Girl Boy Girl

by Savannah Knoop

  I had seventeen hundred dollars in my savings account from my JT outings, and I was working four times a week at the restaurant.

  One evening at work, a bunch of us were standing around chatting and joking with our boss. Without thinking, I asked him if he wanted to finance my clothing project.

  “Show me what you have,” he said, calling my bluff.

  The next day I dropped off a package of one-of-a-kind pieces in cotton voile, printed with a black-and-white cheetah pattern, along with some drawings I had made at City College in my patterning class. He gave the package to his wife, Pauline.

  The following day, my boss handed me an envelope with a note on quarter-inch graph paper, in the sleekest handwriting I had ever seen. “Dearest Savannah . . .” Pauline wrote that she could see where these ideas were going, and she was very interested in becoming my financial partner. I gasped when I read the words, “Please call me after work.”

  I had always liked Pauline, but I had never met her outside of the restaurant. She was a Thai woman about a foot or so shorter than me. That day we met she wore high-waisted men’s trousers with platform shoes, and a baggy cobalt undershirt made out of silk. Her deep brown hair was twisted up into a half pompadour. I liked the way she had dusted silver eye makeup all the way around her eyes. She smelled like lavender.

  We sat down at my kitchen table and went over what we would need to begin a clothing business. I was excited about embarking on this project—it had nothing to do with JT. At the same time, I was aware of my influences. Much of my passion had been spurred by the opportunity to wear designer clothing as JT. One huge inspiration had been Gary Graham. After fawning over his clothes repeatedly, Mike Potter gave me Gary’s phone number while I was in New York. I called him using my JT accent, a rarity back then—Laura usually made all the calls. Gary invited me over. Laura stayed behind at the hotel. I walked down to Tribeca to meet Gary in his studio, and found him hunched over the counter, brow furrowed, examining a leather jacket inside out. His lips were pursed. He wore a paisley shirt rolled up at the sleeves, and his hair looked as if he had been pulling it in different directions.

  “What’re you workin’ on?” I asked.

  “This coat . . . I think I’ve made it harder than it is,” he said wistfully. “I’ve been at it for days now, and we’re going into production with it soon.”

  “Is that the sample?”

  “The fourth sample.”

  “Seems like hard work.”

  “It is, but it’s rewarding,” he said earnestly. He got off his stool and folded up the jacket. I felt very comfortable around Gary, and stopped worrying about my accent and my behavior. He walked me through the racks.

  “Judging by your clothes, I would think you know what you like, so pick out some stuff. But I also have a suit. . . . Do you wear seersucker?”

  “I love seersucker!”

  “It’s kind of weird, so I didn’t put it on the floor, but I think it would look great on you,” he said, gesturing wildly as he walked behind a white muslin curtain. He came out with a classic blue-and-white seersucker, but it wasn’t at all conventional. The coat had a princess seam with layered tails, and came with a pair of baggy pants to match. I squealed.

  “Oh good, you like it! Try it on. Did you pick out some other stuff?”

  “No, not yet.” This clothing was expensive, which made me nervous.

  “Well you’re going to need a shirt to go underneath the suit . . . something like this?”

  He went around to the racks, pulling one of almost every piece.

  As I tried the clothes on, Gary stayed outside the dressing room, explaining details of dye and construction. He confided the ways he would have changed each piece. His way of working was completely hands-on. He had a dye lab in the basement, made his own labels, and signed each piece.

  I picked out a suit, a shirt, a jacket, pants, and a quilted short vest that felt like feudal armor. Then Gary led me around, showing me how everything was made. I decided right then that he was my idol. I wanted to be a designer just like him.

  This was all part of my education. Interning with Nisa had given me a pragmatic sense of the process of clothing design. I knew Pauline and I needed to make a sample line out of fabrics we could buy repeatedly. We needed a catalogue, and we needed patterns. Eventually we would have to do a trade show. Pauline and I set up our fictitious business name under “Tinc.” In Thai, tinc means to throw away. We opened a bank account and Pauline deposited 2,000 dollars. This money would be used to make the fall line and to pay overhead for the office; any extras came out of my pocket.

  My friend Brenda had rented an office space in the Grant building on the corner of Seventh and Market, to work on her own line. The rent was $250 a month, and I offered to split it with her. We shared the first suite on the landing of the second flight of wrought-iron stairs. Oasis, a healthcare clinic for the mentally ill, was stationed directly across from us, and the Bike Coalition was down the hall. Black stenciled letters adorned the frosted glass doors of each suite. The building looked like a set in The Maltese Falcon.

  We hired a friend to help us build a sixty-inch cutting and patterning table with a shelf on the bottom to store bolts of fabric. As we built the tables, people wandered in to see what we were doing. A lawyer barged in and asked, “How much to fix my canvas yacht covers?”

  “We don’t do that kind of thing,” I said indignantly. “We’re not menders.”

  Once completed, the table took up half of the room. There was just enough space to slide in and make our patterns on either side of the table. Outside our window we also had a balcony of sorts, the roof of a donut shop. We used this setting for our photo shoots and as our dye lab, which consisted of a hose, a tumbler of salt, and a few buckets of paint.

  Once the studio was set up, Brenda and I drove down to Los Angeles to hunt for fabric at a textile show. We quickly found out that most of the fabrics at the show were sold at a thousand-yard minimum. We heard that there were jobbers making smaller sales nearby. We found one called “B and J” down an alley, in a warehouse jammed to the ceiling with bolts of fabric. It was oppressively hot and dusty. The man at the front had hair on his arms so thick that one could have parted and combed it. He handed each of us a pair of scissors to cut swatches of the fabrics we wanted.

  “I do not sell by the yard, only by the bolt, ladies.” I watched the man’s eyes crawl up the slits of Brenda’s orange running shorts as she disappeared into the depths of the warehouse. I turned around to avoid making eye contact with him.

  None of these fabrics seemed right. I was reminded of the time Laura and I had met with Ennio Capasa of Costume National. I had been struck by the fabrics. The pieces were displayed on vaulted lacquered pipes, and were made of rubberized cottons, destroyed silks, and veils of cashmere. Ennio picked up a heavy winter jacket and explained that he’d hired a factory to blend a special weave of wool with metal to emblazon the back of his coats with gold-and-copper peacocks. Unlike Gary Graham’s work, Ennio’s pieces weren’t examples of hands-on artistry; they were sleek and seamless. I had a feeling it would take me awhile to get to that point, if ever.

  Towards the end of the corridor in B and J, I found a pair of cream-and-black bolts of canvas and a peacock-colored silk taffeta. Close enough. Down another corridor I found some cotton lycras, a micro-modal material, and a bolt of nude rip-stop.

  When I returned, the man was drinking mint tea, his legs propped up on a bolt of fabric. Maps of sweat bled through his collared pink shirt at his chest and armpits. He disapprovingly took one of my swatches and pointed to a sign that read, “Do not swatch the silk.”

  “I didn’t know it was silk.”

  “What are you doing here then?”

  “I am here to buy fabric.”

  “Only by the bolt, not by the yard. This is for real clothing-makers. Not hobbyists.”

  Why is it that no one takes young women seriously? JT didn’t go around encountering this b
ullshit. JT didn’t even have to say anything. But I had to state my mission to every person I met, reassuring them that I was indeed serious, that I was not wasting their time.

  “Do you want my business or not?” I held the swatch in my hand, rubbing the silk and praying that he wouldn’t say no.

  “Sweetie, I just want to make sure you know what this place is. Is this all you want?”

  “Yes.”

  He called out, “Mauricio! Mauricio!”

  The owner handed him the swatches, and he went adeptly into the forest, returning with each bolt. They weighed at least forty pounds each. Mauricio was dripping sweat by the time he had picked them all out. I was scared of the inconvenience of these bolts, how much space they took up, and the amount of underpaid labor that had gone into making and transporting them. What was I getting myself into? Mauricio helped us pack the fabric into our rental car, the bolts falling over each other like pick-up-sticks. We gave him a tip and drove off.

  Biting our fingernails, we watched the sun set. This is the beginning, I felt. Every oldie on the radio spoke to me. Everything was a sign. In the back of my mind I was thinking, I finally have found something in my life besides being JT.

  I stayed up every night for weeks making patterns for the fall season. I hired a sample-maker, a woman named Dianna from Vietnam. I ripped apart my favorite sailor shirt and Italian warm-up jacket. I made two shirts, a pair of canvas jodhpurs, and a rain slicker inspired by something that Asia had given me. I hired a patternmaker to make a jumpsuit out of cream canvas.

  Once a week I went to a San Francisco boutique that had pioneered some local designers. I hoped they might try out Tinc. When I finally got an appointment with the owner, I said that I would bring in our catalogue—only I didn’t have one. I begged my friend Naomi to be my model, and my mother to be my photographer. We pulled it off in two days. Pauline came in with me for the appointment wearing a stylish black windbreaker. I was so proud to have her with me. We wrote our first order.

  Going door-to-door seemed like the best way to get the next orders. Brenda and I planned a trip to New York to try to sell our clothes to boutiques there. We had made lists of buyers, hoping to set up appointments in advance. But every call ended with the words, “not interested.” Click.

  I wished I could be more like JT, that I could charm people despite my shyness. If I could only contact the people JT had met: Calvin Klein, Bianca Jagger, Juergen Teller, Courtney Love. If only I could ask Winona Ryder to wear my clothes. But I couldn’t ask. I didn’t want to ask. This was my life, and that was his.

  Without any appointments, we flew to New York, deciding to try the pitch in person. We stayed with my former roommate Shane in a little flat on Henry Street in a sixth-floor walk-up.

  In the brute February wind we walked through Manhattan neighborhoods with our color copied catalogues. Our bags were stuffed with samples just in case a buyer challenged us and said, “Okay, let’s see it.” It was a whole new way of traveling. I found it vaguely masochistic and very exciting, though in the end our trip did not bring the results I had hoped for. My savings had dwindled into nothing. The money from Pauline was two-thirds gone. We hadn’t even done production yet for our one order. With just one six hundred dollar order, there was no way to break even. I placed some pieces in consignment shops, but consignment moves too slowly. I needed twice the amount of money that Pauline had given to Tinc originally to do a trade show. I needed four thousand dollars.

  The phone rang twice in a row.

  I pulled myself out of bed, and ran to the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh good, you’re there.” It was my sister, Hennessey. “I wasn’t sure if I should call you. That’s why I called and hung up. Sorry. Anyway, Laura called me several times. The film producers of The Heart really want JT to go to Cannes for the premiere. Laura thinks she has the money lined up to make it worth your while, but she said she couldn’t ask you directly.”

  “How much do you think is ‘worth it’?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I guess it’s relative. Probably more than you’ve ever made.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “Well, to be honest, I didn’t even want to tell you about it. But I felt like that wasn’t right either. It’s your decision to make.”

  “Maybe if it’s enough, I’ll do it just one more time.”

  Just once more. I sounded like an alcoholic taking just one more drink.

  I vacillated for a while, then called Laura.

  “I knew I shouldn’t ask you, but you could make four thousand dollars in four days,” Laura said solemnly.

  My stomach clenched. Four thousand dollars.

  “There is one condition though. I told people that JT couldn’t go out to parties because he was afraid of having a relapse. So, you’re not allowed to drink. It will make the producers nervous, and they’re the ones paying JT to do this press. And between you and me, you don’t do as well when you drink.”

  Here we go, not even a minute into being JT again and Laura was telling me that I had problems, and what to do about them. I was annoyed, but I knew she was right. When I drank I said things that JT shouldn’t.

  “Asia is on the wagon, too. So you won’t be the only one.”

  Asia. I felt the icicle beginning to drip.

  “Okay, I’ll go.”

  CANNES

  RIDING SHOTGUN IN THE BIG WHITE VAN, Brian Young surfed his Blackberry while Laura and I sat sandwiched between Geoff and Thor in the back. The tawny plains shimmered in the heat; occasionally a blackbird flew up in front of us. We had arrived at a hotel situated in the arid mountains northwest of Cannes the afternoon before. As we got out of the car with our luggage, the producers hefted cardboard boxes of what looked to be about four pounds of apples, three loaves of wheat bread, four cartons of soy milk, one jar of almond butter, one jar of jam, and twelve bars of chocolate. They had offered to get us some snacks for our room, not realizing what that would entail.

  Lilly Bright, one of the producers, and her boyfriend, Brad, carried the boxes. I could feel them fuming. They had scoured the health food stores in Cannes to find all of JT’s requests.

  “We couldn’t get you the organic almonds,” Lilly said cuttingly.

  Speedie jokingly said, “No organic almonds! Take it back!”

  Lilly scowled. Laura quickly said, “Thank you, this stuff makes a big difference. We really appreciate all your effort, Lilly.”

  Lilly looked like she was going to drop the box.

  “You want me to take that?” I asked. Best to act like I wanted this stuff, right?

  “No. I’m just going to put it down here,” she flashed me a polite smile.

  Asia sauntered up. She stood barefoot in the doorframe. “What’s with all this stuff?”

  I shrugged as though I had no part in it. I reminded myself that I was going to keep my distance from her. My head jerked back. I’m not falling for her again—her bony, bare feet, her sloppy hair, her winded speech—I told myself. Once I got home from Tennessee, I wouldn’t let myself fantasize about her anymore. I knew that chapter was over.

  We set the boxes down in a fairy tale cottage, which had a wood-shingled round roof and a window seat overlooking a trellis of grape vines. It was a suite. The bedroom had a porch overlooking a gulch now in shadow. On the closet door hung three garment bags marked with the Costume National insignias. Laura and I rushed past the boxes and luggage, unzipping the garment bags feverishly. The designer had flown out specifically for the premiere of The Heart to dress JT. He had sent a freight of clothes for all of us to wear. For Laura, a lambskin trench, lace undershirts, a Wonder Woman belt, long skirts with hoops, and kid gloves. Geoff got a sheer pink dress shirt and sharkskin pants. I picked out a thin wool sharply lapelled jacket, matching pants, an onyx vest woven with metal, and a black shirt with sequins sewn down the front. This was how clothes should feel: my posture instantly changed, I enunciated, I didn’t worry abou
t my body. I could joust. If I took off my jacket I could wrestle. I was ready for anything. It was like finding a new part of myself that had been lost at birth, my full potential reclaimed.

  I was helping Laura snap on a pair of racing gloves when Roberta, one of the producers, came in. Everything was spread all around the room. She began to pluck pieces off the couch and love seat. “You guys have done well for yourselves! Look at this stuff! It is fa-bu-lous! JT, you look fantastic! Oh, you all look fantastic!” She found another pair of gloves on the windowsill.

  “Can I have these?” Her eyes darted around.

  “No!” Laura countered. “We don’t even know what we get to keep yet.”

  “Please?”

  “No, Roberta!” Laura said grabbing the gloves.

  “What are you wearing, Asia?” Roberta asked, her tone still a little hurt. Asia had slipped into the room quietly.

  “Fendi, you know. I still have that contract with them,” she said with an exasperated tone, then turned and left. I turned my head away from her direction so my eyes couldn’t follow her.

  Roberta left as well.

  Laura watched them go and then laughed under her breath, “What a hustler!”

  As the vans descended over the lazy hills, the driver put on a Beatles CD. Laura and Thor sang along, “I am the Walrus. Goo goo g’joob.” The garment bags of finery hung like drapes, swinging back and forth with each curve. Asia and I were to walk the red carpet before the screening of The Heart. As the van crested a hill we saw the ocean and an enclave of high rises crowding up against a crop of beige sand. We reached the lowlands, and suddenly traffic came to a stop. Brian cursed. Apparently Fahrenheit 9-11 had just screened, and a group of Iraq War protesters clotted the streets, drumming and chanting. We crawled behind them. Peppering the crowd of tie-dye and banners and peace signs were little green ears. “Shrek II fans!” Thor pointed out.