“Which brings me to the playground. Resort wear is, if nothing else, fun. It’s for your tropical vacation in the middle of winter and it’s one the few times in fashion when you’re granted a little color freedom because it is, by nature, a playful collection. So I think you’ve picked the right time to premiere in Western fashion; certainly as you start planning your spring and fall collections, you’ll need to scale back a bit…but I’m getting ahead of myself.”
He smiled and said, “Nice to know you’re already planning ahead. I like that in a partner.”
“Yes, well. What I want to do with your show is create the whimsical feeling of the playground but combine that with the exoticism of India. Almost like a grown-up garden party, but with bright colors instead of traditional muted colors you would see there. I want playful music, something almost reggae but not too islandy—we don’t want to cross over into the tropical, Caribbean vibe. Maybe even some upbeat Ravi Shankar.”
“You know Ravi Shankar?”
Whoops. “Yes, actually I’m a fan of Phillip Glass, and I was only introduced to Ravi when he collaborated with Glass.”
“Yes, I remember that album. A little dark, but interesting.”
He was a little dark and interesting. As I had begun to passionately describe my ideas for the show, I had leaned closer and closer to him. I was practically crawling into his lap. I shifted back a bit and looked around, trying to get my focus back. Damn, but this beautiful man was quite the distraction.
“So—light, fun, playful. That’s the spirit we’re going to capture with your show. Your pieces are dramatic but whimsical, colorful but coordinated. I want to create the perfect backdrop to that collection. You only have one chance to define who you are as a designer, and I think showing this collection this way will allow critics to see the talent you have but also the playfulness you bring to fashion. I think that’s something that stood out to me in the work you did while based in India. Even in a country that takes clothing so seriously, you were working with digitally printed fabrics for saris and creating some innovative and new ways to dress the traditional Indian consumer. We want to bring the best elements of your previous work here, keeping your existing customers but opening you up to an entirely new woman.”
“I love your enthusiasm, Millie. I know this is your job, I know this is what you’re good at, but when you talk with such passion about who I am and my designs, it makes me feel as if you work only for me and you care only about my success. I understand now why other designers keep coming back to you again and again. But I wonder, how much does all this passion cost you? What do you have left at the end of day, at the end of the show, at the end of the season?”
With each part of his question, Daniel moved closer to me, punctuating his last question by cupping my chin in his warm hand and looking straight into my heart. The truth was I had nothing left. I took all the pent-up passion I had and poured it into my work. I knew it wasn’t smart to give so much to my job and leave so little for myself, but I couldn’t help it. I envied these talented artists who could pluck these gorgeous garments out of their imagination and then make them real. I couldn’t do that. What I could do was showcase them and promote them and help these artists achieve the audience their work deserved. The passion for their art was my passion.
I had nothing left for me or for any man who could work around my ridiculous schedule and my demanding job. Perfection would be finding a man who understood that passion and what I had to do to help artists achieve their goals. Perfection would be this man turning his hand and cupping my cheek and lowering his head and rubbing his perfectly shaped lips back and forth across mine. Perfection would be this bench magically turning into my bed and our clothes magically disappearing, allowing him to perform some magic on my body with that mouth and those hands.
“Millie, you must keep some of that for yourself. Your passion is one of the most fascinating things about you. I would hate to think you leave it all at the office and are unable to find it at home.” His thumb rubbed back and forth across my bottom lip. I was a quivering mess of nerve endings, craving the feel of his lips on mine.
I would like to say that it was the force of his desire that overwhelmed me, but alas it was a kickball that slammed into the side of my head.
The force of the ball knocked his hand away and snapped my head hard to the right. My ear was ringing and my hand was cupping my stinging cheek as I vaguely heard Daniel thoroughly scolding the group of young boys and even going so far as to turn on their mothers seated on the bench to the left of us.
I tried to shake it off and gather enough of a thought to form a sentence, but I felt as if the force of our interlude and the big red kickball were working against me.
“Daniel, it’s fine. It was an accident; I’m okay, just a little sore around, well, my face. Hazard of the playground. You have to be willing to take a hit if you come out to play with the big boys, right, guys?”
The kids stood around, not sure what to say. I smiled over at their mothers. “I’m fine; please forgive my friend. He’s new to the playground and not aware of the risks involved in all this fun. I’m fine; you all go back to your game, no worries.”
“Millicent, your face is red and swollen, and I refuse to believe that you’re fine. I think we need to get you to a doctor and I think someone on this ragtag team owes you an apology.”
I grabbed his hand and my purse and pulled him away from the crowd that had gathered around us. Leave it to me to try and introduce him to the joy of childhood and the innocence of the playground, and instead I bring out his inner Terminator.
“Millicent, I insist we—”
“Hush! I’m the one who was knocked out. Come on before they all gang up on us.” I was like the little girl dragging the boy up the rope ladder, only this one was a little harder to pull. I cupped my throbbing cheek and for a moment hoped I would wake up and this would be yet another failed seduction dream. How was it that every time I was with this man I ended up covered in food or knocked out? Maybe it was a sign. Maybe we just brought the worst out in each other.
CHAPTER 9
While everyone else is taking a breather from all the fashion excitement, your mama is down in the fashion trenches (or shall we say gutter) hearing all kinds of interesting rumors. There is a little bit of a shake up over at Dior. Women’s Wear Daily reported that current creative director Jennifer Lopez (to the uninitiated or the first-time readers of a fashion blog: no, not that Jennifer Lopez) is taking a leave of absence for a year, ostensibly to concentrate on the birth and raising of her soon-to-be fashionista baby girl.
What WWD did not report is that this is not by Ms. Lopez’s personal choice. Apparently the powers that be at the French house of design have not been pleased with the direction Lopez has taken the company over the last two years and is said to be sending her away so they can concentrate on finding her replacement. Ooo la la. Anyone who knows who is on the top of that decidedly short list, please drop your mama a line and let us know. Merci beaucoup, bitches!
--April 1st “It’s just fashion, bitches” blog--
Thank God it was Saturday. The last few weeks had been a blur of recovering from fall fashion week, prepping new shows, and battling corporate espionage at work. I still couldn’t figure out what Scarlett’s angle was or why she was so hell-bent on making things difficult for me. Marta had extended her vacation but was finally due back into the office on Monday. Maybe I could convince her that Scarlett was up to no good.
Saturdays were usually spent working my other job. The job that no one knew about—well, almost no one. My neighbor Avis was in the know. She was retired, lived alone, and had gotten to the point where getting around was hard for her. I usually ran errands for her, and on occasion I would take her down the block for lunch. Once we got her and the walker down the front steps, it was a clear shot to the deli. Avis grew up in this neighborhood, so becoming friends with her was like becoming friends with the entire block. It made livin
g in this large city a little easier to cope with—made me feel like I was back home in the South.
With Avis home all day and me needing an assistant to help monitor the staggering amount of tips and tidbits I had filtering into my home email account, it became a perfect fit: Once she got used to the foul language, backstabbing, and all around bitchy behavior she had to read, catalog, and rank in importance for me, our partnership was off and running.
Avis also knew that my real dream; what really brought me to New York was not my love of fashion, but my dream of being a writer. I was a journalism major in college and tried desperately to find a writing gig when I got to New York, but somehow ended up working a bunch of temp jobs in the financial district. It was a lead from another temp that got me the interview with Marta. I played up my theatre background and played down my writing to convince her to hire me. If she hadn’t been desperate (and for that matter, me either), I would have probably left the city years ago, my faded dream behind me and a life of Southern suburbia in front of me.
But fate (and my sense of humor) was with me that day, and together we landed the job. It wasn’t long after I started with Marta that I realized two things: first, there was a lot more excitement happening off the runway than on the runway, and second, I was the perfect size to be completely ignored. Like I said, I thought of my weight as a superpower that granted me invisibility.
While being ignored by the very people with whom you were working could certainly take a toll on the old ego, one of the things I realized was that people would say anything around me, because either they didn’t notice me at all or they didn’t think I was intelligent enough to understand what they were saying. Sometimes they didn’t even know I spoke English since Marta believed assistants were like children and should be seen and not heard.
I was left with a job that paid only half of what I needed to cover my living expenses, a dream of being a writer, and tons of fashion gossip and innuendo swirling around me every day. What was a girl to do?
But of course! Take all of that information gleaned by her power of invisibility and publish it. And what better way to do that than a blog?
So, three years ago, my blog was born. I wanted a catchy, cool, slightly dangerous title that signaled the author was both an insider and someone who could back up her words. Gossip mostly, but a lot of fact. I decided on “It’s just fashion, bitches” because it sounded like something I would want to read every day and discuss at work first thing every morning.
It started out slow. A little bit of gossip here and there, a little more, information trickling in, information that no one anywhere else had. But then I stumbled across the biggest story in fashion two years ago when I was assisting Marta with the Carlton show. The head designer, Cindy Carlton, had passed away a few months before, and there were rumors flying everywhere about who would replace her as creative director. I had even blogged about some of the more interesting rumors I had unearthed. I was working very late one night when Cindy’s daughter stopped by to see how the rehearsal was going. Apparently Marta and Cindy came up in the industry together, and that was why Marta had staged every show Cindy had ever presented. So Jennifer Carlton and Marta had an almost familial relationship.
Jennifer had come on stage to walk through the sets with Marta, asking a question here and there about lighting, music, etc.—nothing earth-shattering. I was behind the back curtain making some final selections with the DJ when the two of them wandered into earshot.
It was then I heard it—heard the information that would put my blog on the map. Jennifer admitted that no one was going to succeed her mother because her mother had written into her will that the company would be dissolved after her death. There would be no new designs, no new ideas, if she was not a part of it. The lawyer had instructed the family to keep quiet because he felt the publicity would impact the sales and orders for the new collection. I knew, though, that if it got out that this was the last Carlton collection ever, it would drive the sales through the roof and cement the name Carlton in the fashion history books. Many lines died a slow death with new director after new director put in charge, but this was the first time I had heard of a designer willingly dismantling a company simply because she did not want it to exist without her.
I went home that night torn between what to do. On the one hand, obviously the family wanted to keep this quiet, but on the other, I knew it would be the boost the company needed to go out with a bang. And it would serve as the biggest scoop my little-blog-that-could had ever had. It would put it on the map. My monetization of the blog was based on the number of subscribers. I had a decent amount, but the more people I had following the blog, the more I could charge advertisers and the more links I could put on it; I had a chance to make it in this city as a writer.
So I published the story. It was picked up by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The family was concerned at first because this was in direct conflict with what the attorneys advised and because they thought the leak had come from the attorney’s office.
However, when orders came in from buyers before the collection was even shown, they knew the leak had been a good thing. The collection went on to be one of the best-selling collections in New York fashion history. Cindy had her own display at the Costume Institute of America, and everyone was a winner.
Granted, every scoop after wasn’t all hearts and flowers for the people involved, but I tried to publish the truth and just spice it up a little bit if the story was on the dry side.
The challenge with the blog taking off so quickly and becoming so popular practically overnight was there wasn’t enough information coming into my little world to keep me in good, lucrative gossip. That was when the idea of having eyes and ears out there, bringing me what they had seen and heard, launched. I had made a lot of contacts through the years, and a well-placed comment about the blog (oh yes, I was a huge fan; I had no idea who the author was, but he really had his finger on the pulse of the industry) and how they had an inbox for tips and tidbits garnered me more information than I could drudge through in a day. And with the fourteen-hour days I worked for Marta, I had no time to sort through all the leads.
And that was how Avis found me one afternoon when we were out for our weekend lunch. I was slumped over my grilled cheese and practically in tears because I couldn’t figure out how to keep both careers running. If I quit Marta’s, then I lost the source of the information I trusted the most: myself. If I quit the blog, then I had to admit I was not a writer and just embrace the job I had.
I was completely aware that these were the best of the worst problems to have: too much to do, too many choices. But it was wearing me down, and Avis told me if I didn’t come clean about what was bothering me she would have to force it out of me. While I doubted physical intimidation was what she meant, it did dawn on me that she was a great listener and might be able to help me sound out this particular dilemma.
Imagine my surprise when the solution she offered was that she would become my assistant and troll through the mound of information coming into the inbox and then just give me the stuff she thought was worth me looking into.
Avis had been a librarian her whole life, and while she never followed high fashion, she knew about fashion history, and she knew what people wanted to hear. She was one of the few members of the greatest generation who loved technology, and she had learned years ago how to Google and research, and she was close friends with a network of other retired librarians.
Also, it gave Avis a reason to get out of bed in the morning. For this new “career” to give her a spring in her proverbial step (although I instructed her to not actually spring, as she was getting older and didn’t bounce as well when she landed) and made my life easier; it was a win-win for both of us.
We fell into the comfortable routine of spending Saturdays (when I wasn’t working for Marta) at the deli discussing the posts for the coming week and the feedback/reaction to the posts from the past week. We tried to
put something out there every other day. If I didn’t have time to write anything, I had a folder of picture posts Avis could upload. With the advent of Pinterest, my photo postings were almost as popular as the gossip. This was in large part due to the research Avis and her band of retired librarians had done on the history of fashion and how those ideas were influencing current styles. The resurgent interest in vintage fashion brought on by the popularity of stylists such as Rachel Zoe had been a big plus for adding new followers.
I was anxious to sit down with Avis today and see what she had been working on all week. One thing I had asked her to research was the history of fashion in India and put together some info about the current scene in India. I wanted to run a few Indian-themed posts before Daniel had his resort wear show, and then maybe even a few afterward. I loved being able to support the designers that I liked and worked with through the blog, even if they never knew the publicity and support came from me.
With Daniel, though, this seemed more personal. I really liked him, and I wanted him to succeed. I added a little tidbit last week about an outing he had to a local gay club. I thought if I could work his name a little more into the daily lexicon, it might help him when the show debuted. People would feel as if they already had an idea of who he was.
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