by Susan Juby
Who could have imagined so much talent in my peers? Not even Charlie Dean, and I’m an optimist.
We’d been instructed to whisper until the first model was called and not to speak at all while the show was on.
It all felt so fantastically backstage. Total theater! It helped me to forget that we had a man tied up in a van in the parking lot. I kept having to be very firm with Mischa to prevent her from running and hiding in the bathroom, which she was threatening to do as her anxiety mounted. Models are exactement as difficult as you’ve heard.
We stood waiting. In her pale, architectural gown Mischa was a small storm made entirely of nerves and élan. Wind whistled quickly between her clenched teeth, thanks to her unfolding panic attack. I put a hand on her arm to steady her and also to steady myself. We were on the verge of pulling this off. Of showing everyone what I can do. AGAINST ALL ODDS was the motto du jour!
Twice I caught Jo looking my way. Twice our eyes met, and I felt my heart lurch. I couldn’t see her model through the crowd of people backstage—only a sliver of rich brown fabric.
“Mr. Carmichael is introducing the competition, thanking the sponsors, and telling the audience a little bit about our program,” Tesla reported in a quiet voice.
“Are the people out there?” asked Madina, the adorable girl in the head scarf.
“Full house,” said Bijou. “And we put out a hundred and twenty-five seats.”
Mischa’s breaths quickened.
“Sips of air,” I instructed. “Don’t hyperventilate. All you need to do is walk. You are a very good walker. You’ve been doing it for years.” Of course, she hadn’t been doing it in sky-high heels the way she would be this afternoon. I’d considered putting her in flats to help steady her and because with the full skirts no one would see her footwear, but that would have changed the way the hem swept the floor. No, high, high heels it had to be.
“Jacques will be right there. Probably in the front row. And you’re ready. And you are a testament to all things gorgeous.”
“Right,” she said. “Oh my God, I’m so nervous.”
I craned my head to see what Jo’s model was wearing, but again the small crowd prevented me from getting a good look.
Applause sounded from beyond the door, and then music came on, introduced by what sounded like a hunting bugle. The music itself was operatic and martial, like a call to battle for some ancient, windswept peoples who were on a first-name basis with elves and trolls. I half expected the sounds of muskets exploding and the clattering hooves of war horses.
Tesla pointed at one of the contestants with long, flat-ironed hair, who turned to us and gave us all a nod, before turning her model to show off her look. The candidate had game!
The model, a stunning androgynous individual, wore a one-shoulder bodice formed of what looked like Kevlar. Somehow, the designer, so unremarkable in her own self-presentation, had made an utterly striking ensemble. The bodice fit like a second skin. The single strap was attached with Velcro and so were both sides of the bodice. The model wore tight pants with ballistic-type padding at the knees and great tall boots, and on their back was a genuine quiver of arrows. Glorious high fashion arrows, with fletching and vanes in gleaming shades of greens, blacks, and wine. It was a superhero outfit for the ages. One could wear it to the hottest club, to the end of times, or to a battle in ancient times. Sexy on anyone with the lean muscle mass to pull it off.
Bravo, candidate with no name! Bravo!
The model, fierce and nervy, walked through the door to the runway that Bijou held open. Two seconds later the applause, glorious applause, sounded. I was clapping, too, with all my might, but silently, so as not to distract.
I am a highly competitive person, but my heart was soaring for the contestant with the name I couldn’t remember. Fashion is so full of these moments. Small wonder it is my life.
The music thundered and shook as the model walked, which took not quite two minutes, including pauses, and it faded when the model returned, triumphant, giddy, to us. The long-haired designer and her model fell into an embrace.
Then it was the turn of the witchy, deep-forest-dwelling Ainslee, she of the long curly hair and flowing garb.
The music swelled, and Ainslee whispered something to her model, a full-figured girl, who wore her hair in a complication of braids so magnifique, it would take four mathematicians to undo them.
The model, a natural beauty avec the sweetest freckles and dewiest skin, wore a modified cotehardie-inspired garment in parti colors. Four A-line panels, one side new-leaf green with a faint embroidery pattern of leaves and vines, the other a soft arbutus-bark red. Simple white streamers wrapped around the biceps and fell nearly to the floor. Traditionally, a cotehardie was a dress, but this one was a coat, open but cinched at the waist with what looked like a woven willow belt. Made of boiled wool, the coat was simple, but it beautifully accentuated the model’s generous figure. When she turned to the left, the garment appeared entirely green. When she turned right, it was red. The lines were so beautiful, so suggestive. Underneath she wore an extraordinary silvery leotard and boots up to here! The garb was purest fairy, and even though it was red and green, there was nothing of Christmas about it. It was the season of fall and of spring in the forest. Very historical, of course, but that was the point. Ainslee had outdone herself.
Why wasn’t everyone wearing cotehardie coats to every dance and occasion? Of course, the people who take part in medieval fairs and so forth might do so, but this wasn’t re-creation or mimicry. This was reinvention. The coat dress was as timeless as simplicity itself.
I may begin to wear a cotehardie everywhere. Enough with the suits! Bring on the cotehardie!
Ainslee’s model held a single white rat in her hands. It peeked out from the cage of her fingers.
“Ewww,” said someone near me.
But I loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Unreservedly. Wholeheartedly.
The girl opened her hand and the rat cat-walked, if you’ll allow the expression, up her arm and settled onto her shoulder. Then the door to the stage opened, and she walked into a swell of monumental music.
“Music’s a brave choice,” said Cricket, who sat near me in her chair, as her model, a tall, gorgeous boy, shifted from foot to foot beside her.
“Wolves in the Throne Room,” said Jason Wong. “‘Woodland Cathedral.’”
“Enchantingly moody,” I said as the applause competed with the swelling music and indistinguishable chants.
“Goes well with the rat,” said Cricket, swiping the beautiful red wave of hair out of her eyes.
Two minutes later Ainslee’s model was back, and it was time for John Thomas-Smith’s look. He’d been standing between us and his tiny model. When Bijou gestured at them, the girl, a child really, not more than ten or eleven, emerged from behind him, and Charlie Dean didn’t even know what to do, and still doesn’t. There may even have been some irregular beats of mon cœur.
The girl wore a dress of midnight navy. The sort you could dash about in, having adventures. The fabric, unusual and synthetic, looked substantial but soft, like something a selkie might wear before she turned into a deep-sea scuba diver on the hunt for rare black pearls. The dress ended just above the knee, and there were sporty little white stripes around the sleeves and above the hem. The description doesn’t do it justice. There was just something so astonishingly right about how it looked on the girl, especially with the little white Peter Pan collar. Once my eye had taken in the unexpected perfection of the fit and style of the dress, I was knocked out cold by the accessories.
“She’s got little nunchucks around her wrists,” said Cricket. “So cute! And inappropriate for a kid. I love it.”
Most astonishing of all was the headdress-cum-ruff the girl wore. The piece was made of fine woven metal. It fanned out around her neck and rose up from behind her head. Then th
e lacy metal turned into two woven wire hands, fingers splayed. Between the three-dimensional thumbs was a metal star, sharp as a sliver, lethal, witty.
“That’s a throwing star,” said Mischa, forgetting to have her panic attack for the moment.
The combination of things— preppy, modern little dress and baroque headdress sculpture—should not have worked. But somehow it did. The child looked like an unchained spirit of the night. Powerful, mischievous, and capable of anything.
If this was intellectually rigorous design, I was all in favor of it! I felt a surge of affection and admiration for John Thomas-Smith. He was a worthy rival. I shot another glance at Jo and saw her nodding her approval. Beside her I caught a glimpse of her model and a beaded frontispiece and a long, intricately embroidered, highly dramatic sheer coat. Slayed! Charlie Dean was already slayed by Jo’s work.
John’s child model smiled at us, curtsied, and headed into her music, which was appropriately strange. Some kind of bizarre dance music narrated by the world’s scariest storyteller. It sounded like a children’s book being read aloud in hell’s lunatic asylum. La perfection.
John stood rigidly staring at the floor as the applause rose and fell and rose and fell. I noticed Tesla watching him, her face unreadable.
Next would be Madina. Her model was her mother, who looked absolutely stunning waiting backstage in an elaborate hijab. The outer scarf was scarlet. You have never seen such a rich red. A braided golden rope wrapped around her skull like a crown.
She wore a beautifully tailored gold blouse, tucked into an impossibly elegant, high-waisted red skirt. Madina’s mother had a waist so slim and fabulous in the skirt that Charlie Dean wanted to start a petition to put up a statue of her in the town square. I loved that I’d expected Madina to do more of a hip-hop street look infused with tradition, but instead she went full class and grace for the mature woman.
Madina smiled so hugely at us that every single one of us had to smile back.
Her mother beamed at her daughter and swung a coat over her shoulder.
It was made with a silk brocade, ultra-luxurious, in reds and golds against a dark blue background. In a stroke of mad genius, the shoulder yoke was indigo denim, giving it the impossibly wealthy horsewoman vibe. I was immediately transported to a fabulous, spare-no-expense ranch. Arabian horses everywhere. Racing around, tails bannering in the wind. The coat would be exactly right there. Glamor and taste to burn.
I couldn’t help it. I had to clap again, but quietly, barely touching my hands together.
J’adore Madina!
John’s model skipped backstage, her music faded, and after ten seconds, Madina’s began. French rap music! I’d gotten part of my guess right. Again, the applause from the audience was mighty, and I wished I could be at a fashion show FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!
Cricket readied her model, wheeling around him in her chair. Knitwear! His chunky cardigan sweater was obviously handmade, extremely adventurous in a burned orange color with asymmetrical front closure. He wore a massive chocolate scarf over it, also hand-knitted, beautiful against his dark face.
Ooh la la! And the checked woolen pants in green and brown killed. Something told me Cricket had woven the fabric for those heavy, classic trous with a marvelous, cheeky hand-embroidered front pocket. That Cricket! Not just funny and sardonic, but so skilled. The music that surged was Gaelic, marvelous and jaunty, and her model was the best-dressed fisherman home after a long, dangerous trip, as he headed to the runway.
He came back and bent down to hug Cricket. I almost couldn’t stand how wonderful it was.
Jason’s model headed out. Mischa would go next.
I looked to her, grabbed her hand, and turned her around to face the assembled designers and models. Then I raised her arm, like she’d just tied for the championship fight. My fellow competitors clapped silently for my gown, and I exulted. Yes, I did. This was all going to work out.
thirty-seven
MAY 4
Esther and I headed down the hallway to the stage door to wait with the others. I made sure I was angled so I didn’t have to make eye contact with Tesla.
The models went out, one at a time, and with each, some of my numbness washed away. The outfits were incredible. To think that people, especially these people, had invented and sewn these clothes. To think that I ever thought there was anything lightweight or easy or unimportant about making anything, much less actual clothes for actual living people to wear.
When it was Esther’s turn, I bent down so we were eye level.
“You are going to be so awesome.”
In return she gave me a pale smile.
“You too,” she said.
And then she was gone into the dark circus music of Wax Tailor’s “Heart Stop” from Dusty Rainbow from the Dark. I picked the song partly because Esther reminds me of the girl in the cover art, and because Wax Tailor is a French band, and fashion people have big love for things that are French. The song was exactly strange enough for Esther, and I forgot everything for the few minutes she was out there. It was bliss.
She came back, rolling with the applause.
Her face was lit up like there was a star pulsing behind her head, and I gave her a hug. I caught a glimpse of another model heading out.
Before I could check who it was, Esther grabbed my hand. Hers was surprisingly strong for its size.
“Come on,” she said. “I want to see the other people.”
We ran down the hall, around the corner, and through the doors into the darkened atelier. The stage rose above the audience, who sat on either side in rows.
A guy in a bulky sweater, very rich looking, was walking off the stage. Two seconds later Jason Wong’s model hit the runway. Jason’s model was a skinny, older guy. He wore a bottle-green suit, majorly badass. The music was some redneck-cowboy song about a guy not being as good as he once was. The mix of music, model, and suit was a trip. The suit made the guy looked like a degenerate gambler whose luck had finally turned right side up, the way he always knew it would. I decided that if by some miracle I actually graduated from high school, I would spend everything I had to get Jason Wong to make me a suit.
When the model guy, who wasn’t young or handsome, just kind of weathered and real, stopped in front of the judges, half the people on that side of the room stood up and applauded.
The guy walked backstage, and the lights went down for a ten-second beat, and then slowly came up again as a woman’s voice came over the sound system, whispering, then wailing, something about a disease.
Esther and I edged up to a corner that offered the best view of the stage. The rest of the models and designers had the same idea and crowded in around us.
Charlie Dean’s model hit the stage just as the singer stopped and the music exploded.
Everyone in the place jumped.
The dress was like the exposed infrastructure of a broken dream. It was white and gray. The neckline jutted out and tilted across the model’s chest like she was climbing out of a ruined building. The skirt reminded me of a collapsing scaffolding under a sheer layer painted with shadows and light in graphic patterns. It made the dress look even more like a structure, which I think was the point. The model, the one I’d seen out in the parking lot earlier, still had a bright red scratch down her cheek, and her hair was shaped into a dramatic mound on her head.
One section of the bodice shone with dull sequins, and there was a section on her left side where the sequined section was cut away to show what looked like bandages of satin bands in dull silvers.
There was a piece of narrowly pleated fabric that extended out the side of the skirt, almost like a set of stairs. The dress was completely righteous, as Booker would have said. It was probably one of the most interesting things I’d seen since I started this quest to win the scholarship. Even though it wasn’t practical, it was inspiring, somehow. I w
ondered how I’d ever looked at Charlie Dean and not seen that she was extraordinary.
The audience started clapping as soon as the model appeared, and the applause got louder when the dress came closer.
I couldn’t imagine the skill that had gone into sewing something like that dress.
“That is so beautiful,” said Esther, loud enough that I could hear her over the music.
The model made her way uncertainly down the runway in her huge, radical gown, pausing to turn this way and that. Her eyes were huge and black in her pale, painted face, and she swayed almost imperceptibly. Her eye shadow extended to her temples like a shadow blindfold. The cement-colored satin gloves she wore were dirty, which added to the effect.
She stopped in front of the committee. When Carmichael nodded, she headed offstage, the singer growling and howling something about strange hellos. I almost can’t express the feeling I had right then.
The clapping kept going, and I knew I wasn’t ever, ever going to look at my oddball classmate in her strange suits the same way again. Charlie Dean was definitely some kind of genius.
I think we were all sort of stunned as the music faded, and we waited for the next model.
The room was silent for several long beats, then a flute sounded, followed by a loon’s call, as haunting and surprising as any noise in the world. Then came a deep announcer’s voice.
“The loon is also called the Great Northern Diver, because of its ability to dive and swim long distances underwater,” intoned the announcer. I recognized that it was one of those old CBC Hinterland Who’s Who PSAs about Canadian wildlife that we’d watched in some old biology class. Then the voice was overtaken by drums and chanting and a deep grungy electric beat that turned the place upside down.
“That’s A Tribe Called Red,” said Esther. “We got to go see them last year. They’re my favorite.”
The model came onstage covered in a see-through coat, embroidered all over. She shrugged it off to reveal a beautiful brown dress, so dark it was almost black, with a beaded section at the chest. It was seriously every kind of excellent. The skirt was split down the side from the hip to reveal an ivory silk panel printed with a series of birds, loons I think they were, in different poses. The model held up her fists and danced as she walked, and the audience clapped in time.
