Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  ‘Creepy,’ Defina agreed, touching the goods.

  ‘Flimsy.’

  ‘Sleazy, Creepy, and Flimsy. Weren’t they three of the seven dwarves?’

  Karen didn’t bother to respond. She thought of Chanel, who had said, ‘You know you’re a success, in fashion, if certain things are unbearable.’ This was unbearable. Would NormCo try to do this to her stuff? Karen picked up the price tag instead. Twenty-nine bucks. Jesus, how could they do it for that price? ‘Where was it made?’ Karen asked Defina, indicating the blazer with her chin. While Defina looked for the jacket label, Karen found the origins of the blouse.

  ‘Made in the USA,’ she said, surprised. At least Arnold would be proud if she did a deal with NormCo. He was all pro-US workers. But could she be proud of an association with Wolper, NormCo’s CEO? She’d have to insist on an anti-schlock provision. Did Robert-the-lawyer have one in boilerplate?

  ‘This piece of crap is from here, too,’ Defina said. ‘I thought everything in this price range had moved offshore.’

  ‘Well, no labor costs abroad. My dad says they just chain people to the sewing machines and throw them a little raw meat once in a while. Of course he’s a well-known pinko.’ But, as they went through the racks, they found that most of the Bette Mayer clothes, though a combination of cheap and shoddy, as well as impractical, were made in the USA. ‘How can they do it so cheap?’ Karen asked.

  ‘Beats me.’

  Karen had been wrestling with the reality of the couture business since she opened her doors: the vastly expensive custom-made ensembles for the very rich are not the profit-making end of the business. It is hard to believe that a twelve-thousand-dollar evening gown in peau de soie is a money-loser. But it is usually true. The wealthy women who shopped for custom-made clothes actually cost the designers money. Karen was only going to make money the way the other designers did: by selling cheaper goods to the mass market. It seemed like one of those nasty ironies of life: it was the middle class that was soaked for profits and that actually underwrote haute couture. As Arnold’s daughter, Karen had never felt comfortable with the deal. But she loved her work.

  Now she looked at the shoddy clothes. ‘Who’s designing this shit?’ Karen asked rhetorically.

  ‘Well, I can see it ain’t you, baby. I wonder if Bette even looks at it? Even she isn’t this bad.’

  Karen shrugged. There were fewer and fewer designers who understood how to cut. It was all about perfection of line and of material. The trick was to tame it but keep it alive. This stuff wasn’t just dead, it had never lived. God, she’d hate to have her name on something so disgusting. ‘What else does NormCo do?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t they do Happening?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so. Let’s go check it out.’ Happening was a fairly new line of jeans and casual wear. For two years it had flown out of the stores, then NormCo had bought it last season.

  They wandered around the sixth floor. Karen was starting to feel hungry, but it was way too early to think of lunch. Maybe brunch. That reminded her of Westport. ‘Hey, Dee …’

  ‘Hey, yourself.’

  ‘Want to come out to Westport for brunch this Sunday? Bring Tangela?’

  ‘I was wondering when you’d get around to asking me out to see Jeffrey’s house. But to eat?’ She paused to consider. ‘Karen, I love you but you’re a cripple in the kitchen.’

  Karen frowned. ‘Don’t mock the afflicted. Just say I’m culinarily impaired. Anyway, don’t worry. I’m bringing it all in from the city.’

  ‘Honey, in that case, it’s definite.’ Defina gave Karen a big smile.

  It took them another ten minutes to find Happening and ten more to go through the racks. The news wasn’t good.

  ‘Well,’ Defina said, ‘what they lack in design they make up for with lousy goods. What’s happened to them?’

  ‘NormCo?’ Karen asked. She knew that at the low end the basic rule of business was to try to do what the others in your price bracket were doing – only a little bit sooner, better, and cheaper. Happening had done it in the past but the line didn’t look like it was happening anymore.

  ‘Is it selling?’ Karen wondered aloud.

  ‘Let’s go ask a sales clerk.’

  ‘If we can find one.’

  Because Karen was becoming too well known she always hung back on this part of their forays. She got herself busy near the try-on room while Defina went in search of sales information. While Karen waited outside a fitting room a woman walked by with her four-year-old daughter. The woman picked up a cheap cotton knit top. ‘What do you think of this color, Maggie?’ the woman asked the little girl.

  ‘No!’ she said. Karen was surprised at the child’s vehemence.

  ‘I guess it’s not your color,’ Karen said to the little girl and smiled at the woman, who was dressed in a pair of Gap jeans and a nondescript turtleneck.

  The woman smiled back. ‘Oh, Maggie has always had really strong ideas about clothes,’ she said, and smiled down affectionately at her daughter. She took the child’s hand and the two of them walked away. Karen could see the crease of fat on Maggie’s arm at the elbow and the way her hair swung back and forth, neatly, as if it was cut from a single piece of cloth. From this angle Karen could just see a part of the child’s cheek, smooth as a plum and as delicious-looking.

  Karen, who never cried, was blinking back tears when Defina returned to make her report. ‘Flew out of the store last season, grew roots this one,’ she told Karen.

  ‘Oh, great. Let’s let NormCo ruin our product line.’

  ‘You’re talking like you don’t have a choice. Do like Nancy Reagan said: “Just say no.’”

  Karen lifted her head to try and see the mother and daughter as they consulted over another possible purchase. ‘Nothing is that easy,’ she told Defina.

  They spent a couple more hours in the market and wound up having a late lunch at Mad 61, the other hot restaurant in the basement of Barney’s. Karen was depressed, and Defina, as always, sensed her mood.

  ‘Best shoes,’ Defina demanded.

  It was an old game that they had been playing for years. It needed no introduction.

  ‘Roger Vivier’s.’

  Defina raised her head, paused only a moment, and nodded. Sometimes it wasn’t so easy, and they argued for days. ‘Best florist,’ Karen popped back.

  ‘Renny,’ Defina answered with a shrug, as if everyone knew that. ‘Best knock-offs.’

  ‘For bags? Or dresses? Or what?’

  ‘Gowns.’

  ‘Victor Costa. Give me one that’s hard.’

  ‘Bags.’

  ‘José Suráez.’

  Defina shook her head. ‘Those aren’t knock-offs. They don’t have the labels but they’re the exact same bag made by the same manufacturer. Except for Hermès.’

  ‘They’re still knock-offs. If they don’t have the label, then they’re not originals.’

  ‘If a tree falls in a forest …’ Karen had to smile. With her nonsense, Defina had lifted her mood. She didn’t even call Jeffrey to cancel, and she forgot – once again – to call Lisa.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cut and Dried

  For weeks Karen’s already frantic life had been interrupted by the camera crew from Elle Halle’s show. Richard, the director, had told her to ignore them, to go on with life as she usually lived it. But of course that was impossible. For one thing, she had to worry about how she looked all the time they were around. What would it do for her image if she looked like ca-ca on toast? Karen knew that in person she had the energy and style to carry herself pretty well, but the camera was not her friend. Despite her talent and her energy, the camera wasn’t fooled. It simply reported the facts. Karen knew she wasn’t very pretty, that she wasn’t thin enough, and that she wasn’t young anymore. The camera reduced her to a minimum. This wasn’t paranoia: Janet had a whole shelf of scrapbooks with clippings and pictures in them and Karen didn’t look really good in any of them. But Jeffrey
and Mercedes had insisted that KInc jump at the opportunity to be featured in one of Elle Halle’s classy, hour-long ‘Looks.’ And now, all that was left to complete ‘Elle Halle Looks at Karen Kahn’ was the interview with Elle Halle herself.

  Karen was dreading it. They were going to shoot it this afternoon and Karen felt as if she were going in for double root canal. Given the choice, she’d prefer the dental work. Because she had no illusions: despite her smile and her soft voice, Elle Halle liked to do extractions and she never used anesthetic. Her forte was getting hold of some decaying psyche part and tugging until her victim gave it up, showing the rotten root and all. Gently elicited confessions and tears were what spiced up an interview. Although Elle seemed empathic and warm to the television audience that loved her and loyally tuned her in, Karen had to wonder about a woman whose life work it was to expose the pain of another on national television.

  Karen had already met Elle twice. Both times the woman, tall, blonde, smooth, and commanding, had seemed pleasant. But that was what everyone said about Belle – if they didn’t know her. ‘Oh, come on,’ Mercedes said as Karen got ready to leave for the studio. ‘It’s not that bad.’

  ‘Didn’t someone say that to Marie Antoinette right before the blade hit?’

  Mercedes raised her eyebrows. ‘Have you talked to a doctor about this martyr issue?’ she asked dryly. She looked at her wristwatch. ‘Come on. Let’s go. You don’t want to piss these people off by being fashionably late.’

  ‘Where’s Jeffrey?’ Karen asked as she picked up her coat.

  ‘He’s in with Casey and the financial guys.’ Mercedes raised her eyebrows. That must mean NormCo people. She paused. ‘He’s not going to come.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Karen felt her face go pale, the blood draining down to her heart, which began thumping uncomfortably. ‘He has to come,’ she said. ‘I can’t do this alone.’

  ‘You’re not alone, Karen.’ Mercedes reminded her. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  Karen didn’t bother to be polite. She shook her head. To manage this she needed someone she liked to be with her. ‘Defina,’ she said. ‘We have to get Defina.’ God, this would be too much to do alone. She couldn’t face the ordeal of selling herself, of being herself, and talking not about her clothes but about her life to twenty million people without some support. Why did people care about a designer’s personal life anyway? Didn’t her clothes speak for her?

  Janet looked up from her desk and smelled crisis in the air. ‘Defina hasn’t come in yet,’ she told her boss.

  Karen felt her hands begin to shake. She would go into Jeffrey’s office. She would stop the meeting. Whatever it was, this was more important. She couldn’t go over there, do this big deal, be examined under Elle Halle’s microscope, without knowing that Jeffrey was rooting for her.

  From the beginning, it was Jeffrey who had believed that there was not only more recognition due to her but also more money to be had in the recognition.

  He’d been a graduate student studying painting when she was at design school. She was so inexperienced, so very green. She’d never dated in high school – she’d gone to the prom with Carl. She’d been slow to mature. She hadn’t even gotten her period until she was fourteen! So of course Jeffrey had dazzled her. So much so that she had virtually followed him around, doing errands for him and picking his stuff up, a sort of human golden retriever to his elegant Afghan hound. And he was a hound. Jeffrey had liked her and had bedded her, but she had known there was no commitment there. He slept with a lot of girls at school. All the pretty ones, and Karen. Jeffrey had made it clear that she amused him and that they were friends, but there was nothing more forthcoming. Though she adored him, she was smart enough not to ever tell him so and she never expected anything more.

  Once she’d graduated, it was only through her efforts that they had kept in touch. He’d never called her, but he seemed pleased to hear from her. When she’d gotten out of school, she’d been lucky enough to snag a job working for Liz Rubin, who was a legend, the first woman sportswear designer to have her own Seventh Avenue company. Karen had started as just one of a half-dozen assistants, but within six months she’d been moved up to Liz’s special assistant. They worked together according to Liz’s hours: sometimes Karen would get a call at eleven-thirty at night and she and the tiny older woman would work until dawn. Karen suspected that sometimes Liz – like Karen’s idol, Coco Chanel – called not because she was inspired but because she was lonely. But if that were the case, the other woman had never opened up. Always distant, always authoritarian, always in control, Liz had taught Karen more in the sixteen months that they worked together than Karen had learned in all her years of design study. Soon only work and Liz made up Karen’s life. It was a busy time, and Karen wasn’t unhappy. Because, though Liz never spoke about her feelings for Karen, Karen felt they were there.

  Naturally, during that busy time, Karen had lost touch with Jeffrey. In fact, she’d lost touch with almost all her friends, except Carl. For her there had only been work. One of the reasons Liz had chosen her, Karen always believed, was because no matter what demands Liz put on her, Karen had never said no. She’d always been a hard and willing worker and, as her reward, Liz gave her more and more work to do.

  And she hadn’t minded that she got no credit. The idea of her own name on a label had simply not occurred to Karen. After all, she was only twenty-two. She just wanted to do her garments her own way. But that became the rub. Because after the first few months of working closely with Liz, Karen hadn’t been able to stop herself from voicing her opinions. Once she’d gotten over her awe of Liz Rubin, she’d said what she felt, and sometimes her opinions seemed to have gone right for the jugular. ‘That’s boring, Liz,’ she would say, and make a suggestion or sketch an alternative. They’d argue. Karen always figured Liz liked her because of her opinions. She’d been wrong. She remembered the last fight: it had been over button placement on a jacket. Liz, never one to hide her light under a bushel, had altered a design of Karen’s and screamed at her when Karen insisted that the buttons be again placed asymmetrically. ‘It’s just a gimmick,’ Liz had cried. ‘The jacket is a classic. At Liz Rubin, we do classics.’ Karen had looked at her fiercely. ‘Well, I do what’s right. And these buttons, on my jacket, have to slant across the front.’

  Funny that a few buttons could cause so much trouble. They changed Karen’s whole life. Liz had fired her.

  Karen hadn’t been able to believe it. Because she knew she’d been right. To her it seemed simple – anyone should see it. Especially Liz. Karen just hadn’t thought of the politics and ego involved. She knew the news of her leaving would cause rejoicing among the other assistants, the ones she had bypassed. But it wasn’t just her pride that was hurt. Cold as she was, Liz Rubin had represented something more to Karen than just a job or a paycheck. Liz was like Karen and it was the first time that Karen had ever met anyone like that. Liz had shown her what she could be and it hurt Karen to be discarded that way.

  Karen had sat alone in her apartment crying for two days. She had no one to talk to, nothing to do. (There was a limit to how much she could lean on Carl.) She realized then that she had no life, aside from work. She called home, but Belle was no help and Lisa was still just a kid in school who worshiped her older sister. So, in desperation, Karen called Jeffrey, who was sharing a ratty, lower Broadway loft with Perry Silverman. (Jeffrey’s parents had offered him a pied-à-terre on Sutton Place but he felt it was too bourgeois.) Perry and Jeffrey invited her over and had taken her out, gotten her drunk, and comforted her. She was sure they probably also privately laughed at her naive misery. ‘It’s just a job,’ Jeffrey had said. And Karen had tried, despite a tongue made less articulate than ever by all the bourbon, to explain that it was more than that.

  ‘Why would she fire me?’ Karen cried over and over again. ‘Why?’

  Jeffrey had listened and then had laughed. He laughed! But somehow, this comforted her. ‘She was jea
lous,’ he said, ‘because you were right. She does “classics.” You do originals. And you had the nerve to tell her.’

  ‘Is that what I did?’ Karen had asked, amazed.

  ‘Of course,’ Jeffrey said, as if anyone would know that. As if Karen should have. ‘And she resented you for it,’ he added. ‘She used you, but she resented you.’ He put his arm around Karen while she cried some more on his shoulder. Then he took her to bed.

  After that night, Karen had not cried again. She spent more than a month looking for a job by day and sleeping with Jeffrey most nights. In some strange way, the loss of Liz was made up for by having Jeffrey in her life again. She told him each evening about her day’s adventures and interviews. She was thrilled when she at last got not one but two offers. She asked him which she should take, then she was shocked when he encouraged her to turn them both down. ‘C’mon,’ he told her, ‘you don’t want to be some no-name house designer. Look what you’ve done already. You did most of Liz Rubin’s fall line. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. You just need an opportunity to shine. You need someone to believe in you.’

  It was then she had gotten the offer from Blithe Spirits to do her own line of sportswear. Moderate-priced, but a little higher-quality than most. It wasn’t Seventh Avenue, but it would have her name on it. Karen Lipsky for Blithe Spirits. Jeffrey’s advice had been right, and she’d gotten the chance because she’d listened to him. It was an unbelievable opportunity for a girl only two years out of school, but before she had a chance to jump at it, she’d gotten more good advice from Jeffrey. ‘Turn them down,’ he said. ‘Tell them that you’ve gotten an offer for twice as much money.’