An Innocent Fashion

by R. J. Hernández

  Now I was rubbing my head, and I was late for class—or Régine, or something . . .

  ON FRIDAY OF THAT WEEK, EDMUND STYLED HIS WHITE-THEMED shoot in Paris. Then on Sunday he styled the off-white iteration in London, and on Monday, when I arrived at Régine for the start of my second week, all the clothes were back in New York City while Edmund himself had stayed in London last-minute for a “small holiday.”

  The one essential caveat, it turned out, of borrowing all those clothes for a photo shoot, was that at the end of it all, after the photos were taken, and the photographer and the model and the hairdresser and makeup artist and all of their assistants had moved on, and the Art Department was blurring off the evidence of nature from the models’ faces, the clothes still remained, waiting patiently to be returned. We had two days to vacate the closet, to make room for everything being borrowed for the next photo shoot.

  Sabrina greeted me that morning: “I need every garment hung on these racks by designer, and every accessory on these tables by category—shoes, gloves, hats, whatever—then also by designer. If you have a question, ask George,” and George stuck up his nose and tried his best to look as unapproachable as possible.

  George then ordered me to “go get” the trunks. The first trunk wasn’t so heavy, but it must have been full of scarves. The next one was worse, and every one after that a hellish joke. It was the accessories that weighed the most: A trunk full of “dainty” kitten heels didn’t seem like a lot, but seventy-five pounds of them was a different story, and furthermore, trunk after trunk of kitten heels the least dainty thing in the world.

  Of course, any way I tried to describe this I sounded like a spoiled child whose real qualm was having to do any labor at all. Older people always said this about those of us just out of college: We didn’t know how to “work,” and wanted everything handed to us on a silver platter. Yet I would have spitefully invited them to live out four years in the high-minded steeples of modern academia, elevated in dialogues about God and the origin of human consciousness, only to be ruthlessly dragged back to earth by the very enablers of our self-importance—those faceless gatekeepers of adult life, who had egged us on to superfluous distraction before revealing the punchline of their cruel Sisyphean joke: That in fact, the only aim of our over-education would henceforth be to carry it like a boulder up a hill, and watch it roll back down, over and over forever.

  Between Sisyphus and me, the only difference I could see was that my hill was a series of white hallways; my boulder replaced by a never-ending batch of garment trunks. I would have been happy with anything to alleviate the sheer boredom of it—even just an occasional word from Sabrina or George besides “faster.” A hundred times before me flashed the image of my Yale degree—glorious serif font on bone-white paper, with my name in italics, and evidently no practical significance whatsoever—along with all the laughter, and the champagne, and the riotous off-campus parties, which on that day at Régine I feared might go down in my memory as my bygone “glory years,” my last taste of the good life.

  After I had moved half of the trunks, my forehead was damp and the collar of my buttoned-up dress shirt steeped with cold sweat. I hovered over my desk for a moment, foggily contemplating the removal of my jacket and tie. I felt the jacket fall involuntarily past my shoulders—a cool, momentary relief washed over me—then I froze with a sudden jolt of conviction. I clenched my teeth, and re-buttoned my suit jacket over my sweating body. If my new role necessitated that I be drenched in sweat, exercising no special skills except my brute ability to emulate the motions of a conveyor belt, then at the very least I would uphold my only claim to dignity.

  Back and forth between the elevator and the closet (I memorized the labyrinthine white halls that day), I lost track of everything: the number of trunks, the hours that passed. When after two hours I thought I had unloaded everything—for the first time I breathed a joyous sigh of relief upon joining George in the closet—it turned out the delivery truck downstairs was waiting with a second batch. The hallways were an endless white tunnel, back and forth, forever.

  When all of the never-ending trunks were in the fashion closet (the last of the trunks I had to line up along the corridor outside the closet, as George couldn’t unpack them as fast as I was bringing them), I began to help George remove their contents—dresses, shirts, pants, coats, shoes, gloves, scarves, belts, sunglasses, garment bag upon garment bag, accessory bag upon accessory bag—all while e-mails from designers and PR firms began flooding in and Sabrina yelled, “Gather up all the Cavalli! All the Versace! All the Ferragamo!” so that George had to start combing through them all to find the right things while I was left to continue unpacking, so panicked by the constant barrage of Sabrina and George’s yelling that I abandoned the hope of preserving any order and just began pouring things out of bags, every luxury item losing its individual value and becoming another one of many identical, meaningless objects to slosh through.

  Of course, all of it was either white or off-white, and it felt as though the fresh, compact white snow that had fallen last week had been ravaged by rain and sun into a dirty gray muck, with rivulets of melting ice pooling everywhere.

  After hours of this—I lost track of how many—Sabrina emerged from her cubicle to ask us what was taking so long. When I looked up at her to respond, she was just staring at me as I drowned in perspiration. “You can’t touch these clothes when you’re sweating like this. Go wash your face,” she ordered, and upon my return, yelled, “We need everything Cavalli—urgently! Four dresses, one scarf, four belts—do you remember which? A messenger will be picking it all up in twenty minutes.”

  I couldn’t remember, and had to consult our reference photos. When I had proudly fished out the correct belt and nothing else, Sabrina glared. “What in the world—?”

  “It’s just—” I whimpered, up to my calves in a pile of handbags, with a dress on my head that George had thrown at me.

  “Cavalli is downstairs waiting!” she seethed through gritted teeth, as though it was Roberto Cavalli himself who was glancing at his watch in the lobby and not some hired messenger playing video games on his phone while he waited. Sabrina tore through the closet and came back inexplicably in a minute with the rest of the Cavalli garments, throwing them into a pile with the belt it had taken me twenty minutes to find. I sat there bewildered for a second, staring at the items whose arrival to the Régine closet I only vaguely remembered inventorying one week ago.

  “I need a label,” she instructed, as she flew through the closet to gather up the pieces from Gucci.

  “What’s the address?” I asked.

  “In front of your face,” George said, with a motion toward the address list pinned above our computers. He stapled a Return Manifest to a shopping bag of Balenciaga handbags (everything had to be rephotographed the way it had been when it first entered the closet, with three copies of an important paper called the Return Manifest, one of which went to Sabrina, one to the designer’s PR team, and one to the messenger who was transporting the thing between the two), while Sabrina’s muffled voice called to me from between the racks, “Cavalli goes to Five Twenty-Five West Twenty-Fifth Street, attention Melissa.”

  At first I couldn’t find the labels, and when I finally did in a drawer Sabrina snatched them out of my hands before I could even take the top of my pen off, and wrote it herself.

  “Here’s all the Gucci next,” she said, and again, without so much as consulting her e-mail or a list on the wall, recited, “Send it to Eight Fifteen Madison Ave, attention Charlie.” She did that all afternoon—pulled detailed contact information out of thin air—and it became clear she had memorized the address and contact person of every single designer and PR firm in Manhattan, like a human spreadsheet.

  In the late afternoon, Jane swept leisurely into the office, winsome and fresh-faced, pale ponytailed hair bouncing over her lily-white nape.

  “Hello, darlings,” she greeted. “What a wonderful job you’re all
doing.”

  “Thank you,” came Sabrina’s glorious smile, every trace of malice wiped away from her rosy cheeks. “How was your weekend?”

  “Oh, it was divine, thank you!” confided Jane, as she poked through her stack of mail on the corner of Sabrina’s desk—invitations to shows and parties, and thank-you notes from designers whose creations she had featured in a recent spread. She wore a variant on her usual ensemble: a white dress shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, with royal blue cigarette pants and a pair of lemon-colored pumps. “Took my grandchildren to the zoo.” Her ankle rocked with absentminded whimsy over her high heel. “Came this close to getting kissed by a giraffe, or maybe spit on . . . Oh, isn’t that nice!—a thank-you note from Alexander Wang.”

  “He sent flowers too,” said Sabrina. “I left them on your desk, along with some from Chanel and Balenciaga. You can let me know if you’d like them messengered to your apartment later.”

  Jane turned to all of us and smiled, and my sense of despair was briefly alleviated as I thought: That could be me one day, breezing through the office to collect my cards and flowers. She left the office an hour later, while I searched on my hands and knees for an opal which had fallen off an embroidered Balmain belt.

  MONDAY TRICKLED LIKE MELTING SLUSH INTO TUESDAY.

  In the end we returned two dresses, four bags, and one pair of sunglasses to Céline; four dresses, nine pairs of shoes, three pairs of gloves, one scarf, two belts, and one pair of sunglasses to Chanel; three pairs of shoes, four scarves, seven bags, and six belts to Ferragamo; three shirts, three pants, two coats, and two belts to Etro; four dresses, four shirts, two pants, and six pairs of shoes to Alexander Wang; four dresses, two pairs of shoes, and one pair of gloves to Dolce & Gabbana; three dresses, one coat, two pairs of shoes, and one pair of gloves to Altuzarra; five dresses, one shirt, three shoes, and one pair of sunglasses to Marni; four dresses, one scarf, four belts to Cavalli; three shirts and three pants to Pucci; five dresses, three shirts, four pants, five coats, two shoes, and one belt to Jil Sander; three dresses, one shirt, five pairs of shoes, and seven pairs of sunglasses to Versace; two dresses to Derek Lam; ten bags, four pairs of gloves, five scarves, twelve belts, and six pairs of sunglasses to Louis Vuitton; two shirts, three pants, and two coats to Thom Browne; three pairs of shoes, four bags, three belts, and one pair of sunglasses to Rag & Bone; four pairs of shoes, six pairs of gloves, one scarf, three belts, and one pair of sunglasses to Hermès; three pairs of shoes, four scarves, six bags, and two belts to Bally; six shirts, three pants, two coats, and two belts to Saint Laurent; four dresses, one shirt, two pants, and five pairs of shoes to 3.1 Phillip Lim; four dresses, two pairs of shoes, and one pair of gloves to Alexander McQueen; three dresses, one coat, three pairs of shoes, and one pair of gloves to Chloé; seven dresses, three pairs of shoes, and two pairs of sunglasses to Lanvin; four dresses, one scarf, and four belts to Stella McCartney; two shirts and three pants to Rodarte; eight pairs of shoes to Jimmy Choo; three shirts, four pants, two coats, two shoes, and one belt to Theory; three dresses, one shirt, five pairs of shoes, and two pairs of sunglasses to Proenza Schouler; six bags to Marchesa; two bags, one pair of gloves, one scarf, two belts, and one pair of sunglasses to Nina Ricci; fourteen bags, nine dresses, two shirts, three pants, and six coats to Marc Jacobs; seven pairs of shoes to Manolo Blahnik; and so much more I almost just slapped a label onto myself and fell asleep in a bag to be taken away.

  Around six-thirty on Tuesday, people finally stopped e-mailing for all their clothes back. As we were leaving for home, George pointed to the volume he had asked me to get from the library the previous week. “Can you take this back? It’s just taking up space here.”

  My upper lip curled. “Sure,” I said. But the thing that bothered me was, I hadn’t seen him use it, nor did I think he actually needed it in the first place.

  chapter six

  I didn’t come here to talk about Dorian,” I declared as Madeline and I passed the Prada section on the third floor at Bergdorf Goodman. The store was closing in thirty minutes, and despite my protests that I was exhausted from work, Madeline had pleaded for me to accompany her shopping for a dress. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since the incident at the nightclub, yet a series of missed phone calls late that afternoon attested her sudden remembrance of me (Madeline never left messages, only called and called until she finally got through). I should have known it would involve Dorian.

  Now in response to my frustrated eye roll, she said, “Oh, please, don’t be unreasonable,” as though I was her stubborn husband who never yielded to common sense. “Dorian and I talked it all out—and anyway, don’t take my word for it—he wants to see you for his birthday party next week.” A casual hand through her hair meant she had just cleared up everything.

  Knowing Dorian and Madeline equally well, it was very hard to imagine him just reappearing in our lives unplanned, looking once into Madeline’s sapphire eyes, and realizing the error of his ways. Easier to imagine, however, was Madeline, her hand locked on his knee, begging as she choked up, “Please, don’t go away”—never mind any questions that might upset him, those whys and hows that over the past year had tortured her, and me too. For a fool like Madeline (a blind, lovesick fool—the worst kind) the price of her forgiveness was too affordable: her lover’s noncommittal glance and his halfhearted utterance of any love-like affirmation.

  She hadn’t just considered herself Dorian’s girlfriend—she had been his “true love,” like Cleopatra was Antony’s, and Juliet Romeo’s, with asps and daggers and all. In the tradition of all great, foolish love stories, her reaction to Dorian’s unpardonable offense had therefore been to love him inextinguishably more.

  The effect of Dorian’s departure on my own feelings for him could not have taken a more contrary composition, as in his absence I had hardened like a salt crystal. His crime weighed less upon me than my own complicity: Without my irrational heart as an accomplice, Madeline would have never involved herself with Dorian. She had once despised him—it was me who fell in love with him, and made her fall in love with him too.

  I was tortured by the truth of their “great love.” Even if their reunion at the nightclub had culminated in the unlikely idyll that Madeline claimed (the two of them intertwined on a velvet booth like Pierre-Auguste Cot’s Les Printemps, whispering confessions of love with a luminous glow around their heads), where had their passions led me? Through misery and ultimately to the bathroom, coughing up blood and broken glass into a ceramic bowl.

  “I didn’t come here to talk about Dorian,” I repeated. “I came here because you said you needed help finding a dress!” My voice was an octave too high amid the racks of cocktail attire. I held my nose in the air and crossed my arms over my chest. “I won’t humor you talking about Dor—” I cleared my throat “—talking about him, and no, I won’t go to his stupid birthday party.”

  Through her incorruptible blindness, Madeline searched my face and asked, “But—why not?” Then, with great purpose, while she blinked away any uncertainty: “He says he’s still in love with me. And he still loves you. He wants us all to be a trio again. He says—sorry.”

  “Sorry?” I could have laughed at her, but I was too appalled. “You act like all he did was step on your foot.” I turned away and began to walk in the other direction, glancing at my watch.

  With a hasty scratching of her heels on the carpet, she came up behind me and unbecomingly dangled a delicate arm around my shoulder, like a used-car salesperson trying to get me to see the value in some totaled Aston Martin, a once-beautiful thing whose immobile parts now sagged unrecognizably on the concrete lot. “Just think of it, Ethan,” she whispered with a wild look in her eyes. “Just you, and me, and Dorian, all over again—this solves everything between us all. It’ll be just like it used to be, the perfect trio, just like—”

  I cut her off. “Are you going to try on a dress or what?”

  A year ago, she had sobbed into my arms, “He’s gone,
he’s never coming back,” and I had stroked her back and stared vacantly at the wall, filled with unfathomable emptiness. Now she implored, “Why? Why won’t you give him a chance?” as I flicked away a price tag on a four-thousand-dollar Ferragamo sheath, which boasted an incredible markdown of one thousand dollars.

  “Did he explain himself? Did you even try to make him?” I pressed. “What makes you think now he won’t just run off again?”

  Lost in a nervous trance—she knew she could lose me over this—Madeline poked through a rack of Lanvin dresses, barely looking, just shuffling her hand in and out, and yanked at one. “What do you think of this?”

  It was an overripe summery sensation, a rotting strawberry bush uprooted and trailing along the carpet as she came at me in reckless entreaty. I don’t think she even really looked at it; she was too busy with her eyes on me, searching my face for the approval I rarely withheld from her—approval about the dress, about Dorian, anything.

  “It’s too big for you,” I said. She didn’t seem to hear, and I lagged behind while she rushed it to the fitting rooms, where a gray-suited salesperson with a pug-like face was preparing a room for another customer. Madeline gestured at me to follow her, and the puggish little man said, “I’m sorry, we only allow one person in a fitting room at a time,” coupled with a reprimanding snort, like we really should know better than to try that nonsense at Bergdorf Goodman.

  This was one of the reasons I hated to shop with Madeline. In New York City there were loads of these uppity salespeople, whose life’s ambition was to deny fitting-room entry to best friends in expensive stores. The same thing happened the last time we came to Bergdorf’s, when Madeline had lied and said she’d “be right out,” and had me tapping my toe outside the fitting room for a half-hour before innocently pretending she had lost track of time because her phone “just didn’t work in there,” like she expected me to believe that by closing a curtain she had really gone to another country.