Fashionistas

by Lynn Messina

  Sarah shakes her head. “They’re younger.”

  “Damn.” I don’t know how such an awful man can have younger sisters. It just doesn’t seem possible.

  “So you get why he owes you a favor?” asks Kate.

  I do twenty to thirty makeovers a year. Nobody has ever treated it like a favor. “No.”

  “You changed her life,” Sarah says.

  This is precisely the sort of silly nonsense we propagate in our magazine but it’s not true. Your happiness doesn’t really depend on the type of eyelash curler you buy. “I changed her hair.”

  “Two days after leaving here with her blond highlights and Chloe dress, Carla Hayden Keller got a job as a host of Generation Y on the Metro channel. At a Metro function, she met renowned corporate financier Alistair Concoran, who fell instantly in love with her. They got married two months later, bought a house in Westchester and are even now expecting their first child,” Allison says with a wide smile.

  “So you see,” says Kate, “Alex Keller owes you one.”

  Alex Keller

  Everyone in the office has a Keller story. Although no one has ever seen the confirmed misanthrope, we’ve all had our share of run-ins. He is always slamming the phone down in disgust or sending rude e-mails with impatient replies or dashing off abrupt little notes that cut interns to the quick.

  He keeps his office door closed. You never see light shining through the frosted windows, and if you didn’t hear the constant disco beat emanating from behind his door, you’d assume the room was empty. When you have something for him, you follow the prescribed delivery system. You place it in his in-box, knock twice and walk away. Turn around a second later and it’s gone. The whole process is cloaked in mystery, and you feel like Dorothy leaving a broomstick for the Wizard of Oz.

  Alex Keller is the events editor for Fashionista. Every month he fills a dozen or so pages with pictures from premieres, galas, benefits and openings. All happy parties are alike and when you look at the layouts you can hardly tell what distinguishes a Givenchy fete from a breast cancer fundraiser. Take the cookie-cutter genericness of every wedding you’ve ever attended, add a few thousand candles and you have Alex Keller’s section. Only the names are different.

  The candid snapshots, which vary only slightly from the ones in your high school yearbook, are usually accompanied by blocks of text describing the bash. Keller’s snappy writing style—always chatty, frequently punny and seldom dull—mimics the Page Six gossips, only without the insinuations of sex and greed.

  Since his life, tinged with glamour, offers no justification for his hostility, we are left to speculate. We are left to theorize about his parents (weak father, domineering mother), his childhood (fodder for bullies), his stature (Napoleon complex) and his sex life (nonexistent). The hostility he feels toward his fellow human beings can only be explained one way: He’s a short man with unresolved rage issues who isn’t getting any. Since Keller has never come out of his burrow to dispute this conclusion, the tales have grown more and more fantastic over the years. A mythology has sprung up in place of a person, and we are so intimately acquainted with the details that sometimes we forget that they are entirely fictional.

  This is what happens when Sarah, Kate and Allison formulate their plan. They fail to take into account the fact that Alex Keller might not be an angry dwarf looking to avenge himself on an emasculating mother figure.

  The Plot

  I don’t think respect is the word to describe how Jane feels about me but I keep that to myself. I want to hear what their plan is, and they are on the verge of telling me.

  “It was Allison’s brilliant idea,” says Kate, “so she should decide.”

  Allison smiles and blushes. She’s not used to her ideas being called brilliant. “I don’t know,” she hedges, turning to her fellow fashionistas. “We said earlier that we’d only tell her if she agreed to help.”

  “But she will help,” insists Kate, who is all for spilling the beans. In a room full of cautious conspirators, she is a fool ready to rush in. “Once she knows the plan, she’ll help. I’m sure of it.”

  Sarah doesn’t look convinced, but she has ceded responsibility to Allison and is quite happy with her abdication. “I’m cool with whatever you do.”

  Allison breaks under the weight of autonomy and turns to me. “All right, but you have to swear that if you don’t want to help that you won’t tell anyone about our plan.”

  I consent to this because I’m reasonably sure that their plan amounts to nothing more than putting Nair in Jane’s shampoo and waiting for her to resign from the humiliation of being bald.

  “There is a show coming up, in a gallery in Soho,” Allison says slowly. She’s still not sure she’s doing the right thing. “It’s by one of those young British artists, Gavin Marshall. He’s the sort who fills plastic inflatable furniture with cow entrails and calls it art. His newest work is a series officially entitled Gilding the Lily, but the British press called it Jesus in Drag. It’s exactly what it sounds like,” she explains. “He dresses up Jesus statues in women’s haute couture. Although the show was a huge success in England, it was highly controversial and no style glossy over there would touch it. But we’re going to convince Jane to do a story on it anyway. There will be an uproar and calls to boycott, and the publisher will have to fire her to appease our advertisers and religious conservatives.”

  “How are you going to convince Jane to do the story?” I ask. Their plan is actually interesting and creative, but I have little faith in its successful execution. Jane McNeill might be a tyrannical egomaniac, but she didn’t fall off the turnip truck just yesterday. She’s put out enough magazines to know what makes dangerous copy. She’s worked in this business for enough years to realize that most celebrities won’t relish being in the same issue as Christ in Christian Dior.

  “That’s where you come in,” says Sarah.

  “Me?”

  “You,” Kate says.

  “Me?” I repeat, almost appalled. I can’t imagine why they think I have influence over Jane.

  Allison nods. “You’re the linchpin.”

  I’m tired of hearing about my linchpinness and stare blankly.

  After a moment of silence, during which she debates how much of her plan she wants to reveal without my acquiescence, Allison continues. “We need you to get Keller to agree to stick Gavin Marshall’s opening party on the schedule for November parties.”

  “And make sure he puts down lots of celebrity names,” Kate adds. “Jane won’t be interested unless there are lots of celebrities involved.”

  Although all it takes is one A-list player to get Jane’s attention, this plan is seriously flawed. “She won’t be convinced.”

  “That’s only phase one,” says Allison.

  “Phase one?”

  Sarah nods. “There are other phases.”

  “How many?”

  Allison closes her eyes and reviews her plan silently. “Four,” she says, when she’s done counting. “There are four phases. Phase two is your bringing Marshall to Jane’s attention.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got to do it very casually. She can’t know that you want her to know about him,” Sarah adds.

  “We want Jane to think that she’s uncovered a secret,” Kate says.

  Now I’m reserving judgment. “To what end?”

  “Well, if she discovers, quite by accident, of course, that the new editorial director is planning to propose that Fashionista sponsor a party for Gavin and maybe do a story on him, then she’s going to want to steal the idea from her,” Allison says.

  Although this sounds like typical Jane behavior, there is one thing wrong with their logic. “But Jane would look into Gavin and realize instantly that he’s too controversial for us to touch.”

  “She would if one of us were to suggest a party for Gavin,” Sarah agrees, “but she wouldn’t if she thought the idea was Marguerite’s.”

  I realize there are things here I don’t
know. “She wouldn’t?”

  “They’ve been rivals for more than fifteen years,” Allison says. “They were associate editors together at Parvenu and competed for interviews and stories and scoops. They both had their eye on a senior editor position and when it opened up, Marguerite got it. After that, Jane was given all the crappy assignments and she blamed Marguerite. Six months later she left.”

  This collection of facts amazes me. “How do you know all this?”

  Allison smiles. “Number one rule of warfare: Know your enemy.”

  I didn’t realize we were at war.

  “So you see, if we can convince Jane that Marguerite is planning something behind her back in order to score points with the publisher, she’ll do whatever she can to undermine her,” Kate says calculatingly. “And whatever reservations she might have about the suitability of the project will be quickly crushed by her belief in Marguerite’s interest.”

  “She won’t be thinking clearly,” Sarah insists. “All she’ll be doing is watching her back, waiting for Marguerite to strike.”

  “I guarantee it,” Allison says.

  It’s impossible to guarantee anything, but sometimes you can hedge your bets. Bringing down Jane McNeill does not seem like a sure thing to me. Although their plan is good—considerably better, in fact, than I’d given them credit for—it depends too much on human variables. No one knows how Jane is going to react to Marguerite. More than a decade has passed since their Parvenu days, and Jane, once a lowly associate editor, now heads the most successful women’s magazine in history. These are the things—time and success—that heal old grievances.

  I tell the fashionistas that I’ll think about it for a day or two and get back to them, but I’m only being polite. I’m not a cabalist, and as much as I’d like to bring down the current regime, I’m not the sort to take up arms.

  Your Silly Life

  Dot Drexel speaks in magazine headlines. Her sentences are always declarative and you can positively feel the capital letters hurling toward your head.

  “Skate-Skiing: Your New Favorite Sport,” she says, as I enter her office. Although she’s been a senior editor at Fashionista for five years, Dot’s office is pristine and tidy and unencumbered with personal effects. If she had to sneak out under the cover of darkness during some military coup, she could do so in seconds and leave nothing behind. She wouldn’t be weighed down by plants and picture frames and the quirky, useless things that clutter other people’s desktops.

  I sit down and search my brain for an old favorite sport that skate-skiing has supplanted. I draw a blank.

  “Forget snowboarding,” she says, handing me a brochure with snow-covered peaks and après-ski fireplaces, “here’s the sexy new alternative the stars are racing to learn.”

  Although snowboarding never really made an impression on me and is easily forgotten, I somehow doubt that the sexy, new alternative will take up permanent residence in my mind. My psyche is a revolving door for trends. “All right.”

  “Excellent,” she says, pleased by my amenability. “Give me five hundred words on the Hippest Fashions To Skate-Ski In. Call the designers and get a list of celebrity clients. We’ll only shoot those outfits with names attached. Start with Versace. I think they have a line of outerwear. And for That Perfect Touch of Whimsy, call Sanrio and see if they make Hello Kitty skate-skies. We want to hold on to our under-twenty-fives.”

  The nanoconference is over and I get up from the chair. I stand up and marvel that I even bother sitting down at all. “I’ll get right on it,” I say, as though I’m Lois Lane and skate-skiing is a threat to the citizens of Metropolis. What we do is not journalism but sometimes I forget.

  “And what is skate-skiing?” I ask before leaving the office. Usually I feign familiarity with esoteric topics during these meetings and then run to Netscape for elucidation the second they’re over, but not today. Today I don’t feel like playing. Today I want to have things explained. I don’t know what to attribute this odd occasion of orneriness to, but I wonder for the very first time if I’m reaching the end of my tether. Five years might be all I can stand of nothing.

  Dot sighs heavily at my ignorance. “The Most Fun You’re Not Having,” she says definitively, before picking up the telephone.

  But she’s wrong. Skate-skiing is not the most fun I’m not having. The most fun I’m not having is nothing so innocuous as a sport that combines the heart-healthy endurance of cross-country with the stimulating thrill of alpine.

  Getting To Know You

  Marguerite Tourneau Holland Beckett Velazquez Constantine Thomas calls me into her office for a talk. Since Christine, Kate and Allison have already gone before me, I’m expecting the summons and don’t leave for lunch until it comes. Then I walk down the hall to a small office that shares a wall with the elevator shaft. You can hear the lifts going by.

  This is not Eleanor Zorn’s old office. Eleanor had a large corner suite with a comfortable sitting area and wide windows that overlook both Sixth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. She had bright spots of sunlight in the mornings and the iridescent glow of Radio City Music Hall in the evenings. Marguerite has none of that. Her office is so tiny, it can barely accommodate a desk and chair. There is no place for a couch or a coffee table, and for the moment visitors have to sit on a plastic folding chair that is missing its fourth leg.

  Marguerite has a window, but it’s the sort you find in nineteenth-century French adventure novels, the type that reminds you of the world outside but doesn’t let you see it. All you can see are brown panels from the building across the street, and the view itself hangs on the wall like a piece of modern art.

  This is further evidence of Jane’s vehement dislike.

  Although this meeting has been advertised as an informal chat, I’ve brought half my file cabinet with me and several old issues of the magazine. I don’t know what to expect and I want to be prepared.

  “Bonjour,” she says, holding an antique watering can. She’s in the middle of watering her plants. This is only the afternoon of her second day, but she has already imprinted herself on the little office with African violets and flowering geraniums and wandering pathos, and her imprint has the comfortable aura of perpetuity. Her window ledge looks like it has always been a greenhouse.

  “Hello,” I say, sitting down. The plastic chair wobbles under my weight, and I grab on to the desk for stability. I notice then that she has several magazines opened to articles of mine. My one stab at journalism, fifteen hundred words on the care and presentation of teeth, is on top.

  Marguerite follows my gaze. “Yes, I was just reviewing some of your work. This one here is très magnifique. La Fashionista needs more informative pieces like this, don’t you think?”

  “More pieces like that one wouldn’t hurt,” I say cautiously. Jane only asks your opinion in order to pick it apart and I expect this behavior from all my employers.

  “Excellent,” she says, sprinkling water on the last plant, a thriving azalea, before taking a seat. “Why don’t you draw up for me a list of ideas of useful articles that you think might be right for Fashionista and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Although I relish the idea of writing practical, useful articles instead of celebrity fluff, I refuse to have my head turned. I know a campaign promise when I hear one. “All right.”

  She smiles. “You’ve been here how long?”

  “Five years.”

  “And you started as Jane’s assistant?”

  “Yes, for two years.”

  Marguerite raises her eyebrows. “Two years! How did you put up with that ha— I mean, two years, what a long time to be someone’s assistant. I know mine never stay above fourteen months. Onward and upward, you know.” She considers me for a moment. “You and Jane must be très compatible.”

  I shrug. Compatible is the wrong word to explain my and Jane’s relationship but there is no right word. With Jane, things can’t be described; they can only be experienced.

  �
��Bien. I hope we’ll get along just as well. I plan to be here for quite a while.” She turns to her window for a moment. “I’ve been in Sydney for so many years that I’d forgotten how energizing this city is.”

  “How many years were you there?” I ask, to make small talk, to learn more about her, to enjoy the novelty of pleasant conversation with a superior.

  Her answers are long and I stay in her office for twenty more minutes. When I leave, she reminds me to type up a list of article ideas and I assure her that I haven’t forgotten.

  Marguerite is friendly and approachable, and although I can find no cracks in her sincerity, I’m not convinced. Her efforts to get to know the staff seem genuine, but there’s enough here to make me suspicious. Marguerite seems too much like a soldier gathering information behind enemy lines, and I realize that Jane’s behavior might actually be in keeping with the situation. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

  Jane Carolyn-Ann McNeill

  We get the memo first thing on Wednesday morning. Marguerite has been in the building for less than forty-eight hours and already Jane is taking the offensive. Already she is cutting trips short and sending out directives.

  “What do you think this means?” I say, leaning against the thumbtack wall that separates me from Allison. It’s the first time I’ve ever stuck my head over the partition to make conversation, and she looks up in surprise.

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  “It’s a memo from Jane.”

  “I haven’t even glanced at it yet.” Curious now, she reaches into her overflowing in-box, removes the top layer and reads the memo aloud. “Please note herewith that Fashionista’s editor in chief Jane McNeill will be using her full given name of Jane Carolyn-Ann McNeill on all official and unofficial Fashionista documents. Thank you for your compliance in this matter.”

  “She had Jackie send it out to every media outlet in the city.”