The Designer

by Aubrey Parker

  Two massive bags of dresses, shirts, pants, everything. The total bill is less than forty dollars.

  Back at the shop, I examine the “craftsmanship.” I tug, pull, stretch, and examine the raw ends. I take photos. Then the fun part: I take a seam ripper and tear them to shreds.

  The fabric is worthless, the raw edges unravel just by moving them around. The edges look like a shaggy head, desperate for a haircut.

  The clothes are overly complicated. Too many folds and flashy notions. There are few simple patterns, but all the solids give me a headache. The colors are just too bright. But by now it’s clear to me why: simplicity in design shows off how badly the clothes are made, same for the fabric.

  In the Expendable Chic design room, they must keep shouting: Crazier prints! Stupider patterns! That color doesn’t make my eyes bleed, Todd, so turn it up another notch! And what’s that straight hem … can’t we add frills? Something totally unnecessary.

  Anything for distraction, like the flourish in a magician’s trick.

  Anything to hide the fact that the fabric and the make is almost worse than nothing.

  And that’s when I realize I can’t do it.

  Because I can’t make good things out of bad fabric.

  I can’t craft good designs when the demands of distraction are so high.

  And yet I persist. Day after day. Luckily, the tailor work is light, and I haven’t had many FairTraded orders. It lets me spend most of my time in the back room, trying to spin gold from pilled cotton.

  And the entire time, Hampton Brooks is in my head.

  I wonder why, if he dislikes me so much, he hired me for this job.

  And I wonder why, if I dislike him so much, I’m killing myself to do it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  STACY

  MY HEART IS POUNDING.

  I sit on my stool, shoulders rounded inward and hands between my knees. My back is bent. My head keeps wanting to come down. My heels are together on the stool.

  Hampton is standing. He keeps shifting his gaze from the sketches to me.

  Judging my designs.

  Judging me.

  “I don’t understand,” he finally says.

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “What you’ve done here.”

  I stand halfway, pointing at my sketches. “You didn’t give me a lot of direction as to what you wanted, so—”

  “I shouldn’t have to specify. You’re supposed to be a professional.”

  “Yes, but I mean what kind of line and usage, like are you preparing for summer or in advance for winter, and if there were any holes in your current lines that you’re looking to fill. I couldn’t reach you, so—”

  “I wasn’t sitting around and waiting for your call. I have a business to run, whether that business is to your liking or not.”

  From the minute Hampton walked in, his body language was exactly like the shadow boss I’ve imagined for two weeks. I haven’t projected a false Hampton, birthed from my paranoid imagination. He is the shadow come to life.

  What’s this chip on his shoulder?

  Why did he walk through my door like an enemy rooting for his protégée to fail?

  He shakes his head as he leafs through the designs again. Each sheet of thin paper whispers against its cousins.

  “Explain to me what you were trying to do here.”

  I take a moment to find my senses. They’re right there, just beyond my reach.

  “At first I imagined a simple line. I started with two ideas: that the clothes needed to be high enough quality to meet …” I pause, because I almost said, … to meet my standards. “… to be a step up, because you mentioned that you always welcome improvement.”

  “Of course I always welcome improvement,” Hampton snaps.

  “W-well, that was one thing. A step up. The other was your limitations.”

  “Limitations?”

  He gives me an eye. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Hampton Brooks recently, and I’ve researched him enough to know there’s no shortage of women who dream of his eyes lingering. But this stare he’s giving me now is nothing to envy.

  “No, no. I misspoke. I just meant your …” Careful. “… your company’s established, strategic constraints. I know you need to keep production prices low to be profitable without raising prices.”

  I wait to see how that lands. He nods. “Okay.”

  “The problem with any simple line was that the constraints don’t allow for the attention to detail needed when the craft itself is so on display. I realized after a while that’s why Expendable Chic clothes are never very simple. More complex patterns, more accents, brighter colors and patterns and prints, that all hides the imperfections.”

  I wonder if Hampton will flare at the word “imperfections.” He seems to be perching like a vulture, waiting for an insult. But he doesn’t.

  “So, I figured I couldn’t do a simple line,” I continue. “There’s nowhere to hide. For a while, I tried designing clothes like what you already have.”

  Hampton looks down at the sketches. “These are nothing like what I already have.”

  “Exactly. Because that didn’t work either. I can’t design like your team.” I stand. “And honestly, I don’t see any point in you hiring me to design for you if I’m only repeating what your current people have already done. You only pushed this offer on me after I did something you didn’t want me to do.”

  We match stares. He flinches first, then holds up my sketches.

  “So that’s what this is? You do things that I don’t want?”

  “How’s your blazer, Mr. Brooks?”

  He blinks. “What?”

  “I watched you get out of your car before you came in. Saw you take a jacket off, because it’s a little warm today. Which jacket was it?”

  “The same one. What of it?”

  “Have you worn it between today and the first day we met?”

  He hesitates as if sensing a trap. “Yes. What’s your point?”

  “Just that maybe you don’t always know what you want,” I say.

  He shakes the sketches, eyes never leaving me.

  “What I see here is a compromise. A compromise is a situation where nobody wins. I can tell just by looking at these roughs that we could never make them to your specifications. I don’t even know what half of these seams are.”

  Of course you don’t. Because you only sell garbage.

  “Look up the fabrics when you can. You’ll find they won’t fit your specifications, either.”

  “You didn’t even try. You designed clothes the way you want them, rather than what your client asked for.”

  “I designed what the client needed.”

  “What the client can’t make. This checks none of the boxes. It’s not affordable for the Expendable Chic business model, and maybe can’t even be manufactured on our existing equipment.”

  “I looked it up. It can, with modifications.”

  “Which machines are we supposed to modify? Am I supposed to convert a solvent factory to produce unprofitable clothes?”

  I hold up my hands. “You don’t see the whole picture.”

  “But you do, I assume? Enlighten me, if you know best.”

  “I don’t exactly have a business degree, but even I know that profit is the difference between income and expenses.”

  “You got that without a business degree?”

  “My point is that you’re only focused on expenses — how much the clothes cost to make. The solution is simple. Just charge a little more to balance it out.”

  Hampton laughs.

  “What?”

  “You don’t understand our model at all. You don’t know our marketing or our customer avatars or our target demographic.”

  “Not the details. But how much more would you have to charge? It couldn’t be more than—”

  “I don’t have time to tell you all the ways you’re wrong. There’s the supply end. We don’t have the
relationships to get this sort of fabric in the volume we’d need, at prices that are scalable.”

  “I’m sure you could find new connections if—”

  “We don’t have the factories to spare, as I mentioned.” He hesitates at this, almost as if he remembers something, but then focuses and goes on. “We may not have all the equipment. The people who make our products aren’t trained in these techniques. If you honestly expect a bump in quality, that means we need a higher round of QA screening. You’re underestimating how much more we’d need to charge. It’s just not possible.”

  I think he’s lying. He doesn’t believe that it’s impossible; he’s just unwilling to check.

  “You don’t want to be here, do you?” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you’d come back, but not just to meet with me. I could have mailed these in. You said you were in town for something else. Between when you made me the job offer and now, you’ve soured on this idea, haven’t you? You only came in to close the loop, because you said you would. But you’re not looking to say yes. You came here to say no because you wish you weren’t in here talking to me at all.”

  “You’re right.” He turns on his heel. “This was a mistake.”

  Halfway to the door, I call, “Mr. Brooks.”

  He looks back. He is a handsome man. Too bad he’s such a prick.

  “I think you at least owe me an honest appraisal.”

  “You got your money.”

  I walk to the register. Open it. Take out his check. Then tear it into fourths. Beneath my stewing anger, that hurts a little. Okay, a lot. I could have done great things with that money.

  “Now I’ve worked for free. Tell me the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “What you think.”

  “About your designs?”

  “If you want. If that makes you more comfortable.”

  He’s fully turned. I march toward him, heart pounding and hands wanting to clench. I could breathe fire. Step by step, my fury grows.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You hired me because you respected my work.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “But you don’t like me. Something about me grates on you. So tell me why you’re turning this idea down for no good reason.”

  “I gave you a half-dozen good reasons!”

  But I’m not stupid, and I won’t play coy anymore. For a while, my mother wanted a career in graphic design. I helped her study. I’m not a brand expert, but I know enough for this.

  “You’re being deliberately stubborn,” I say. “You haven’t even looked at my notes on brand fit.”

  “I saw them.”

  “And?”

  “Your designs don’t fit the Expendable Chic brand. They’re not even close.”

  “I didn’t mean for them to match everything about the company at the top level. Expendable Chic doesn’t strike me as truly being about expendability. That word may be in your name, but it’s not one of your company’s core values.”

  “How the hell would you know what our core values are?”

  “Because I watched you take your company’s clothes to children with cancer. I saw how much it pleased you when the clothes made them happy. I talked to people on your team. You’re not trying to make things that don’t last, that don’t matter in the end. That’s just your hook. You want to make a difference. You make your mark on the world by saying your clothes are expendable because that’s what you think pleases your customers the most. You think they need the stuff to be happy — more clothes, more variety, more distractions from the drudgery of modern life. Low prices, high volume, high wow factor.” I take another step, bringing us almost toe to toe. “But your company isn’t about cheap, or disposable. It’s about pleasing people. Deep down, I’m guessing you built Expendable Chic so you could make lives better however you can.”

  Hampton looks like he wants to say I’m being presumptuous, but he doesn’t speak. It might be because I’m right. It might be because Expendable Chic isn’t quite what he thinks it is on the surface, and he only realizes it now.

  “I’m proposing is a sub-brand,” I say, tapping the sketch. “Something that’s within and beneath Expendable Chic. Something that matches the rest of your lines enough to fit, yet would have its own identity. Like Victoria’s Secret has Pink. This new line would share your company’s core values. It would just do it differently.”

  “And how exactly would it do that?”

  “By making customers happy in ways that don’t revolve one hundred percent around their wallets. By focusing more on affordable quality, and less on cheap.”

  Hampton’s eyes are still on me. I’ve got him. He sees the truth, and the brilliance of my idea — the way I’ve managed to create affordable clothes that don’t belong in the basement.

  But I’m wrong.

  Instead of recognizing the truth of what I’ve said and the brilliance of my proposal, Hampton turns and leaves without a word.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  STACY

  IT STARTS TO RAIN THAT evening.

  At first, it was sunny, then threatening clouds, and now the downpour. Everywhere is gray, the ground muddy. It’s terrible that a such a promising start could end up here.

  The teapot whistles in my upstairs apartment while I’m sitting restlessly in a chair. I’m out of sorts and don’t know why. Until I realize that I’ve spent every waking minute of the past two weeks down in my shop, slaving over those designs for Expendable Chic.

  It’s strange. The absence of that work, now that Hampton is no longer interested bothers me. It’s not that I miss the project itself — the tireless, thankless sketching for a boss I was sure would disapprove and ultimately did. It’s more that my time is too empty. I have nothing to do that feels worth doing. Nothing to occupy my mind and hands. I’ve gone from full-press, to get the sketches ready in time, to nothing. No slowing. Just this immediate stop.

  I pour boiling water over my herbal teabag.

  Then, only realizing what I’m doing until I’m doing it, I walk downstairs.

  To the shop.

  The lights are off, but the one I’ve left on outside glows through the window. Williamsville sleeps when it’s dark, so I go to the door and flip the switch. Then, since I’m already there, I open the door and peek outside. The street, dark as it is, looks like a moor. Like a thatched-roof village from three centuries ago.

  I close the door, then stand with my back to it. It’s hard to stand straight. I feel heavy. Dragging. Like I’m carrying a burden, yet I’m not sure what it is.

  I trudge to my drafting room and turn on the light.

  I gaze out the window in here, which sees only darkness and runnels of undulating water on the glass. The sound is a lullaby. I want to lie atop my table and let the raindrops kiss me into sleep.

  But I sit instead, and I take a pencil. I want to work on the sketches even if Hampton doesn’t want them. As much as I fought this project, I ended up proud of my work. Hampton almost made me feel bad, but with him gone and the moment behind me, I can see my true feelings.

  I loved those clothes. From Expendable Chic’s standpoint, they raised the bar. From mine, technically, they lower it. Either way, they were foundation pieces. Designs to evolve and come to love. I can add all the care they need. Inexpensive doesn’t have to mean cheap.

  But I can’t work. Can’t do anything with the pencil in my hand. Because hate them or not, Hampton took my sketches. He probably didn’t even realize it, but he stormed out with them in his fist. I didn’t even get paid. I threw my money away, just to make a point that couldn’t be made.

  I wonder if I should bill him.

  I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.

  I wonder why I’d want to.

  I wonder why I feel as empty over the absence of the shadow boss as I do over the absence of the work.

  For two weeks, I’ve wondered how I’d handle meetin
g him again. Who is this man? I know what the paparazzi shows — his beautiful face, his beach body, the way pop culture desires him as its handsome darling. But I met two sides of the man himself. One side, I loathe. The other?

  Well, that’s the mystery.

  It’s hard to believe the Hampton I glimpsed at the hospital is the same ass who argued in my shop today.

  I feel that heaviness again. That weight in my heart.

  There’s a small sound. A tinkling, as of chimes.

  I must have left the front door unlocked when I peeked at the rain. Now, well after dinnertime, someone has decided to walk in. Someone clueless, considering that the only light on in the entire place is the one back here.

  I walk out and see a silhouette. I flip on the light, and there’s Hampton, a collapsed umbrella at his side, dripping on my mat. He’s holding something in his other hand, like a rag.

  “Mr. Brooks?”

  “Hampton.”

  “What are you doing here? I thought you’d gone?”

  “I didn’t pay you. You tore up the check.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t need—”

  “I insist.”

  His voice is quieter than before. Disarming. The light in here isn’t enough. I can’t read his face, and something stills my feet from walking closer.

  “But you didn’t like them.”

  “You were paid on spec. The money is yours regardless.” His hand dips into his pocket. He must have already written the check because he sets a folded piece of paper about that size on the waiting nook end table.

  “Besides,” he says. “I got to thinking.”

  Something is wrong. Strange. I wonder if he’s been drinking. We parted hours ago, and now it looks like he’s just been hanging around town. In the rain. He flew here in a private jet, so it’s not like his plane’s been delayed.

  When he left, I was furious with him. But then the rain came with the emptiness. It seems to have come to him, too, though I wouldn’t know why. I can’t be mad, even though I’d like to be. I hate Hampton Brooks. He’s arrogant, stubborn, and won’t see common sense. But before me now, it’s almost like something has broken.