Fashionistas

by Lynn Messina

  Despite the inevitable frustrations, I’m happier in my storage-closet office than in the shantytown cubicle around the corner. There’s a freedom here and a sort of nose-to-the-grindstone glamour I hadn’t expected. Fashionista is just a comic book. It’s just a Batman cartoon with “pow,” “bam” and “kaplooey” under the pictures, but it’s so much more satisfying to draw the lines instead of coloring them in.

  The Spring Collection

  The theme for Pieter van Kessel’s show is urban renewal.

  “Urban renewal?” says Marguerite as she pulls her wrap tighter around her shoulders. It’s not that she’s cold—the room is hot with heaters and people—it’s that she doesn’t want to get dirty. “This feels more like urban decay.”

  Van Kessel is holding his fall show on the construction site for a new Lower East Side library. The contractor has barely broken ground, but I’m still surprised that he let van Kessel pitch a tent and invite the press. This seems like the sort of thing that leads to disaster. “It’s not so bad,” I say, when we finally find our seats. It took us ages because we’re in the front row. I’m not used to being so close to the runway and naturally I had to work myself forward. During this process, Marguerite trailed behind me, examining the crowd.

  She wipes a thin layer of dust off her seat with a handkerchief and sits down. “This is an impressive showing.”

  The turnout is better than anyone could have expected. Word of mouth spread like wildfire, making van Kessel’s show the hottest ticket of Fashion Week. Marguerite recognizes buyers from Barney’s and Neiman Marcus and says hello. I’m excited. I’m excited because van Kessel deserves the attention, because my instincts were right, because there is a second article here.

  Marguerite is not unknown in the fashion world and she holds court with an assortment of admirers who want to be seen in the front row, if only for a minute or two. While Marguerite talks about van Kessel’s classic Old World style (she’s been reading my notes) I sit quietly in my chair, staring at my hands folded in my lap. I don’t know anyone here. This is only my second fashion show and I’m not sure yet how to comport myself. Minding my own business seems the most safe, though least enterprising, way to behave.

  “Vicious, spiteful cat,” a woman whispers in my ear.

  Clearly my pose is not as innocuous as I assume. I turn to her, my eyes wide and defensive. The woman is old and glamorous, with white chin-length hair in a wavy bob, vintage silk pajamas and diamonds. There’s something vaguely familiar about her, like she’s one of the bodies I sweep past every day on the subway. “Excuse me?” I ask, my voice almost shrill.

  The woman is surprised by my attentions. Either she hadn’t been addressing me or she suffers from a Tourette’s-like syndrome that she’s unaware of. “I’m sorry, dear. I was just mumbling to myself. Please pay me no mind.”

  “Excuse me,” I say again, my inflection dramatically altered.

  “Don’t be silly, dear. You were perfectly within the bounds of proper behavior.” She laughs and runs a hand over her hair, smoothing it. “I should know better. I’ve certainly been to enough of these.”

  “It’s all right,” I say, smiling awkwardly for a moment before turning my eyes back to the runway. The woman next to me is clearly a veteran of the fashion wars and I don’t want to intrude.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” she says conversationally. “Is this your first time at one of these things?”

  “Almost. The only other one I’ve been to was van Kessel’s first show in June.”

  She raises a drawn-in eyebrow, impressed. Only opinion makers and me had been at that show. “I wish I’d gone but I’d never even heard of van Kessel until I read a review in the Times. I pride myself on staying current but it’s more work than it used to be.”

  “Oh, I only went to the show because a friend of mine’s mother, who used to work with van Kessel’s assistant, had an extra ticket,” I say, feeling compelled to explain. I don’t want her to think I’m a fashion genius. I’m not a genius; it’s just that sometimes I get lucky. “It was a very exciting collection. It was so good that I dashed over to his shop and spent half a day with him and his team.”

  “Clever girl,” she says approvingly.

  I blush more from the approbation than from the compliment. It’s nice to have one’s instincts validated. “Thank you. I thought it would be interesting to follow the career of a hot new talent. I envisioned a series of articles charting van Kessel’s rise.”

  She nods. This, too, is a good idea. “When will it run?”

  “It probably won’t.”

  Her expression is puzzled.

  “I work for Fashionista.”

  This is explanation enough. “Ah.”

  “Yes,” I say sadly. “I tried pitching it, but it’s really not the sort of thing we run.”

  She pats my hand kindly. “That’s a shame.”

  I shrug. There have been many shameful things during my tenure and it wouldn’t do to linger over one of them now. “It’s all right. As you said before, I should know better.”

  “I’m Ellis Masters, by the way,” she says, offering me her hand. “I don’t know where my manners have gone. I should have introduced myself long before.”

  Ellis Masters is a legendary fashion maven, the sort who makes careers and breaks careers and doesn’t think of the fallout. She is always spoken of with the type of reverence usually reserved for the dead and dying, but she is still vitally alive. She’s vibrant and friendly and muttering to herself in the front row of fashion shows.

  “It’s an honor to meet you,” I say, resisting the urge to bow my head, which wouldn’t be appropriate. She’s fashion royalty, not the queen. “I’m Vig Morgan.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Vig.” She surveys the crowd and then glances at her jeweled watch. “I do wish they’d get started. I have three other shows to get to tonight.”

  “I’m sure you’re too busy,” I say, at this reminder of how jam-packed her schedule is, “but if you have a moment free Thursday night, Fashionista is hosting a party for Gavin Marshall and I’d love for you to come. He’s a British artist who—”

  “I know Gavin,” she says. “I was very surprised that Fashionista was involved at all. Controversial art is really not the sort of thing they run, I believe is how you’d term it.”

  Suddenly I’m overwhelmed with the desire to confess everything, but I resist the urge. “We expect it to be high-profile.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Well, I’ll keep it in mind,” she says, but she’s only being polite. Ellis Masters is too mannerly to refuse an invitation outright.

  Marguerite’s admirers disperse and she notices for the first time whom I’m sitting next to. “Ellis darling,” she drawls, jumping out of her seat to hug the grand dame of fashion. “How lovely to see you again.”

  Ellis doesn’t share the sentiment. It’s obvious in the way she suffers the embrace with impatience. She frees herself as quickly as possible. “Marge,” she says in a voice that’s no longer warm and welcoming.

  Marguerite doesn’t notice the difference and chatters away about the old days and Paris and friends they’ve lost touch with. Ellis Masters looks trapped for a second, but before I can intervene with my look-isn’t-that-Damien-Hirst-waving-to-you trick, she smoothly extricates herself from the conversation and starts talking to the man on the other side of her. He’s an easily recognizable actor, and although he has no idea whom he’s talking to, he recognizes a woman of importance.

  “She’s such a darling and I haven’t seen her in ages,” Marguerite says, returning to her seat. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you, Vig. Sometimes she’s a temperamental old thing and there’s nothing you can say to it.”

  “How do you know her?” I ask, wondering at her chilly reception.

  “I worked at her magazine, Parvenu. It was a hundred years ago when I was starting out. God, I was just an associate editor. I made no money and had to wear designer suits with the
tags still on. I’d return them afterward.”

  Marguerite is about to reminisce more but she doesn’t get a chance. Music starts playing, and although she makes several attempts to shout over it, the drums are too loud. They’re deafening and they drown her out completely. I sit back in my seat and wait for the show to start, but my mind is elsewhere. It’s on Ellis Masters and Marge and the words vicious, spiteful cat.

  This Is Not a Relationship

  Alex’s parents are in town for the night.

  “It’s only a stopover on their way to London,” he said on the phone earlier, explaining why he couldn’t meet me for dinner after the van Kessel show. “They have an early flight tomorrow, so they should be back in their hotel room by ten. I could drop by your apartment afterward.”

  Although I was disappointed that he hadn’t invited me to join them, I agreed to this plan and told him I’ll see him later. But I’m not surprised that he doesn’t want me to meet his parents. Our relationship isn’t the say-hi-to-in-laws sort. We see each other regularly and have fun, but we don’t talk about things. I don’t ask about the breathy blonde who lives next door and he doesn’t ask if I’m seeing anyone else.

  The answer is no, of course. The answer is that I’m so thoroughly besotted by this charming ogre that sometimes I can’t think of anything else. But I’ve dated enough men to know when to keep my distance. I’ve been out here in singleland long enough to know when to play it safe.

  At ten-seventeen he shows up on my doorstep with vanilla Häagen Dazs and chocolate syrup and, while he makes sundaes, he asks me about the show. He questions me about Pieter van Kessel and my story ideas, and when I ramble excitedly for a half hour, he doesn’t interrupt. He just nods encouragingly, offering the sort of support you’ve always wanted from a boyfriend.

  After he washes the bowls and spoons, he tells me he has to go home and walk Quik. He says he can’t stay but he does and when I climb out of bed at three in the morning, I have to crawl over his legs because a narrow set of drawers is in my way. When I come back, I stare at him. In the red glow from the alarm clock, I can see a beauty mark on his back. It’s just beneath his shoulder blade and I run my hand over it gently. I glide my fingers over his warm skin for a moment, but before I can move away he’s pulling me toward him. He’s pulling me toward him and wrapping my body against his. I’m held fast in a prison of warm skin.

  I lie there awake for a long time, my arm encased in his, and I try very hard to remind myself of the truth. Despite what it feels like, this is not a relationship.

  Urban Renewal

  After his tremendously successful show in a Lower East Side parking lot, Pieter van Kessel went into seclusion. He made polite and ecstatic conversation with everyone who came backstage to congratulate him on a brilliant collection and then disappeared into the night. No one has seen neither hide nor hair of him since except his assistant, Hans, and he’s not talking.

  “It would be a huge coup for us,” the woman says, after she introduced herself as Leila Chisholm from the Times. “We’ve been trying to get something out of his people for hours, but everything seems to be in disarray over there. They don’t even have a publicity department.”

  I think of the ramshackle basement I visited months ago during the height of summer. No, I’m not surprised they don’t have a publicity department. “Who told you about the interview?” I ask. I’m still trying to grasp the fact that the New York Times wants to buy a piece from me.

  “Ellis Masters mentioned it to my editor,” she explains. “She said you were proposing to do a series of articles charting the success of a hot young property.”

  “It’s an idea I’ve been toying with,” I say, understating the case and playing it cool and collected as though my heart weren’t flying.

  “We love it.”

  “Excuse me?” It’s not that I didn’t hear the words the first time. It’s just that I want to hear them again.

  “We love it,” she obligingly repeats. “We want you to do the series for us.”

  “All right,” I say. Although I’ve signed documents giving Ivy Publishing ownership to any ideas I think of while working for them, I’m not worried. Jane isn’t going to suddenly be interested in Pieter van Kessel. He might be a sensation in the fashion world, but Fashionista isn’t about fashion.

  “Good. We’d like to run the interview in Friday’s paper,” she announces matter-of-factly. “We’ll say three thousand words. When do you think we can have it?”

  I do some rapid calculations. I have a dozen pages of notes to read through and organize and two hours of tapes to transcribe. “How is tomorrow?”

  “In the morning?” she asks.

  I was thinking in the afternoon, but I readily agree. The pile of work on my desk is boring and inconsequential and nothing compared with this. I have no intention of touching any of it until my piece on Pieter van Kessel is perfect. “By eleven?”

  “Eleven’s a little later than I’d like, but it’ll do,” she concedes. “If you give me your fax number, I’ll send over the contract right away.”

  I’ve had so few things faxed to me that I don’t know the number, and I spend several anxious moments rifling through my drawers for a piece of paper with this sort of information on it. After I hang up the phone, I stand at my desk, trying to decide what I should do next. Call my parents or hover by the fax machine? A paranoid sense that nothing good ever happens to me washes over me and I run to the fax machine to wait. I don’t want any fingers but mine to touch that document. It takes fifteen minutes and the ink is faint but it’s beautiful to my smitten eyes.

  Before calling my parents or doing a triumphant jig, I duck my head in Marguerite’s office and casually ask if she thinks Fashionista will ever be interested in my van Kessel article idea.

  She shakes her head sadly. “Not the way things are right now. Maybe if I were editor in chief….” She lets the sentence trail off seductively, but I’m in no condition to indulge her. She has said exactly the words I want to hear.

  I can no longer control my exuberance and I give her my brightest, happiest smile.

  “Thank you,” I say, demure and breathless at the same time. Then I return to my office, close the door and dance around happily. Three thousand words in the New York Times! I can scarcely believe it. This is the sort of thing you dream about. This is the reason you went into journalism in the first place.

  I take deep calming breaths and decide it’s time to get to work. However, before I find my Dictaphone and microcassettes, I write a thank-you note. I dash off a gracious letter to Ms. Ellis Masters and drop it into the mail slot, but it’s only a gesture and an inadequate one at that. The truth is I can’t ever thank her enough.

  Jane Carolyn-Ann Whiting McNeill

  Fifty-two hours before the party, Jane adds her maiden name to her already inflated appellation. Stickly distributes the memo, which Jane deems too time-sensitive to go through regular channels. It could take up to four hours for it to wind its way through the system, and she doesn’t want us to lose crucial Whiting-memorization minutes. The addition of her middle name has not gone as smoothly as she’d like, and she’s had to call a few unfortunate individuals into her office for inopportune dropping of “Jane McNeill.” One publicist has already been fired because of a slip in the Observer.

  The memo is printed on elaborate monarch-size letterhead, and Stickly wears a stoic mask of indifference as he drops it on my desk. He’s trying to be brave. He’s trying to keep a stiff upper lip but he’s practically radiating despair. This isn’t what Sticklys do. They deliver peasants to monarchs, not monarchs to peasants.

  “Ms. McNeill will see you at one-thirty,” he says in that imperial voice that could fill amphitheaters.

  I shake my head. I have no intention of leaving my office right now. I will not budge a tiny fraction of an inch until I know what Leila Chisholm thinks of my article. I’m expecting the worst. I’m expecting her to hate it. I’m expecting her to scream
loudly in my ear that it’s the worst tripe she’s ever read in her entire life. I will suffer her abuse unflinchingly. I will endure it without a whimper; then I’ll hang up the phone and weep.

  The article is on my desk, but I can’t bring myself to look at it again. I’ve read it too many times already and still cannot decide if it’s good or not. I’m exhausted from lack of sleep and suspicious of my own judgment and terrified that the sort of genius that strikes at three in the morning is just nonsense in sheep’s clothing.

  “One-thirty’s no good for me,” I say, taking my eyes off the phone. A watched pot never rings.

  “It’s very important.”

  I raise an eyebrow. There are many important things to be done, but Anita Smithers’s assistant is devoted and thorough and is taking care of all of them. There is nothing important that Jane has to do. “Is it?”

  He nods. “Ms. McNeill wants to discuss whether she should stand in front of the blue Fashionista banner or the red Fashionista banner.”

  Jane doesn’t have discussions; she takes polls, gives quizzes and lectures. “What did you say?”

  “The blue.”

  “The blue?”

  “Yes, mum is wearing a red dress and would run the risk of clashing.” Stickly is still using his imposing voice and holding himself with dignity, even though neither one befits the subject matter.

  I compliment this excellent reasoning and exhort him to tell Jane that I too say the blue background. Stickly wants to argue further with me—my intractability offends him—but he has to move on. He has to hand out the memos in less time than it would take the in-house mail service to do it.

  Stickly leaves and I return to my previous activity of phone staring. When Leila Chisholm finally calls three hours later, I’m fast asleep at my desk. My head is at an uncomfortable angle and there are paper clip indentations in my cheek. The ringing telephone is jarring, like a splash of cold water on my face, but I’m still groggy when I answer it. My thoughts are muddled, and it takes me a full minute to realize that she doesn’t hate it.