by Shirley Lord
He couldn’t believe it. Not because he was his son. Because he, Quentin Peet, who’d unveiled some of the most brilliant, duplicitious characters in the world, was too smart to be fooled. “But,” a voice nagged in his brain, “your own wife fooled you. Despite her being equally horrified over Johnny’s marriage, she still preferred to leave what remained of her inheritance to him and not to you.” It was an act of revenge he didn’t deserve.
He heard the fax machine going in the other room and soon after, the phone began to ring. He ignored both, staring grimly into space. Finally, he picked up The Racing Form and scanned the day’s runners. Perfidy was running at Aqueduct at 8 to 1. It seemed an appropriate choice. He leaned over to call his bookie.
Finito. It was all over. Ginny Walker was never going to be a model, let alone a supermodel. She had just been insulted for the last time and it had given her great pleasure to tear her much-mulled-over contact sheet into shreds and shower them over the so-called style editor’s head.
She should have done it before. After all, she and it had been seen now by three “top bookers” at three “leading model agencies,” as well as by four editors, all with different titles, but the same job, flesh assessor, at four women’s magazines.
Her paper shower had gone to a particularly well deserving assessor with acne at Harper’s Bazaar, who’d had the gall to say to her face, “Sweet, but a shade too ordinary for us.”
There was coffee in a paper cup on her desk. Ginny was tempted to wash away literally the editor’s hypocritical expression of regret by pouring that over her, too. The editor must have read her mind. She moved the cup, and Ginny turned on her three-inch heels and marched away.
No more tears. THERE MUST BE NO MORE TEARS.
She would never set foot in Oz Tabori’s studio again; she would never pose again; she would never read a stupid women’s magazine again. To add colossal insult to horrendous injury she had also learned in the last week that Ford had actually signed Poppy Gan. There was no justice in the world. It was months short of her six-month deadline, but she was on her way to Seventh Avenue in the morning.
By the time she collapsed in a heap at Sophie’s, although her bravado had dried up, a slow-burning anger remained, at the world in general and photographers, model agencies and magazine bookings editors in particular.
“There was a call for you.” Sophie was such a doll; she made it sound like a proposal of marriage.
“I don’t care. I’m not calling him for a while.” Mr. “Everything is going to be okay” Tabori was dead and buried as far as she was concerned.
“It wasn’t a him. It was a her. It was…” Sophie put on her reading glasses. “A Miss Baker Davies, contributing editor of Harper’s Bazaar,” she finished triumphantly.
So the butch stylist had already heard about her aberrant behavior. So what? Ms. Baker Davies could congratulate herself on her all-seeing eye and pat herself on the back that she had known before anyone, including Ginny Walker herself, that her face was anonymous, sweet, but ordinary, lacking that certain “look” factor needed in the great money making faces of today.
“Aren’t you going to call her back?”
“No.”
“Oh, Ginny, dear, I think you should. It could be important”
Was Sophie trying to tell her what she knew only too well? That she had been taking her hospitality without contributing anything to hearth and home? Ginny didn’t really think so, but she was super-sensitive on the subject, and her Bloomingdale’s savings and dowry from the parents were running awfully low.
All the same, she wasn’t going to call the stylist just to hear “I told you so” and run the risk of being kissed, even on the cheek. “No,” Ginny said again brusquely and went into her box and shut the lid.
The evening stretched before her. She had to get away from Sophie’s reproachful eyes. She called Esme; and to her relief, Esme told her she had a night off from Ted—he’d gone to a business conference in Toronto.
Ginny rented an old Bette Davis movie, Now Voyager, and they watched it, eating pizza and drinking kir on the king-size bed in the king-size apartment Esme now shared with Ted in the upper eighties.
Bette’s suffering in the movie made Ginny relax enough to pour out the story of her non-supermodel splash, endless rejections and feelings of total inadequacy.
“But you never wanted to join the brain-dead model set,” Esme exclaimed. “Remember how you told me over and over you were only going through the motions to please your mother and Alex, your genius of a cousin.” Ginny didn’t like the sarcastic way Esme referred to Alex, but forgot it when she continued, “You were born to be a designer. Don’t waste another second thinking about something you never wanted to do in the first place. Get into designing—go to Seventh Avenue.”
Because of Ted’s money, Esme only went to Blooming-dale’s as a shopper now. “You’re needed out there,” she told Ginny soothingly. “There are tons of clothes, but they all look the same. Go to it, Gin…”
By the time Ginny left the apartment, she’d shortened one of Esme’s recent purchases, critiqued a toque hat (suggesting Esme wear it back to front), and altogether—with Esme’s encouragement, the kirs and Bette Davis—felt like a reasonably okay person again, even if a slightly hung-over one.
There was a message in capital letters by Sophie’s phone: “MS. BAKER DAVIES CALLED AGAIN. SHE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED AND SAYS NOT TO WORRY IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. SHE KNOWS OF A JOB FOR YOU WITH A DESIGNER, EVERARD GOSMAN. PLEASE CALL IN THE A.M.”
Underneath, in red pencil, Sophie had written and underlined, “Please wake me up if I’m asleep when you get in or make sure to see me in the morning. I know Gosman. This could be good.” Dear Sophie. Dear Ms. Baker Davies.
Ginny rolled into bed and dreamed Bette Davis’s lover, Paul Henreid, was trying to make love to her in a canoe.
Sophie woke her up with a cup of coffee, apologizing that it was only just after seven, but, “I was so worried I’d miss you.”
Ginny was instantly alert. Good God, Gosman! Baker Davies had called about the possibility of a job with Everard Gosman!
Sophie bubbled over with excitement. What a loving, kindhearted chaperone she’d turned out to be. “I spoke for a long time to your friend, Ms. Baker Davies. She really likes you, you know.” Sophie missed seeing Ginny’s grimace. “Everard Gosman needs an assistant. Of course, he’s not really a designer.” Seeing Ginny’s frown, Sophie added hastily, “I’m telling you this now because in this business you may hear him dismissed unkindly as a merchandiser.”
“Quoi?—excuse my French.”
“That’s what people are called who copy other people’s designs,” Sophie explained carefully, “but Gosman is so good, his copies of French couture at low prices are amazing. I hear the stores are lapping them up. As usual it’s only the jealous ones who call him that.”
Certainly Lee Baker Davies, apparently one of Gosman’s oldest friends, never did. When Ginny called her back an hour later, she asked to meet her for coffee to see her portfolio. She then gave her the third degree about her basic pattern/dressmaking knowledge and business experience.
Thank God what Ginny had learned at FIT and a B.A. in finance were enough to impress Lee. In twenty-four hours she’d arranged an interview for Ginny with Gosman, who hired her on the spot at twenty thousand dollars a year. (She could probably have gotten more, but it didn’t even occur to her to ask until she waltzed home—if you can waltz on the subway.)
That weekend she went to Maryland to tell her parents her good news, and on Monday morning she joined Everard Gosman at 554 Seventh Avenue, spitting distance from the BIG INFLUENCES: Lauren, de la Renta, Karan, Klein… also only a few steps from Lou G. Siegel’s kosher restaurant, where chicken livers on toast were to become her favorite meal, WHEN she had time to eat an actual meal.
Ginny Walker was in heaven and so was Mr. Gosman, who knew he’d never had it so good, because from that Monday on she set out to be absolume
nt indispensable and so she was… a girl Friday, Saturday and every other day of the week if he needed her.
He needed her, all right. During a twenty-minute “training session” Ginny discovered how desperately disorganized he was, with phone calls coming in one after the other, people rushing in and out with “urgent” written all over them, and Gosman yelling instructions so fast all his words ran together.
The Wizard of Oz was still pursuing her. Ginny couldn’t imagine why, unless it was that pride thing of his, because he had made it clear she was the only girl he’d ever photographed who’d refused to go to bed with him. Also, he was still convinced his pictures proved what a wonderful model she could be.
Those in charge of making it come true hadn’t agreed. That was all there was to it. He could call everyone involved “assholes” until the earth froze over, but it wasn’t going to change anything. One day he’d get the message. Goodbye, Oz, forever. Today was the first day of the rest of her life, her wonderful new life in the fashion industry.
As she rushed into the showroom, half an hour early, as eager and friendly as a wirehaired terrier, Gosman was prancing around with Women’s Wear Daily.
“Read it. Read it, little girl. Learn something about your boss.” As he kept it firmly in his hands she didn’t have a chance until the phone demanded his attention. It was a story about a Gosman copy of a Valentino dress ($325 vs. $3,050), with what Ginny supposed Mr. G. took to be an admiring quote from a retailer: “He’s a Xerox machine on legs. He remembers every detail and never runs out of ink.”
Some of the staff were openly snickering, but obviously Mr. G. was proud of the piece, because later that morning he sent Ginny out to find a narrow black frame, so it could join the other framed clips on his wall, ones that chronicled his chutzpah and craftsmanship with headlines like COPYCAT CHAMP, INSTANT “COUTURE”—GOSMAN STYLE.
As far as Ginny could see, the press had been reporting his espionage for years, because he’d never bothered to hide it. He attended the Paris shows with a sketchbook, returning home to the U.S. to transform his sketches in a matter of days into three- and four-hundred-dollar best-selling copies of the multithousand-dollar French designs.
Ginny couldn’t understand why he was so peculiarly proud of his reputation as a first-class copier. Ironic, because while he boasted about what, after all, was stealing someone else’s work, he hid the fact that he actually designed originals all the time. On his desk were piles of sketch pads, many filled with new ideas.
Why? Was he scared to try out anything that was all his own? She was too new a girl on the block to suggest he give it a go.
“I want nine dollars off 705,” he yelled one morning as she brought him his daily apple juice and baby aspirin (something to do with warding off heart attacks).
Mauve Smith, one of the male assistant designers, was nervously “walking through” 705, a short, pouffed-out silk taffeta dress from the new collection, just arrived from the factory several congested blocks away. This shape was “borrowed,” Ginny gathered, from Christian Lacroix, a new French designer.
Mauve rapidly went through the cost (for interfacing, china silk lining, buttons, zipper and, of course, the five yards of fabric).
Gosman threw up his hands in disgust when he heard the fabric cost twenty dollars a yard. “Howd’y’thinkwecanmakeanymoney.” Ginny often didn’t understand him, but this was a familiar cry.
She ran outside. She had been seeing fabric reps the third day after her arrival, simply because there was no one else available to see them. In several cases she’d asked for a sample five-yard cut because “it said something.”
She ran back. “This is available.” She handed Gosman a shimmering synthetic shantung, which, expecting the questions that now followed, she had already tested—“howdoesitsew?”… “howdoesitpress?”
“Beautifully,” was the answer to both. “And it’s eight dollars a yard.”
Gosman held the swatch to his head as if it was an icepack.
“Whycouldn’y’findsomethinglikethisMauvelloveit…”
Mauve looked at Ginny as if she should crawl back under the stone she had just come from. Gosman growled to no one in particular, “letmeseeitmadeuptell’mtoshrinkthemarker…” Ginny already knew he always slowed his sentences down when it was expedient. “Get it back by two,” he said carefully. “No, you can make that three. I’vegottagotothedentist.” Thank God for his root canals.
“Shrink the marker” was a key instruction—and something of an art. She’d learned that at FIT. It meant interlocking, or placing the pieces of a pattern together, tighter and tighter, to get as much out of the material as possible in order to make more profit on the final product.
Ginny put up her hand. “I’ll take it.”
She adored going to the factory. It emphasized the fact that she now belonged on Fashion Avenue, dodging the rolling racks of next season’s dresses, inhaling the smells of chicken and rice, cigars and traffic exhaust, peering in the dozens of little storefronts selling zippers, leather and passementerie to the trade, running fast in sneakers (hers) or some days clacking along on three-inch heels (also hers), seeing micros and miniskirts mingle with yarmulkes and saris.
She also adored arriving at the grimy old factory building, handing over the dress sample from the sample pattern maker at the Gosman office to the factory production pattern maker to “dupe.” It thrilled her to watch the massive automatic cutting machine (which looked like giant shears) slice through many different layers of material, each layer fitting exactly on top of another, to produce the pieces that would sew into ten duplicates of a ready-to-wear dress. It was like watching ten giant club sandwiches being made.
Today, as she waited for the elevator in the bleak stone corridor outside the showroom, Mauve came out with Frank, one of the senior tailors. (Because Gosman was also known for his “couture” suits, he employed two full-time tailors, plus a couple of freelancers.) Ginny smiled, but they were stony-faced and stood one on either side of her. They started pushing and shoving her hard, one to the other.
“Stop that.” But they didn’t stop, and Mauve said very clearly, “We’re getting tired of you, little miss smart-ass. If you don’t want to end up getting mugged one sad night by all the ugly people out there, you better keep that trap of yours closed tight from now on.”
“Is that a threat?” Her voice was steady, although she wasn’t.
“No, it’s a promise,” the other guy, Frank, said with a sneer.
When the red light went on to indicate the elevator’s arrival, they gripped her arms so hard, she yelped with pain. “Look at your black-and-blues tonight, smart-ass, and know that’s nothing to what you can expect to see on your face if you keep this up.”
The elevator was almost full, but they pushed in with her and continued the gripping routine all the way down. She was in such a state of shock she didn’t utter a word. Although they let her go with one more shove on the avenue and watched her rush away, she didn’t stop looking over her shoulder all the way downtown.
She was wet through with panic. She hadn’t a minute to spare, but she grabbed a cappuccino at a grimy-looking coffee shop on the corner, trying to calm down before facing the factory production pattern maker and asking him to shrink the marker and run up a quick dupe.
There hadn’t been any more pushing, shoving and pinching, but every time she had the misfortune to run into either goon, she got her quota of filthy looks and muttered epithets. She didn’t need to hear them. The bruising on her arms hadn’t just been black and blue, it had been royal purple.
She was still indispensable, but she no longer made the mistake of putting in her three cents when anyone else was in the room. Mr. Gosman may have noticed a difference but he never said a word, and she was still frantically busy from entry to exit, with often a twelve-hour day in between.
Only on weekends could she relax. If she wasn’t working on a super-creative design for herself, Esme, or Sophie, she loved cur
ling up with a bunch of Women’s Wear Dailys, carefully collected from Gosman’s wastepaper basket at the end of every day. She devoured them as thoroughly as her father ever devoured Quentin Peet; and she also breezed through the magazines and social columns that Mr. G. let her borrow— Town and Country, Avenue, New York magazine, Vanity Fair, stuff like that.
Gosman put paper clips on the pages showing photographs of women wearing his clothes. There were always lots of paper clips.
There was only one pinprick in this form of recreation. The emergence of Poppy Gan as a leading member of society. “Poppy Gan shows the flag at Bulgari’s soirée,” read a T and C caption, “wearing a clever shift from the workshop of Seventh Avenue’s latest arrival, Jam Tollchin, a designer to watch.” Clever shift indeed! It was something Ginny knew she could make with her eyes shut.
When it was announced that Poppy was the latest contender to be the new Guess? girl (where Alex’s pal from Dusseldorf, Claudia Schiffer, had first made her mark), it seemed she was never out of the papers, especially WWD, photographed at parties, happy, carefree but, thought Ginny, still abominably dressed, despite now being seen in the company of some of the country’s richest, most powerful men.
Women’s Wear Daily spotlighted what Ginny called “fashion in action,” reporting through its pick of the best parties around the country what the most fashionable were wearing. For some designers it was like receiving a brilliant review every day.
Why did Poppy’s constant appearance in the papers annoy her so much? Because she couldn’t see what it was Poppy had that was so special? Because the words “anonymous” and “ordinary” still tolled away in her head?
It hadn’t taken long for a bitter truth to dawn: wearing her own creations, however witty and wonderful, along the grubby, drafty Seventh Avenue corridors, was never going to get her anywhere as a designer.
She needed to be seen in Women’s Wear Daily herself, wearing her own designs, but how could she make that happen, with her limited social activities?