An Innocent Fashion (14 page)

“Nine tonight?” On first thought, it seemed rather late for an unpaid intern.

“No, of course not, silly,” he said in a saccharine tone, which served as answer enough. “We
never
stay late. We just leave a few million dollars' worth of luxury merchandise unattended in the lobby downstairs so that we can have a nice dinner and get a good night's sleep and be all smiles and polka dots the next morning, like you!”

Five feet away, Sabrina's voice escalated. “I don't see what's so difficult about this request,” she enunciated tersely. “Can't you just track it right now? Isn't there a GPS or something?”

“No, ma'am,” a calm voice responded over the speaker, “I'm sorry, I wish we could do more, but—”

“Yes,” Sabrina cut in sharply, “I wish you could too,” and hung up with a crack of plastic. “
Boys!
Are you finished with the trunks? I just got an e-mail—our September It Girl has crashed her car on methamphetamines,” she said. “The new It Girl is only available to shoot this week, so in addition to styling the white shoot, Edmund will be styling this second story too.” She stepped out from behind her desk. “Edmund's It Girl story will be an off-white theme. That means the first story is
white
—this
other one is
off-white
. They are completely different, so if you mix them up . . .” With a special glance in my direction, she left, presumably to discuss an important matter with the fashion editors.

George and I erected a new garment rack for Edmund's off-white story. Because putting the rack anywhere else would have made it impossible to walk through the closet, we had to place it directly behind our desk so that, as the day went on, the clothes multiplying behind us gave the unsettling impression that a crowd was gathering over our shoulders.

As a proudly visual person, I didn't disparage the distinction between white and off-white, but I did wonder why Edmund couldn't think of a theme that was less similar to the one he was already styling for the same issue. The only justification I had for it was that he was a genius, and I just didn't understand his methods yet.

During the first hour of check-ins, George accidentally hung a faintly cream Dolce & Gabbana slip dress onto the white rack. I said, “Oh, that's not white, it's off-white”—not to make him feel bad, but you know, just so he'd be aware—and re-hung it on the correct rack.

From then on he refused to say a word to me, and after photographing the incoming clothes began to leave them in a beigeish heap for me to pick through as his retort. This went on until around two, when Sabrina's desk phone began to ring nonstop. Usually she picked up on the first ring, or sooner, but she had gone downstairs to pay a deliveryman for her lunch and couldn't know that, twelve stories above, an incessant trilling demanded her attention. George had bumbled to the kitchenette to make a coffee, and a conservative guess deemed me unauthorized to answer on Sabrina's behalf, so I let it ring on and on, until sud
denly it stopped, and a voice rung out from the other side of the closet wall.

“
Sa-briiiinnnaaaaaaa
,
Sa-briiiiinnnnaaaaaaaa
!” The sound resembled a fire alarm, which made me wonder—if a fire broke out at
Régine
, would it be my job to save the clothes?

The closet door burst open, and Clara moaned, “
Sabrina
, I have been calling and calling you.”

I started to explain that Sabrina was downstairs, but Clara continued in a wounded tone, “Now look at me—I've had to get up.”

The closet now contained so many racks—white and off-white garments lined every available space—that the only part of Clara I could actually see was her high heels, barely visible beneath a wall of hanging fur coats. A flailing hand, followed by a faltering ankle and a progressive ripple through the curtain of fur, suggested her ultimately unsuccessful passage.

“Somebody . . . ?” she called, with a hint of despair.

I managed to announce myself and she exclaimed, “Ethan!” sounding much relieved. “Thank goodness! Please, can you bring us the trunk of off-white gladiator sandals? It's
urgent
!”

I was seized with panic. This would be my first time in Clara's cubicle.

CLARA, WHO WAS THE SENIOR FASHION EDITOR, SHARED A
large U-shaped cubicle with Will and Christine, the associate fashion editors. As senior fashion editor, she was the highest-ranking among them and directly below Jane, which meant she oversaw Will and Christine, who oversaw Sabrina, who oversaw George, all of whom oversaw me. Due to this hierarchy, inti
mate relations between their rank and my own should have been impossible—yet an oversight of office design ultimately made it possible for me to know them extremely well. That is, the wall between my desk and their cubicle outside was so thin, I could hear every last word they said. In a matter of weeks, I would become well-acquainted with them and their daily rundown, which went like this:

Clara and the fashion editors would always take their seats at around 9:45 a.m. There was the booting of computers and the muffled rolling about of office chairs—then one of them always began with, “
Good
mooorrrrning
, darlings, how was your evening?
” They all spoke like they were in a beauty pageant, with much-extended vowels through strained smiles you could almost hear cracking. The initial response was, “
Lovely, how was yooouuurs?,
” followed by abridged retellings of their respective evenings prior, always spent unglamorously at a “
little party with nice people
”; enjoying “
a bit of Riesling in bed with the boyfriend
”; or otherwise engaged in some dull goings-on, which was their sad obligation to reveal to the others.

These unexceptional accounts might have constituted normal office talk were it not for the glaring fact that it was their
job
to be the most glamorous people in the world. Consequently, they all knew the truth about each other's boring lives: The “little party” had led to a toast with Marc Jacobs (Clara), and the “Riesling in bed” to sex with a Fortune 500 fiancé (Christine).

To my innocent eye it appeared that the fashion editors were as humble as they were endowed with social grace, at least until my second week, when Clara described an extravagant dinner with Calvin Klein as “simple and charming.” From this gross understatement (images from the supremely un-simple
event were posted on every major fashion news site), I finally guessed the reason for their tight-lipped reluctance to divulge: They simply couldn't trust each other. A position in the palace at
Régine
could be taken away by a decree as imperious as the one that had given it to them. Just one slipup—a tip-off revealed to the wrong ears, or a secret to the wrong eyes—or a single move that suggested they didn't meet the standard of gilded perfection that was required, and any one of them could be exiled. Privy more than any outsider to each other's lives, nobody posed as great a threat to them as one another. Furthermore, they all knew that, as far as their careers were concerned, there was nowhere else they could go. They would always be welcomed with grand fanfare at another proverbial court, yet no other was as fantastic and powerful as
Régine
—they could hardly do better than their current positions at the top of the masthead. To ascend at all would mean promotion to Edmund's or Jane's or even Ava's role: Each event was inevitable, but how long would it take? And out of the three of them, which one would be chosen? The editors were trapped in the sphere of one another's ambition—confined in a cubicle every day with their own worst enemies.

And so every day their strained niceties went on and on . . . before they became suddenly silent. An hour later the strangeness would reach new heights when they switched to making meaningful consultations over their shoulders about “
Which Chanel slipper do you think is the best for the new story?
” and “
Do you think this Jil Sander coat is quite right?
” and “
Don't you agree we absolutely
neeeeeed
Look Fourteen from
Ferragaaaaaamo
?
,” everything bloated with an earnest sense of purpose, like they had agreed to a momentary truce in the interest of a greater common cause,
which at the end of their handbag-filled day they all upheld with absolute conviction.

This sense of united purpose was somehow reflected in the most curious fact about them; that despite any mistrust they hid from each other, they trusted more than anything in each other's
taste
, so much so that they had come to dress alike, and smell alike, and even keep their hair the exact same shade of platinum blonde. They always got their roots re-dyed around the same time, and oddly enough, the more I eventually got to look at them, the more I recognized in the very contours of their faces an identical strain—as if, no matter what they were doing, in the back of their minds they were constantly concentrating on the exact same set of things, like how to tie a difficult knot while balancing a teacup on their head and going up the stairs.

IT WAS THIS COLLECTIVE EXPRESSION OF CONSTANT MENTAL
exertion that I mistook for impatience when I entered their cubicle for the first time, depositing nervously at their feet the trunk that Clara had summoned. I was breathless, having tipped over a garment rack of racy lingerie in my unglamorous attempt to extricate the trunk from the overcrowded closet.

Sniffing me out, they wheeled their chairs around me, circling the trunk like slick, muscular sharks. Inside the trunk floundered forty pairs of colorless gladiator-style sandals, captured fish gasping at the bottom of a boat.

With a preoccupied half-glance in my direction, Clara pointed ambiguously to the trunk. “Can you . . . ?”

I knelt down beside the trunk and tried to guess what she wanted me to do.

“Gucci,” she clarified.

I dug through the trunk in search of her selection—a task which was made difficult by my trembling fingers and the fact that the editors had beseeched all the PR firms to borrow every designer's version of the same shoe. Gladiator sandals were trending, evidently, that season—and every sandal was the same shade of off-white. The pair by Gucci, which Clara asked me to pull out, was distinguished only by gold buckles that, unlike the gold buckles on the pairs by Christian Louboutin, Bottega Veneta, and Hermès, were carved out in the shape of a double
G
. I identified and offered up the requested pair like a sommelier displaying a bottle of fine wine for the consideration of his distinguished guests.

I waited for someone to tell me if my interpretation of this task was correct as the trio gathered closer to one another and made furtive remarks behind half-raised hands.

“Ferragamo,” said Clara at last. I replaced the Guccis and set out digging for the Ferragamos; pulled them out; observed the exchange of more whispers.

“Louis Vuitton,” said Will next.

“Chanel,” said Christine.

“Manolo Blahnik,” said Clara.

“
That's it
,” they said together. I jumped.

“That's the shoe!” exclaimed Clara, pointing. A smile broke out across all their faces. I experienced an uncanny ripple of joy; that in some small way I had facilitated a feeling of satisfaction in them.

“That shoe, with the knee-length Armani skirt!” Will exclaimed.

Christine placed a demure hand over her heart, glowing with
the thrill of endless possibility. “Or the Valentino mini, with the sheer side panel!”

“Yes,” said Will, resting his own excited hand on the back of her chair, “and the Balmain military jacket!”

“Edmund will love it,” Clara concluded with a vivid clap.

Will took one of the shoes from my hands as Clara glanced up at me and smiled, “Thank you, Ethan—you can take away the trunk now.”

“Hold on a second . . .” interjected Will as he inspected the shoe. The others had already begun to roll toward their desks when he flipped it over and tapped on the sole. He squinted. “These are a size forty,” he announced. His voice reverberated with the grave reluctance of a soldier required to inform a widow of her husband's misfortune in the line of duty.

Clara turned to him, her desk chair squeaking. “So?”

“It Girl's a thirty-seven, and it's open-toe. Her feet will look so bad.”

“Oh
no
,” said Christine. The tragic realization descended over her face like a shadow.

I stood by while they deliberated. The shoe had been passed to Clara. She counted with an effort. “That's thirty-seven—thirty-eight—thirty-nine—forty—four sizes too big.”

“Actually three sizes,” corrected Christine.

Clara didn't seem to hear her. “You're right. Think about how big that will look on her.” She stuck out her leg so the others could inspect her own delicate Manolo-clad foot. “My feet are tiny, and when I try to wear sample-size, I look ridiculous . . .”

“Great shoe,” Christine noted grimly to Clara's foot. “Are those the ones you wore to Jane's wedding?” As a redress for her humorless tone she smiled a little too hard, like a levy about to burst.

“No,” Clara smiled even harder, “those were Dior.”

“I'm sorry,” smiled Christine, “your style is just so cohesive—I couldn't tell them apart.”

Will was in a trance. “What do we do?” he lamented, as he stared hopelessly into the trunk full of shoes. “They're too big, but they're the
only
shoe.”

“Surpriiiiiiise!” a voice suddenly called out.

They glanced toward the fashion closet door to see Jane, the creative director, in her white collared shirt and cigarette pants, with her white-haired, ponytailed head topped by a pink birthday cone hat. Balanced precariously on her forearms was a heavy-looking crystal platter brimming with chocolate cupcakes, each decorated with sprinkles and rainbow plastic letters that together spelled out, H-A-P-P-Y B-D-A-Y C-L-A-R-A-!