The Stylist Takes Manhattan

by Rosie Nixon

  “Your job, ahead of Coachella,” he commanded, “would be best spent sourcing her some flesh-colored G-strings from Macy’s and perhaps some funky nipple tassels.”

  Funky nipple tassels? All I could do was nod and try to look understanding.

  When they had left the studio, in the blacked-out limo they arrived in, I hurriedly packed away the beautiful gypsy-inspired tops, cool caftans and denim flares I needn’t have spent so much time carefully picking out, and reflected on the missed opportunity of turning Liv into the American equivalent of Alexa Chung, instead of a hippified Playboy bunny. Mickey had seemed more of a pimp than her manager. At one point, he had goaded her into trying on the fringed waistcoat with nothing else, and taking a few snaps, “for research,” on his phone. He seemed to have some kind of unspoken hold over her and Liv was willingly submissive toward any request he made. The whole thing turned my stomach, making me feel more like a professional fluffer than a fashion stylist. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d asked me to source a merkin so she could prance around the festival with nothing on at all.

  * * *

  “I mean, why bother going to the length of engaging a stylist if you don’t want to be styled?” I said to Rob when he got home that evening, after I’d spent the rest of the day returning all the unworn clothes to Rose’s and shelled out for a load of nude knickers and body stockings in Macy’s, out of my own pocket.

  “Sounds like she thinks she’s going to Burning Man rather than Coachella,” he remarked. “Anyway, not your problem. How Liv wants to express herself is up to her—you’re there to make that dream come true. It’s all part of the weird world of celebrity styling.”

  “I hope she doesn’t go around praising her stylist while she’s there, though,” I said. “It’s hardly going to do me any favors. She was a sweet girl, if a little needy.”

  “Anyway, we’ve been invited to our first New York party next weekend,” Rob said, grabbing two beers from the fridge. “It’s at Amy’s place and it’s fancy dress,” he added with a strained laugh.

  My facial expression dropped. “Oh God, I can’t go.”

  It was the reaction he knew he would receive. We didn’t need to go through it again. I’d bored Rob with the sorry stories already: the one where I nearly blinded a guy I fancied at university by getting false eyelash glue in his eye while helping him get into his Clockwork Orange costume; the one where I split up with an ex-boyfriend while dressed as a crab because he was coming on to Jessica Rabbit right in front of me; and the one when I got so drunk on sake while portraying a piece of sushi, I couldn’t eat sushi for over a year—and still hate sake. In short, me and fancy dress do not mix. It’s just not my idea of fun.

  “Oh, come on, this could be the party that breaks the mold,” Rob pleaded. “Besides, it’s not so much about the costumes as the people—the main reason for going is to mingle, make some friends, you know? It’s not as if everyone will be paying a huge amount of attention to what us two are wearing, anyway.”

  “What’s Amy wearing?” I asked tentatively, knowing full well that it didn’t really matter because Amy would look amazing in a dishcloth.

  Rob tapped into his phone, replying a few seconds later: “She hasn’t decided yet—maybe Westwood.”

  “Hmm, Vivienne Westwood, great idea,” I murmured. The key was to find an identity that made you look cool and reasonably attractive at the same time. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.

  “Why don’t we go as something really British, too?” he suggested. “There will be loads of New Yorkers at the party, so we should be typical Brits. It’ll be an ice-breaker.”

  “What, like Kate and Prince William?” I pondered, thinking at least I could look reasonably stylish and pretty in a royal-blue Issa dress with matching ring. “We could have a little Princess Charlotte doll with us?”

  “I like your thinking. But a bit boring,” he replied. “What about the Queen and Prince Philip? We could get a toy corgi.”

  It was a brilliant idea. My mind began racing with the plaid-skirt suits, pearls, sensible court shoes and black handbags I could pull from Rose’s. This was flexing my fashion muscle already.

  “I’ll get started on our outfits tomorrow. I need to go back to Rose’s anyway, to see about some actual clothes for Liv,” I added, accepting that me and fancy dress were going to have to make amends.

  “Oh, and while you’re out, can you get a second set of keys cut?” Rob put our door keys into my palm.

  The costume hunting would have to wait because, shortly after Rob left for work, Dana came through with an invite to my first New York fashion show for the following morning. It was Michael Kors, which filled me with serious excitement, having been a fan of his clothes for, like, forever. I spent the rest of the evening primping and preening myself as best I could, bearing in mind the lighting level was so low in our bathroom I could barely see myself in the mirror. I tried on eight different outfits before settling on what to wear. I bet Carine Roitfeld doesn’t have this problem.

  * * *

  Early the next morning, my yellow taxi pulled up outside a huge warehouse building at Chelsea Piers. There was no way I was going to risk the subway today, not wearing the one pair of amazing heels I’d brought to New York with me—fortunately, as it turned out, a pair of sky-high Michael Kors black platform sandals—a leftover from my days working at Smith’s boutique where we’d sometimes get to snaffle a really hot sales bargain ahead of the customers. With these shoes on, I could wear jeans and a T-shirt and it would work. Except jeans and a T-shirt would definitely not work today. It was just gone eight o’clock and the street was awash with glamorous women, dressed to the nines, carefully stepping out of blacked-out SUVs, limos and taxis, preening and posing as if on a catwalk themselves. Occasional splashes of color could be seen among the generally black-clad fashion posse streaming into the building for the show. I pulled my dress down and slung my Michael Kors bag over my shoulder, glad that at least I blended in—wearing pieces by the designer we were all here to see is an absolute must for a fashion show. I had finished my look with a plain black smock dress that could have been from H&M or Michael Kors; only a very well-trained eye would know the truth.

  There was a buzz in the air and it was impossible not to get swept along by it, yet, as I neared the entrance, where two going-on-six-foot, black-clad model types stood with iPads, checking off names, my heart rate quickened. I really hope Dana has remembered to put me down. I can’t bear to be humiliated and have to turn against the tide. Especially in these shoes. Suddenly a frenzy of flashbulbs erupted and we were all shunted to one side to make way for supermodel Gigi Hadid and her entourage. I watched in awe as the newly blond star slunk her way toward the front row, way taller than I imagined, and so thin, wearing a skintight shimmering silver gown from the new Michael Kors collection. I recognized it immediately from my research last night. The diversion caused a panic among the door staff just as the lights began flashing and a Tannoy announced twenty seconds to showtime and kicked off the countdown, the lights chiming in sync. Now it was a free-for-all, as a surge of desperate fashionistas from behind me began stampeding to the front. Someone’s stiletto trod on my toe, making me shriek out loud. My bag was nearly dragged off in the opposite direction to my body and I had to use all my strength to yank it back. There was nothing glamorous about this, yet all around me bouncy blow-dries, petite bosoms and thin limbs elbowed their way past, desperate to get in before the lights went down and the big doors slammed shut. The first show of the day simply has to run on time.

  The door police had given up by now and I scrambled past one of their iPads to find a spot on the nearest bench seat—miraculously, on the third row. This almost makes me a somebody! I caught my breath as the countdown reached its conclusion—“Three . . . two . . . one . . .”—and then the room fell pitch-black and a loud beat pounded from speakers in every direction, making my throat pulsate.

  In the darkness there was a kerf
uffle in the gangway as someone entered—a small, sparrow-like woman with a peroxide bob and an entourage of three deeply tanned, good-looking guys. A few disgruntled women sitting in the second row on spaces marked PRESS were hurriedly turfed off the bench to make way for the group, right in front of me. As the lights shot up, bathing us all in bright daylight, I recognized her immediately as Lola Jones, one of the biggest stylists in New York, famed for her arty, off-beat shoots in the cool underground fashion mags like System and Intermission.

  I studied her mannerisms in detail, from my perfect bird’s-eye view, as entranced by her and the inaudible whispers she shared with her handsome companions as by the parade of clothes being churned out, one after another, on the runway. I snapped away on my iPhone, like everyone else around me, capturing both Lola and the catwalk collection before me and uploading photos to Instagram as fast as my fingers would let me. A stream of perfectly preened models wearing opulent fur coats, camel grandpa cardigans and belted tweed suits marched down the catwalk in perfect time to the heavy beats. Knitwear, cashmere and tweed was complemented by lavish bias-cut evening gowns studded with twinkling crystals or sparkling chokers; a pajama suit in gun-metal gray made an appearance, too—a sure message that the women of New York could step out in pretty much anything they liked this autumn/winter. I moved on to video, creating short Instagrammable clips of the fashion parade and uploading them immediately. There wasn’t any time for clever captions; today I was all about being first.

  It was only after the show, when the lights were turned back to a normal level and some background music played, that I had a moment to gauge the reaction to my postings on social media. To my astonishment, my Instagram likes were in the hundreds and a stream of new followers decorated my feed with beautiful + signs. One particular image of Lola seemed to be generating a lot of attention. I opened the shot and began scrolling through the comments underneath. They ranged from emoticons insinuating shock and laughter to actual comments, such as:

  “OMG Lola Jones is going bald!”

  and

  “Lola’s hair loss #cringe”

  I scrutinized the photo as a rising level of panic began burning its way through my body. How could I not have noticed before? I’d been so enthralled by everything going on around me. But now it had been pointed out—and after I’d spent some time zooming in on my own image—it was painfully obvious that Lola had a rather large patch of wispy hair barely covering her scalp, right in the middle of her crown.

  To my horror, very quickly it had snowballed; my photo of the renowned super-cool stylist was being reposted and re-grammed right across the internet, crediting my account and—worst of all—tagging Lola Jones herself almost every time, and there was nothing I could do about it. Even if I removed the post, the damage was done—it was already out there, multiplying faster than a fungus in a chemist’s lab. And unless you lived on Planet D’oh, you’d know that this meant I had offended one of the city’s biggest names in fashion. Shit. Shit. Shit! #Mortified didn’t cover it.

  The saving grace to this monumental mess was that Lola and her three escorts had already been whisked out of the warehouse—presumably for the next show, Victoria Beckham, across town—and would not have seen that a little-known stylist from London seated directly behind them had outed her hair loss for the whole world to see. Not only was this an off-the-scale mistake, but I also felt deeply disturbed that if Lola did have a genuine alopecia problem that she had been hiding from the world, then I was the back-stabbing bitch who had mocked her misfortune.

  Outside the show, I felt painfully conspicuous as my photo continued to gain momentum in the social media universe. All the fashion people around me looked glued to their phones and tablets. Were they all gawping in shock at the same image, currently gaining speed as it ricocheted around cyberspace? I bowed my head and weaved my way toward a queue for taxis. While everyone else had a fashion breakfast or a ticket to Victoria Beckham, I bought myself a family bag of Reese’s Pieces and quietly retreated back to Williamsburg to hate myself and assess the damage from the privacy of our shoebox.

  * * *

  Dana called when I was in the cab. She cackled down the phone: “You’ve certainly entered the fashion world with a bang this morning, Amber Green. What a way to kick off New York Fashion Week! You’re damn lucky I don’t rep Lola Jones, too—I bet she can’t wait to bump into you on the scene.” The mess I had created for myself seemed to tickle her. “But, anyway, this is fantastic for your online presence. It takes some people years to get up to two thousand followers and you’ve done it in two days! Bravo, Amber. You sure are taking Manhattan by storm.”

  Two thousand followers. Christ. It was something I would practically have killed for a few days ago, and now I wasn’t sure I wanted the notoriety that came with it. What if Lola and her three guys come looking for me? What if she gets me barred from every fashion show from now on? Worse still—what if she’s so upset, she attempts something stupid?

  Panicked, I phoned Vicky. “Jesus, babe, what’s with the six o’clock wake-up call?” came the half-asleep voice at the other end.

  “Sorry, hon, forgot you’re still three hours behind. Can you talk? I’m in a bit of a shit storm and I need your advice.”

  A rustling of bedding followed by a few coughs ensued, then: “Of course. I’m awake now. Trey didn’t come home last night. Again. I don’t know what the hell is going on. Amber, he’s driving me mad. It’s all work, work, work and literally no play. Never mind play, I’d take just setting eyes on him. I barely see my so-called boyfriend. I mean, he could at least call. I bet he’s seeing someone else; I’ve just got this feeling. And the star of his latest film is that minx Joni Tozer, which isn’t exactly helping my paranoia.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” I said, sensing she would much rather talk about this than listen to my current drama. “Doesn’t he ever call to let you know he’s not coming home?”

  “Call? You must be having a laugh. He never answers his cell phone. Leaves it here most of the time because he needs to be “free of communication” to concentrate on directing. Honestly, I’ve never felt more bottom of the pile. I’ve just about had it. Anyway, what’s the shit storm?”

  “I’m wishing I’d left my phone at home, too.” I sighed. “I’ve got the opposite problem.”

  “What, Rob’s ringing you too much?”

  “No, I’ve posted something on Instagram and it’s spiraling out of control.” As I told her the story I watched my iPad in horror as another five hundred strangers “liked” my photo and another two hundred followed me.

  Vicky paused. “To delete or not to delete, that is the question.”

  “You think I should delete it?” I asked hopefully; perhaps this course of action would somehow erase the whole thing, like rubbing out a pencil drawing.

  “No, there’s no point,” she finally conceded, confirming what I’d thought earlier. “You’re already tagged in every post and Lola will have seen it by now. The only thing you can do is embrace your newfound popularity. Try to see it another way, Amber: you’ve not done anything malicious on purpose—thank God, you didn’t caption the photo or point out Lola’s alopecia problem—all you did was show the truth, from your viewpoint. No one can hang you for that. Not even Lola herself. Anyway, maybe she’s relieved the truth is out there.”

  “Hmm, I doubt it, somehow,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, me too,” she confessed. “But, hey, you’re starting to build a following and that’s what you want at the end of the day. What’s that phrase? ‘All publicity is good publicity.’ I still can’t get to three hundred followers. For some reason, even photos of our hot new gardener aren’t setting the social networks alight: whereas, you’ve cruised into four figures with just a few photos of your new apartment and one fashion show. Just pretend you haven’t realized the fuss you’ve caused, but give your new followers the real you, I say.”

  The feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach was ebbing slig
htly with every word. Good old Vicky, she always had a way of cheering me up. And I suppose she was right—I did want to make a name for myself and at least more fashion followers now knew I existed. It wasn’t exactly the way I intended that to happen but, as she said, I didn’t set out to do anything mean; I hadn’t pointed out Lola’s bald patch intentionally. I would never do anything so mean. So, yes, now I had to let people get to know the real me.

  Instead of lolling about in a state of panic, I decided to dust myself down, move away from the Reese’s Pieces, and get right back on Instagram, posting a photo of myself in a rocking #ootd—ripped Topshop skinny jeans, Whistles T-shirt, prized vintage biker jacket, Ray-Bans—going about my business, like I hadn’t noticed the drama my previous post had caused. Valencia filter; caption: “Hitting the stores to style a big star for Coachella #shopping #stylist #NYC #Coachella #festivalfashion #letsgo”

  And I hit Rose’s again, to see if I could find any cool pieces of barely there clothing—a see-through negligée or a silk dressing gown, perhaps—to tempt Liv to put some actual fashion into her Coachella suitcase.

  Chapter Eight

  There was something deeply pleasing about stepping into Rose’s Fashion Emporium. The huge, three-story showroom on the Upper East Side was more a fashion library than a store. Filled with rail after rail of designer gowns, day dresses, trousers, tops, jackets—you name it—plus racks containing at least eight thousand pairs of exquisite shoes, and cabinets filled with handbags and glittering accessories, there was something for every taste and every occasion. It was a stylist’s mecca and, thanks to Dana, I was part of the “club.”

  Although Rose’s held most of the current collections from the main design houses—from Agent Provocateur to Zuhair Murad—I found myself gravitating to the vintage section, where every item had a past life and a story to tell. Sometimes you could smell it on the clothes—leather jackets, with an ingrained smoky scent of parties gone by and hangovers weathered; delicate silk gowns that might have once waltzed with a president or led an A-list star to the bedroom. It was enough to send my imagination into overdrive. I was drawn to the glitzy gowns—some dated right back to the early nineteenth century—and there was a fantastic section of Dynasty-style eighties dresses that would still set a party alight today. I wondered if Rob and I should change our outfit plan for the fancy-dress party—that was until I spied the most amazing apricot crepe dress and coat that had Her Majesty written all over it. I was sizing up the outfit in front of one of the full-length mirrors, when I felt I was being watched.