I positioned the frame on the windowsill above my bed’s headboard, a complement to Desiree’s display on her end.
“Vacation home, wow. They’ve got some money, huh?” She leaned in to examine the photo. “I can tell by the picture that isn’t some department store twenty-nine ninety-nine kinda deal.”
“They’re pretty loaded.”
“Which one is he?”
I pointed to Ethan. “His brother is a little more, I don’t know, geek.”
“Geek is chic, girl.” Desiree held a shirt by the hem and snapped the fabric to rid it of wrinkles. “So tell me about Ethan.”
Tell her about Ethan? Desiree was already the best roommate ever. Forget Maya telling me to get over Ethan; Desiree was my new source of support. “Ethan. He’s …” How to sum up Ethan Laurenti? We had so much history, a whole life living so near to each other.
A knowing grin appeared on Des’s face. “Girl, you are knee-deep in swoon swamp. I know what that look is. You’re a girl gone crazy in love.” Desiree paused from her unfolding. “Hey, I only say it because I’ve had that look myself.”
“Yeah?”
“My boyfriend had me all tangled up for a while. Like I couldn’t think straight. He’d text me and it was like, stop everything—he texted me.” She tipped her head back and gave an exaggerated groan. “I was a mess. After a few weeks of going out, I calmed down. You know?”
I didn’t. I didn’t know the feeling because I’d always been stuck this side of love struck. With Ethan I could watch and plan, but so far all I’d done was watch and plan. I needed to act. Only now I was here, a plane ride away from home.
Des looked over her unpacking progress. “A little distance does some good to make a heart grow fonder, or some such. What are your goals for your time here?”
“Goals?” I’d barely thought beyond boarding the plane. My planner pages were empty squares. “I guess I’m ready for anything,” I said, and realized it was true.
“That’s a good attitude. I’ve taken two business courses and a marketing elective through my high school back home. I job shadowed a fabric wholesaler last fall, someone who my family knows. We run a store, though clothes aren’t our specialty. That’s what I want us to get into, so I need to focus on networking and connections. You have to know what you want and set your goals in order to make it all happen. That’s why I’m here.”
Whoa, talk about confident. My plans for what Maya termed my fashion design empire basically amounted to the old standby of: (1) Like fashion; (2) do fashiony stuff; (3) ???; and (4) PROFIT.
The wardrobe door closed across the room. “You okay? You got kind of quiet over there.”
I thought knowing I wanted to be a fashion designer was enough. I didn’t have business and marketing experience. I knew Juanita, the namesake from Juanita’s Fabrics, but had no idea what a fabric wholesaler did.
“I guess I want to know what I want.” The words sort of fell out of my mouth. Immediately, I wanted to swallow them back.
Desiree sighed. “Girl, don’t we all.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Waking up in New York City was a lot like waking up back home, but with the added sounds of wailing police sirens, jackhammers, and Desiree’s singing echoing from the bathroom connecting our room to the one next door.
Out the window, buildings clamored for space, wedged in tightly beside one another. Traffic moved steadily on the street. No palm trees, no tropical flora.
No Laurentis.
A pang of longing hit. Even with Des’s added decor, our room was mostly bare, white-painted cinder blocks. A cold, rugless floor. I’d dreamed of coming to New York plenty of times, but usually as an older, accomplished designer. I hadn’t envisioned a saggy mattress with a pillow smelling like harsh detergent that stripped away any sense of belonging. All I could think of was home.
I checked in with my RunwayGirl12 account on Instagram. After replying to comments, I posted a preplanned picture I’d saved to my cloud file. I added generic text about summer style in the city and tapped in all my favorite memorized hashtags. I’d check this later on a break and reply to all my Likes and comments. I couldn’t leave my audience hanging.
Des and I headed over to the main building to grab breakfast before splitting off to our blocks. She’d chosen the fashion marketing and business-focused block of classes, while I was slated for the more traditional sewing techniques route. The internship courses mimicked how design school would be structured. All of this I learned from Des, who seemed to know everything.
The student lounge was back to how I’d remembered it the day before, after having gone through its own makeover for last night’s internship mixer. Dimmed lights, a DJ, the works. Desiree and I had filled up our plates and basically clung to a wall. I’d been surprised at her shyness around the other students after she acted so open with me. We talked to a few of the instructors, and the rest of the time to each other. Then we’d left early and watched style blogger videos online until we passed out from travel fatigue.
“You good?” Des stood in the hall between our respective classrooms.
“Sure. Of course.” I pasted on my all-good smile.
She glanced toward the door with my class number on it. “Now I’m wishing I’d signed up for your block so we could go through this together.”
She needed me? I still felt like the least prepared person here. Half the time I was still thinking about hiding under the covers in my room back home. “We’ll see each other at lunch, right?”
“Yeah. Sounds good.” Her smile was tight as she took off. So both of us were nervous.
I walked into my assigned class and froze at the door. My hand flew to my chest. Be still my reality-TV-loving heart. This looked like the Project Runway workroom! Neat rows of tables filled the middle of the room, each with its own sewing machine. Dress forms assembled at the back of the room, bare and unadorned. A bulletin board of color swatches and famous-label designer ads was tacked up to invite inspiration.
I chose an empty work station near the back. Digital interfaces! One tap of a button revealed more stitch options than I knew existed. This was like being thrust into the captain’s seat of a spaceship. Ground control to Major Tim Gunn! “I’m a long way from home, Johnny.”
“Who’s Johnny?” A voice spoke at the table beside me. It was Anime Girl.
“Oh, my sewing machine back home, Johnny Cash. My grandma passed him down to me.”
“You named your sewing machine after an old singer … oh wait, I get it.” She rolled her eyes, but laughed anyway. “I’m Amy. So which model?”
“A 457. It’s old. Like from the nineteen sixties.”
“Ooh, vintage. Good machine. I have a stylist model from the seventies. I had a newer machine and burned out the motor. Cheap machines aren’t worth using if you do any work with upholstery fabric or denim. The vintage models won’t let you down if you treat them well.”
No one in my life talked sewing machine stats. Not even Abuelita. She’d rescued Johnny from a church rummage sale. “I’m Amelia. Cool outfit.”
Amy wore a white top with blue ribbon details paired with a bright red skirt. Over that, a fitted vest. Red ribbons threaded through her black and pink hair, and some sort of leather gear belt wrapped around her hips. Key chains hung from the belt with little trinkets attached. I’d been accused of wearing too many layers by many people in my life, but Amy really challenged that assumption.
“Thanks!” She arranged her supplies in a caddy on the table. “I can’t wait to plan out my thesis project.”
At least seven seconds passed before what Amy said processed. The very word thesis sent a quake low in my gut. “You mean we do a thesis? Here?” I must have skipped that part of the brochure. Any mention of a thesis-level project had to be tiny-fonted in the back somewhere.
“I think it’s optional. But if you want to go to design school, it’s great for your portfolio.”
Whew. Optional. I could handle optional
. Though Des mentioned setting goals. A thesis was an actual goal, and I definitely wanted to go to design school.
Our block instructor arrived and reviewed our agenda for the internship. Truth was, I loved school. I was the girl who geeked out over school supply shopping, and my planner stickers were a natural extension from that. Thinking of the internship like school actually helped it feel less intimidating.
After reviewing our sewing-skills agenda, the whole block of students moved next door to the technology room. Painted graphic patterns ran the length of one wall, and oblong desks set up with laptops were placed around the room. Here, we divided into teams for a project. The instructor tasked us with creating a mock fashion blog where we’d put together a sample post about a trend or fashion topic, but I suspected the real point here was to get to know our classmates. Back home at school, we were always being assigned group projects for reasons of teamwork.
I partnered with Amy and a guy named Jimmy. He reminded me of a dandelion with a weed-thin body ending in a fuzzy black Afro.
Now that I was into school mode, I settled in at our group table and waited for Jimmy or Amy to get us started. I always let someone else take the lead.
Amy picked at her rainbow-painted nails. Jimmy tapped at his phone.
I leaned in. “Hey, guys. So, I guess we should like, make a plan.”
“Right.” Amy stopped her nail picking and focused her attention on me. “I don’t really do style blogs.”
Jimmy scratched his light beard scruff. “Me neither. I can’t think straight today. I barely slept last night. Do either of you have roommates who snore? Do you have hangers stabbing you from inside your mattress?”
“I can relate to the mattress,” I said. Everyone at the tables around us talked excitedly, or wrote notes. We needed to get some ideas going. “How do you interact with fashion?” I asked Amy and Jimmy. “I use Instagram and Pinterest and cross post to both. I don’t do my own style blog either, but I follow lots of people who link to blogs.”
Amy and Jimmy mentioned several video sharing and chat apps, two of which Mami expressly forbid me to use after watching a “What Is Your Teen Doing on the Internet?” special on Dateline. The only chat app I used was with Maya, anyway. Me and video didn’t get along so well. Mainly, I clammed up the second the red recording light blinked on.
“Let’s not do video,” Amy said. “I’ve been meaning to start a blog, but it’s always last on my list, you know?”
I opened Pinterest on my laptop. “All my favorite blogs are tagged here. I really like simple interfaces. They look more professional, instead of super crowded with images. See?” I showed them a blog with a background covered in a photo collage, which looked messy, versus the cleaner designs of my top choices.
“That font is all wrong,” Jimmy noted.
“I agree, simple looks better.”
We talked about favorite websites for a few minutes, gathering ideas. “I can show you my go-to sites for high fashion images, for the ones I use on Insta.” I pulled up my account on my phone and scrolled through my feed.
Amy scooted her chair closer. “Wait a sec—roll back to your profile.” She reached across me and tapped my phone’s screen. “Is this you? You have eleven thousand followers?”
I smoothed my hair, pressing it down my cheek and along the front of my shoulder. “I’ve had the account since I was fourteen. It’s built up.”
“Whoa!” Jimmy jumped up to see my phone. “This picture has twelve-hundred Likes! Who are you, girl?” He laughed and sat back down.
I’m really popular online never meant much to anyone back home. In fact, most of my friends didn’t know this Instagram account existed, mainly because I hadn’t told them.
“I have an idea,” Amy said. “Let’s photograph street fashion and put together an inspiration board of how to create a similar look.”
I angled back to the laptop with the Pinboards. “I have tons of examples of those. Where you dissect the outfits and put together your own ideas.” I showed them more of my inspiration boards, while keeping out of view any of the prom themes and my secret boards.
“These are bloody fantastic!” Jimmy was clearly channeling someone British, somewhere (he was from Staten Island). “I vote you as content editor. I’ll work on the blog design.”
“And I’ll take the photos,” Amy added.
Ha. So my obsessive Pinboarding was actually good for something here. Maybe I did have skills to offer. I twisted my hair up and away from my face and got to work.
We spent that afternoon’s free period walking around Bryant Park and Times Square. Most people were fine with stopping for a photo when we told them we were design students (save for one lady who got nasty and said maybe we should learn something worthwhile, like how to stop the national debt crisis, but I think she was having a bad day).
Later, back in the technology room, we assembled our post in preparation to share with the larger group.
“I’m following your Insta,” Amy said after she finished writing up the text for our blog. “This looks super pro. It’s like you go to fashion week in Paris. Are any of these your own pics?”
I was only partially listening as I finished up the formatting. “No, but I credit every photo. I always mention the source or tag it if possible.”
“Huh. You have all those Pinboards of looks you’ve put together. Why don’t you post from those?”
“I used to sometimes, but those posts never got as many Likes as the runway shots. That’s what people are looking for. Hey, our blog looks pretty good. See?” I turned the screen to show her.
“Yeah! It’s great. Nice job, team. Anyway, Amelia. You should totally do posts about the internship. You could feature us. You could include our blog!”
Okay, now Amy was getting intrusive. What I’d built up on my RunwayGirl12 account was a careful selection of fashion and style photos. It wasn’t high school Amelia and her friends showing off their fake blog. I had top bloggers following my Insta account.
When it came time for the sharing portion of the project, Jimmy and Amy looked at me to volunteer. I really hated any aspect of presenting in front of people. Back home at school, giving a presentation meant staring back at glassy-eyed faces or watching kids carve their name into the table edge with a pen. It wasn’t much different than the video thing. I’d have everything planned out to say, and then once I stood up or turned the camera on, my words evaporated.
“Team three? Pick a presenter please.” The instructor’s smile thinned at the second request.
Neither Amy nor Jimmy made a move. Fine. If no one else took the lead, it would need to be me. I gathered my courage, and stood.
Ever since yesterday morning, I’d been going nonstop. I’d barely had the chance to check my RunwayGirl account, let alone text home or check in with Maya. At eleven-thirty at night when I hit the sad saggy mattress, I sent quick “doing well!” messages with a bunch of emojis, then crashed.
After our morning workshop, my fashion design block took a field trip to a fabric store. Not any fabric store, but Mood—the Mood Fabrics (as seen on Project Runway!). Sure, anyone could order from the store online, but to be here in person among fabric bolts stacked to the ceiling, collected from all over the world—it felt like a rite of passage. This place was more warehouse than store.
Shoppers clogged the aisles, some of them just taking selfies. They weren’t even looking at the fabric!
“Tourists,” Jimmy grumbled as we passed three women chiming “Make it work!” as their friend snapped a pic in front of a display case loaded with trimmings and embellishments. “There are half a dozen other stores we could have gone to.”
“I heard the Sorting Hat was constructed with felt bought from Mood,” I told him.
He stopped and swung back toward me, nearly missing getting jacked in the face by a bolt of heavy brocade. “The hat from the Harry Potter movies? How’d you hear that?”
I grinned. Okay, so it was my own fang
irl fantasy of melding worlds together. I couldn’t imagine anything better than a magical talking hat made with materials from the world of high fashion.
Jimmy scrunched his nose. “You’re putting me on. You—I’m watching out for you.”
Tourist trap or not, the store impressed me. We were given a half hour to walk the aisles and take notes, which we’d discuss later. Already I was seeing fabric types that would never reach Juanita’s humble shop back home.
For lunch, we grabbed food at a nearby café and sat in a park to eat. I found a spot on the edge of a concrete flower bed with my lunch on my lap and my phone open beside me. I scrolled through my Pinterest NYC board, where I’d been tagging inspirations that came up during class. Already I’d collected my own shots of Times Square from yesterday and a few candids from the internship.
“He-eey!” Amy appeared next to me, a spunky ponytail stuck up on her head. She wore a jumper-style dress that looked more high fashion than school girl. “Thanks for presenting for the group yesterday, by the way. You were awesome. Can I sit? What’s up?”
I held up my phone. “Oh, you know, just catching up.”
“Ooh, are those prom dresses? Are you planning for next year’s prom already?” She angled toward me, checking out the phone’s screen.
Shoot. I’d switched to a prom board by accident when my finger slid across the screen. “It’s just some old stuff I pinned.”
“Can I see?” She set down her lunch and took the phone. “Love this.” She pointed to an image of a sleek purple gown. Flowers piled into the model’s updo. “I could see you in this dress. You should totally wear it. You’re so lucky you have a boyfriend. Desiree told me.”
Her subject switch to boyfriend wiped any response I could come up with. Good thing my mouth was filled with sandwich. I half nodded and kept eating.
Alterations Page 4