My schedule for the day included two panel discussions that were part of the Fashion Week calendar. Maggie Black, Sandy’s mother, had secured a pass for me to a series of talks and demonstrations taking place at an event space on Eighteenth Street.
“There’s so much to see and do during Fashion Week,” she’d told me when she invited me to attend Sandy’s show. “I want to make it worth your while to come to New York. He needs our moral support, but I promise it’ll be great fun for you, too.”
I’d assured her that there was always plenty for me to do in New York City, not the least of which was having an opportunity to visit with business associates and, best of all, family. But Maggie had gone ahead and signed me up for a hair and makeup demonstration; an art show of canvases by fabric designers; a panel discussion on how the fashion world would have to adjust to the graying of America; and an immediately sold-out lecture on the role of luxury goods in the modern world—all taking place in the same building or one nearby. What especially lured me to the panel on the graying of America was that among the panelists was Claude de Molissimo, the author published by Buckley House whom Matt Miller offered to put me in touch with. I’d Googled him on my laptop at the hotel after my dinner with Kopecky and was impressed with the accolades he’d received for his book, although there were some negative comments, including one about his “bombastic views.” This was obviously a man who knew the fashion world inside and out and had ruffled more than a few feathers.
Instead of ordering breakfast at my hotel, I bundled up—New York was experiencing a cold snap—and marched briskly uptown until I finally spotted a luncheonette off Sixth Avenue, where I sat at the counter perusing the newspaper over poached eggs and toast. Comfortably full, I determined to work off my meal and save money by walking downtown instead of taking a cab.
My route south took me to Times Square, where despite the frigid temperatures, a young man wearing white cowboy boots, a matching Stetson, and practically nothing else, strummed his guitar while standing on a concrete median as pedestrian and vehicular traffic streamed by. The “Naked Cowboy”—his title was emblazoned across the back of his white briefs—was a street performer who certainly attracted a lot of attention. Cell phone photographers grouped together across from him while he posed for pictures with a succession of female tourists. I couldn’t see if they tipped him for the service, but if they had, I didn’t want to know where he put the money.
The triple-X movie theaters are long gone, and pickpocketing is said to be a “lost art” in that part of the city, but when I crossed the street amid a throng of people, I hugged my shoulder bag to my side. It always pays to be vigilant, especially in an unfamiliar environment.
When I had safely crossed, I happened to look up at the news crawl that was making its way around one of the buildings overlooking Broadway.
BREAKING NEWS, FASHION WEEK EXCLUSIVE:
WHILE NEW YORK CITY DETECTIVES DENY LINKS IN DEATHS OF TWO MODELS, TOP DESIGNERS BEEF UP SECURITY AT SHOWS.
The press has a tendency to dramatize events, I thought. Everything these days is “breaking news.” But were authorities protesting too much? By strongly denying there was a connection between the two models, were they inadvertently convincing the public of the opposite? My mother used to say “A maid convinced against her will is of the same opinion still.” She didn’t know the origin of the reference, but she quoted it every time I tried to persuade her to change her mind.
“Hey, lady, you’re holding up traffic here,” a woman’s voice called out to me.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, looking around.
A female police officer raised her baton and saluted me. “We gotta keep everything and everybody moving,” she said.
“I’m on my way,” I called back, hurrying to make the light at the next corner.
I finally reached the address on Eighteenth Street and joined a flow of people inside where a large poster pointed in the direction of the panel discussion I wanted to attend. The seats were filling up rapidly and I scouted them in search of a good vantage point. There was a vacant one two rows removed from the dais where the panelists would sit, and I headed in that direction. It wasn’t until I’d reached it that I realized that I’d be sitting next to Steven Crowell, the New York Post reporter who had written the piece I’d read that morning, and who’d approached me for a comment at the party the night of Sandy’s ill-fated fashion show.
“My lucky day,” he said as I sat.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” I said, not eager to encourage conversation.
“Mind if I ask you a question?” he said.
I sighed. “No, of course not, but please respect that I know nothing about the death of the model—of either model.”
“Yeah, sure, but why are you so involved in Fashion Week? You’re a mystery writer, not a designer, or press.”
“I’m a friend of one of the designer’s mothers. We’re from the same town.”
“Cabot Cove, Maine,” he said, uncapping a pen with his teeth and poising it over a reporter’s pad resting on his thigh.
“That’s right. I also have family here in New York, and I’m meeting with people in publishing. So Fashion Week is not the only reason—”
“Xandr Ebon is your friend’s son, right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know him back in Cabot Cove?”
“Not well,” I said, pleased with the interruption when the moderator took the microphone while other panelists filed in and found their seats behind placards bearing their names. The hefty Claude de Molissimo was hard to miss with his mane of white hair, glowing, red-cheeked face that could have belonged to a man thirty years younger, and a stylish white bush jacket over a pale blue shirt and vibrant red-and-white ascot. The moderator welcomed everyone and then introduced each member of the panel, saving de Molissimo for last. It struck me that while she had lavished praise on those who were introduced before de Molissimo, her comments about him were surprisingly short and lacking in enthusiasm, confirming my impression that he was not a beloved figure in fashion circles.
The panel’s topic addressed the question of how the fashion world would have to adjust to the increasingly aging population of America, not a particularly scintillating subject for the majority of audience members, who appeared to be in their twenties. One of the panelists, a Ph.D. in data science, launched into a lengthy presentation of facts about America’s growing number of people falling into the “senior citizen” category. The number of people over sixty-five years of age would more than double between 2009 and 2030, he reported. They would compose nineteen percent of the population by then, and, according to a statistic quoted in 2012, they represented the age group with the most money, their average annual income more than seventy-five thousand.
That led to the next panelist, a young woman whose thesis seemed to be that regardless of how many Americans were sprouting gray hair, fashion still had to focus on youthful designs and open the doors to young designers.
A third member of the panel, billed as a psychologist-cum-designer, debunked the notion that older people wanted designs created for them. “They want to remember when they were young,” he intoned, “and would resent designs blatantly conceived to cover up their added weight and wrinkled skin.” There seemed to be a murmur of agreement in the young audience, which did not include me. I thought that his remarks were offensive.
De Molissimo evidently agreed with me. He’d listened quietly as the others made their points, a scowl on his broad face. When the psychologist-turned-designer concluded his remarks, de Molissimo pulled a microphone close to him and said in a booming voice, “What we’re hearing here today is what’s wrong with the fashion world, and always has been.” He went on for another ten minutes despite the moderator’s attempt to cut him off, his diatribe aimed at the cult of youth in the fashion world, teenage models seeing plastic surgeons, outlandish
styles that no self-respecting woman would ever be seen in, and all of it fueled by money. He saved his final salvo for models’ agents, whom he termed “bloodsuckers preying on egotistical young women who think there’s something glamorous about tottering on a catwalk in obscenely high heels for a few minutes.”
Until he spoke, the panelists’ comments had been dry and boring, but de Molissimo’s attack garnered everyone’s attention, including Steven Crowell, who laughed when de Molissimo stopped talking. “That’s why he’s hated in the industry,” he said. “His book rattled a lot of cages.”
“He certainly doesn’t pull any punches,” I said. “I have his book to read.” I retrieved it from the oversize bag I carried that day and showed it to Crowell.
Our attention returned to the dais, where de Molissimo suddenly stood, announced he had an appointment to get to, and walked away, leaving a perplexed moderator whose panel had another half hour to go.
“Excuse me,” I said to Crowell, getting up, squeezing by others, and following de Molissimo from the room.
He’d stopped at a coffee service in the lobby, where he grabbed a glazed donut from a tray.
“Hello,” I said.
He turned and glared at me.
“Sorry to bother you, but I heard your talk inside and—”
“You were in that room?” he said.
I was taken aback. “Shouldn’t I have been?” I asked.
“Frankly,” he replied, “you’re a little old to be in that crowd.”
“I am?”
His stern expression softened. “I wasn’t sure anyone there had made it out of middle school. You’ll have to pardon me,” he said. “I’m not in the best of moods.”
“No pardon needed,” I said. I took his book from my bag. “Vaughan Buckley, my publisher at Buckley House, gave me this copy. Would you autograph it for me?”
His face brightened and he pulled a pen from his breast pocket. “Vaughan, eh? He’s a good man.”
“No argument from me.”
“You’re a writer, too?” he asked, signing his name with a flourish.
“Yes, Jessica Fletcher. I write murder mysteries.”
He let out a loud “Ha! Sure, Jessica Fletcher. What’re you doing at Fashion Week? Researching your next book? If you are, I can tell you where all the bodies are buried.”
“I was hoping that you would,” I said with a smile, despite it not being my motivation in pursuing him.
“Really? You want an inside look into this so-called industry? Come on, let’s have breakfast. It’s on you. I’m a little short of cash, but I’m rich in knowledge.”
We went to a luncheonette across from the building in which the panel had taken place and sat at a booth. De Molissimo ordered steak and eggs, with a side of hash browns. Since I’d finished breakfast barely an hour ago, I stuck with tea and toast. As we sat there, he picked up where he’d left off at the panel, berating anything and everything about the fashion business and Fashion Week in particular. He was especially harsh on plastic surgeons. “They take these gorgeous young girls, some as young as twelve or fourteen, and promise to make them even more beautiful by using injections and or even the scalpel. ‘Sculpting,’ they call it.” He paused to use a piece of toast to soak up the yoke from his fried eggs. “You know Dr. Edmund Sproles?” he asked.
“The name is not familiar.”
“You want to see the really dark side of the fashion biz, spend time with him. He’s gotten rich catering to models, hundreds of them who flock to his fancy Park Avenue office, his bills paid by parents who think their daughters are God’s gift to the modeling world. The modeling business is so viciously competitive that these pretty young kids think that if their thighs were slightly narrower, or their nose was tweaked just a little, or their lips were a tad fuller, they’d have a leg up on the competition. It’s pathetic.”
“I thought that was starting to change a little,” I said.
“Not enough for me. You have some advertisers using what they call ‘real-life’ models—there was the Dove campaign. But despite New York’s efforts to encourage older mannequins, if you peruse the fashion layouts, many of the models are barely past puberty and look like walking sticks.”
“It must be hard living that way,” I offered.
“Worse than hard. Modeling agents are no better than the doctors. They encourage these kids not to eat so that they stay skinny, and then take big commissions. Half of the models I know are anorexic. Every time I see one with a little meat on her bones, I root for her, but I know that she won’t get the lucrative jobs apart from the few designers who specialize in what they call ‘full-figured women,’ or even the still fewer who design for ‘plus-size.’”
I assumed that I was considered one of those “full-figured women,” which suits me just fine. I couldn’t help smiling at his passion for what he believed in. The question did cross my mind as to whether he exaggerated the situation and burnished his iconoclastic reputation in order to financially benefit from his views. His curmudgeonly role in the fashion industry seemed to have brought him a lot of notoriety, and he’d successfully used it to write a book and find a wonderful mainstream publisher for it.
“Tell me more about this Dr. Sproles,” I said.
De Molissimo’s face screwed up in disgust, as though even to have mentioned the name was distasteful. He finally said, “I don’t mind plastic surgeons making older people look younger—even if I did, it would be a waste of time—but to screw up the faces and bodies of kids for them to fit some crazy definition of what’s beautiful—well, that brings my blood to a boil. All across this country, teenagers are literally starving themselves to death to match some warped vision of how thin a person should be to look good in clothes. It’s insanity! And I lay that at the feet of the fashion industry. Ready to leave?”
“Yes.” I hesitated to tell him that there was another program I wanted to stop in on for fear that it would set him off on another tirade.
We parted on the sidewalk and he extended his beefy hand. “Nice meeting you,” he said, “and thanks for breakfast. Next time it’ll be on me.”
“It was my pleasure.”
“And say hello to Vaughan Buckley for me.”
“I certainly will,” I said as he walked away, “waddled” being a more accurate description.
My encounters that morning initially with Steven Crowell and closely followed by Claude de Molissimo made me determined to do a little research at the earliest opportunity. First, I would do what I’d promised Grady, and that was to look up Sandy Black’s Hollywood credits as a costume designer. And second, I would see what I could find out about this Dr. Edmund Sproles. Why? I couldn’t tell you at that moment. But he obviously had intimate knowledge of many models, and I wondered whether that included Rowena Roth and Latavia Moore. Could Rowena have died from anorexia? Did Latavia? That was a possibility I hadn’t considered before. Rowena had been as slim as a willow branch, but she hadn’t struck me as emaciated. Some models in fashion magazine layouts look as if the wind would knock them over. Rowena had been sturdier than that. I’d never seen Latavia in life, so I couldn’t judge if she’d been starving herself to stay on top.
The truth was that not only was I interested in the idle speculation that there was something suspicious about their deaths, but I’d also begun to toy with the idea of setting my next murder mystery during New York’s Fashion Week.
When in Rome . . .
Chapter Nine
I had time before the next panel convened and settled on a couch in the building’s lobby with what my dear friend and Cabot Cove’s favorite physician, Seth Hazlitt, likes to call a “newfangled fruit phone.” My skills on the phone are limited—I haven’t mastered typing with my thumbs and I’m not sure I ever will—but I was able to figure out how to access the Internet, and managed to locate a database site for movie infor
mation.
Because I wasn’t sure what name Sandy had used during his years on the West Coast, I started with the professional name he now went under, Xandr Ebon. There was one Xander but no Xandr, and one Ebon and several Ebonies and other variations, but no Xandr Ebon. Going back to basics, I typed in Alexander Black and was disappointed once again when his name did not appear. But I did find three films on which a “Sandy Black” had worked, first as a “costume trainee,” then later as a “costume assistant,” and finally as a “costume design assistant.” Of course it could be another Sandy Black. The same name could belong to a woman rather than a man. But I chose to believe that Sandy had found some success in Hollywood even though his mother had said she’d wanted to forget his time in California.
I didn’t recognize the names of the films on which Sandy Black was credited, but that wasn’t surprising. Between my writing schedule and my travel schedule, I couldn’t remember the last time I had bought a carton of popcorn and sat down in a movie theater to enjoy the show.
I had just typed Sandy’s name into Google to see if I’d overlooked anything when the phone rang. It was his mother, Maggie. I pressed the answer button.
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