camera to go to Zeus for input. “Um, my family isn’t totally cool with what I’m down with. I mean, if that’s what you want to know,” he reveals. The camera keeps rolling, so does Zeus. “I think they’d rather I do something else. But I see modeling as a way to help my family. I mean, my dad works hard. He’s a custom tailor and has his own shop, but he could have been a designer, I mean he’s got the skills.”

  “Were you deejaying in the Fashion Café yesterday when everyone was voguing?” Caterina continues.

  Now my clunky clogs come in handy—because I kick Zeus on his left Adidas under the dining room table. After a few seconds of silence, Caterina realizes that we aren’t going to break from twenty years of covert tradition, not even for our five minutes of fashion footage, so she continues probing with supa-catty questions.

  “Who’s the bigger threat—Shalimar or Ninja, Jr.?”

  “They are not our enemies—merely the competition,” I respond calmly. The four of us do the Catwalk handshake on that one.

  “What is that you’re doing?” Caterina asks.

  “That’s our Kats and Kitties handshake,” I explain proudly. “You know, crossing paws.”

  After fifteen more minutes of sound bites, we take a snack break, then get back to our meeting. By the end, we’ve compiled a list of all the candidates we need to assemble for team members and we complete the copy for the flyer I’m putting up on the Fashion Board.

  “Ayigght, I’m gonna hook up the cat graphics and the type tonight on my computer, and I’ll have the poster ready in the morning. Cool?” Zeus asks, beaming at us.

  “Abso-freakin’-lutely!” I say emphatically.

  After the Teen Style Network crew leaves, we start squealing. “You were fierce!” declares Aphro.

  “Really? I felt like a Bazozo,” I say jokingly, referring to our Catwalk code for dunce.

  “Miss Biggie Grande, you’re gonna have to stop with the hoochie shout-outs, or we’re gonna end up in the haters’ corner,” warns Felinez.

  “For true,” I second, issuing a gentle warning before dolloping praise on Fifi: “You were on punto, too,” I say, giving her a much-needed hug. I think all that model talk sometimes does bother her now that Aphro and Angora are in the mix.

  “Caterina is très inquisitive,” notes Angora, who is helping me clean before my mom gets home from work, which will be pronto.

  “Mos def,” I concur. “I bet she even knows where all the squirrels in Central Park bury their acorns.”

  “Well, you definitely put your landlord on blast, that’s for sure,” Aphro teases.

  Zeus looks at us, puzzled. After we brief him on Operation: Kitty Litter, he gets his heckle on heartily. “Well, I definitely think you got his attention. I don’t know if that ceiling is gonna get fixed, though,” he says, trying to suppress his laughter.

  We all laugh so hard that my disappointment about Ice Très’s disappearing act melts away. Who cares, cuz I definitely earned my zebra stripes today by snagging Zeus for the House of Pashmina—even if I don’t get to keep him all to myself.

  FASHION INTERNATIONAL 35TH ANNUAL CATWALK COMPETITION BLOG

  New school rule: You don’t have to be ultranice, but don’t get tooooo catty, or your posting will be zapped by the Fashion Avengers!!

  BOYZ IN THE HOODIES

  Ever since I was a young fashion thug tying up the laces on my first pair of Adidas Superstars and leaving my mark on my first legit slab of vertical concrete (the 20-foot overpass on Highway 20), I knew I wanted to represent street style for brothers everywhere. See, back in the day, fashion was all about name-dropping, from your hoodie to the bangle on your hot toddy’s arm, but today you can jet to Shanghai or South Central and see our raw flavor served full strength. I’m not gonna front—I did snag those style sentiments from a certain delovely. Anyway, as for the new-school definition of a brother: it’s anybody who isn’t trying to jack up my street cred just because they’re making paper on Wall Street or shouting from their seat in the House of Representatives. See, we’re all representatives in this thing called life. As for a “house,” the time has finally come that I’m going to be part of one that’ll make fashion hestory. Straight up this Catwalk competition at Fashion I is dominated by the delovelies, but I will still represent. If the music business can clean up its act and end the pirating of video vixens to sell records, then the fashion business should stop the propaganda that style is for sissies. But I won’t lie: a de-lovely with a style vision of her own (like the aforementioned) is like a virgin slab of concrete. I’ll never be able to resist the temptation to leave my mark. So, there’s nothing else I can say to the ones tempting me right now except “Tag, you’re it.”

  10/01/2008 10:45:44 AM

  Posted by: Fashion Thug

  8

  “I still can’t believe Ice Très stood me up,” I bemoan to Felinez, slamming my locker shut. “Wait till I see him, I’m gonna be so shady—”

  “I know: it’s total eclipse time,” Felinez interjects, because she understands my dark side too well.

  What I don’t understand is why I can’t stop obsessing about the Fashion Thug—that is, I can’t stop until Zeus strolls up with the fabbie flyer we’ll post on the fashion board. He opens his black vinyl messenger bag and holds up his handiwork like it’s a delicate soufflé. “Think potential Kats and Kitties will dig that?”

  “You put the ‘fly’ in flyer!” I squeal, marveling at our tagline: ONLY CAT LOVERS NEED APPLY.

  “Check the groovy graphics on the borders. Hello!” adds Aphro.

  Angora takes notes on the curlicues. “J’adore this typeface. Is it from Font Book?”

  “Nah, I designed this jammy myself. We can use it for all our graphics needs—the programs for the fashion show, our little hype handouts, everything,” explains Zeus.

  “Major purr points,” Angora concurs.

  “Okay, let’s tack and roll,” I order, grabbing the flyer and Felinez’s arm. Aphro is chaperoning Angora to the ladies’ room.

  “Non-Catwalk business,” I inform Zeus with a wink while we stand there whispering among our fabbie three selves.

  Zeus smiles knowingly: “I got two sisters. I got you,” then jets to his locker in the next row.

  “Oy, now I’m getting like Ice Très,” I comment to Felinez as we walk to the fashion board. “Winking and blinking.”

  “What happened?” Felinez asks in an agitated tone.

  “What’s bothering you, Blue Boca?” I ask, taking the spotlight off myself.

  Felinez’s apple-size cheeks turn bright red as she explains what happened on the way to school this morning. “Outside the bodega, this fat guy with his stomach hanging out of his T-shirt yells at me, ‘Hola, fat ass!’ So I turn and blast, ‘Who you calling fat?’ He laughs like a stuffed puerco. ‘I said, flat. FAT asses I like, mami!’ ”

  “What a jerkaroni,” I snarl, comf
orting Felinez, at least until I see Ice Très helping Shalimar put up her flyer. Now I’m the one who needs to be comforted. My mouth open like a guppy’s, I read the overly hyped header on Shalimar’s poster in disbelief: CALLING ALL FASHION THUGS. HOLLA. Suddenly, that’s exactly what I’d like to do: scream and make some noise. “So now she’s into ghetto couture?” I hiss under my breath, grimacing at the musical-chair turn of events. Ice Très has obviously become her graffiti guru. Fifi pries the pink tacks out of my hand to prevent me from sticking them into Ice Très’s pointy head instead of on the corners of our prized poster. The guilty one grins in my direction, instinctively realizing that he’s just escaped the wrath of a killer kitty. Meanwhile, I pretend I can’t see the brightness of his rabbit teeth bouncing off the fluorescent lights.

  Felinez nudges me back to business. She points to Chandelier’s poster—the most blinged-out on the board. “She must have gotten here at six a.m. with the other fashion vampires,” I comment as we walk away. “Well, at least we beat Anna Rex and Willi Ninja, Jr.”

  Against my will, I turn to stare at Ice Très. Shalimar winces at me and points to the meowch pouch strung around my neck on a piece of pink rawhide. “What you got in there—voodoo mojo? Don’t think it’s working!” she giggles. I ignore her and try to meet Ice Très’s gaze so I can level my signature shady glare, but now he’s pretending he doesn’t notice, his head shrinking into his Rocawear hoodie.

  “I can’t believe I’ve been hoodwinked.” I wince, walking away to lick my wounds in private.

  Now Anna Rex and Elisa Pound whiz by us, their poster in hand. “Sorry I’m late,” Anna moans to her black-clad disciple. “I had to beg my mother to give me money for Alli.”

  “I wish I could go get Alli, too,” Felinez laments.

  “Who’s Alli?” I ask her, secretly wondering if she’s losing it. That’s when I discover the only thing she’s trying to lose is weight, as usual. “Alli” is the half-dose of the prescription drug Xenical—a fat-blocker pill—with disgusting side effects I can’t repeat.