The Dress (13 page)

Honor trailed off in the face of the deathly silence that had descended on the room. Breton and his assistant were staring at her, open-mouthed, as if she had spoken so
deeply
out of turn that they had not yet figured out how to react.

‘What I mean is... ma'am...'

Breton's sense of self-preservation overtook his fear of Joy. He swept across the room and, with a flourish of his arms, said, ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick. May I present to you my new protégé, Honor...'

‘Conlon,' she said, helping him out.

Honor had been so flustered that she had forgotten to remove her atelier apron. Now she quickly undid the ties and threw the work garment to one side, revealing the wide navy skirt and crisp white blouse she had chosen to impress Breton. Joy took Honor's hand.

‘So, these are your drawings?' she said.

Honor nodded. ‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘And you designed my New Year's Eve dress?'

‘Well, I made it, and...' Honor looked across at Breton.

‘Yes, indeed, Honor designed and made the dress, under my instruction of course.'

Joy paused, arched her brows and said, ‘Of
course
,' before quickly turning to Honor and saying, ‘Well, then, I have a very important event coming up and I need a dress, so let's get started, shall we?'

As Joy talked, she picked up Honor's sketches and studied them, before putting them, carefully, respectfully, back down on the desk. ‘These are really
very
good, I am sure some of them could be adapted to suit me. Although, I am not so sure about green –
nobody
wears green. You'll have to sell that one to me a bit harder.'

Honor was elated. She looked across at Breton and, smiling, he waved his approval. Even Colette seemed happy, as she helped Honor gather up her sketches and take them across to the private fitting room, next to the atelier, where the client consultations took place.

One wall was mirrored and the others were a light salmon pink; the carpet had a thick white pile and satin drapes lined the changing area. The room was designed to flatter the women and the clothes by throwing a soft light over them both, but in this overtly feminine space Honor felt the woman's beauty fill the room. She could barely believe that she had been commissioned to design a dress for such a tall, slim, perfectly elegant creature and yet, on another level it felt like an inevitability, a piece of fate that this woman, above any other, should be her first client. Honor's head was exploding with ideas. Joy Fitzpatrick was the link she had been missing – her dark hair, the angular, assured beauty, her long neck, slender arms, endless legs and the way she floated across the room. As Joy stood in front of her in Breton's flouncy dressing room, Honor realized this was the woman of her imagination, the woman she had been drawing since she was a child. She was the figure standing in an Irish field, as acres of soft, golden bog grass swayed around her, and she was the silhouette emerging from the black water of the Hudson in early evening. Honor was momentarily dumbstruck.

‘First, I should warn you,' Mrs Fitzpatrick said. ‘I am a very exacting client. Secondly, I know what suits me and I know what I like. That is not to say that I do not expect a high level of design, because I do. It just means that, when I say I want a change made or something specific done to a garment, I expect it to be done just so. Detail is of the utmost importance to me...'

‘I still think you should consider green; only a very deep emerald, in a heavy satin to give it movement, bring it to life.'

Joy looked irritated. ‘I specifically said...'

‘I know what you said, Mrs Fitzpatrick, but you're not anybody, are you? Most women struggle with it, but I know you could carry it and if you can wear something other women can't, then I think you should.'

For a moment there was an uncomfortable stand-off.

‘So what you are saying is, I have a
responsibility
to wear green.'

‘Yes,' Honor said, ‘most definitely. I can't lie. I can see you in it.'

‘And because
you
can see me in it, I should wear it?'

‘Absolutely,' Honor said. She had never felt surer of anything in her life so she added, ‘...because I am the designer,' then appended as an afterthought of respect, ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick.'

Joy seemed annoyed and stayed silent. Her face, beautiful and imperious, was impossible to read. Honor realized that she had gone too far. This woman was, after all, not a mannequin, but a monied New York socialite and, by her own admission, a fussy customer. Honor was trying to think how she might reverse what she had said when Joy said, ‘Make me a day dress, in green. Nothing fancy, just plain lines, in whatever fabric you prefer. If I like it, we'll consider green for the evening dress, and if I don't...' The implication was clear.

Honor felt sick. She had managed to lose the evening-gown commission. What would Breton say?

Joy briskly picked up her bag and pulled on her gloves, saying, ‘Have it sent around on Thursday, please.'

Three days? Was the woman mad?

‘But you'll need a fitting.' Honor stood shocked as Joy went to leave.

‘Breton has my measurements.' And with that Joy Fitzpatrick swept out, past a confused Colette who was coming in with a complimentary glass of champagne.

Colette drained the glass herself, then, as soon as she was sure Joy had cleared the building, said, ‘Don't worry, Breton will understand. Joy Fitzpatrick is the best dressed woman in New York but she is also the most discerning. She's rich and beautiful but she is also exacting. She makes you work for your praise!'

‘She wants me to make her a day dress, by Thursday.'

Colette raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Jesus! In three days! What did you say?'

‘I said I'd do it.'

Actually, she hadn't said anything. Joy had just assumed.

‘Honor, you stupid girl. You measured her very quickly...'

‘Actually, I didn't. She said you had all her measurements.'

Colette opened her eyes in an exaggerated French look of horror. ‘I don't know where her measurements are! We will have to call her and say it's a mistake...'

‘No, Colette, please, I can do this. Please, it's my big chance. Let me try and make her the dress.'

Colette looked at her and saw the determination and, yes, the talent in her young Irish seamstress.

‘All right,' she said, ‘but what will you do about her measurements...?'

‘Don't worry Colette,' Honor said, ‘leave it to me.'

In the moments since Joy Fitzpatrick had left, Honor had already begun sketching out the shape of a dress in her head, something that would not need precise measurement to look supremely stylish. She knew she could design her something she would love, but Colette was still shaking her head.

‘A client like that can ruin a design house. One mistake...'

Honor pulled a pen out of her skirt pocket, grabbed one of her sketches and began drawing on the back of the sheet. As the black page filled with the soft strokes of her pencil she said, ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick is a slender woman, and women of that build can wear loose-fitting garments, without appearing oversized. She's tall, but only a few inches taller than me; much of her height comes from the way she carries herself, so it will be easy to make an accurate estimation for the hemline. Look, if we bring the shoulders down like this, straight to the waist, we have a simple shift dress that will fit any woman and then we can simply pull it in with a matching wide belt – maybe a matching squared-off bolero jacket, to make it smarter.'

In the time it took to describe the outfit, Honor had it drawn out.

Colette pursed her lips and nodded tightly. ‘Yes, all right. OK, OK, you can make the dress.'

She would have to square it with Breton, but he always took her advice. If Honor failed to produce what Joy Fitzpatrick wanted, she would never come back and neither would her friends. However, if she was told they had lost her measurements she could do the same thing anyway.

If the girl made a success of the outfit Joy would send all of her friends and Breton's name would be refreshed among the fickle couture clientele. Colette privately worried that Breton had become greedy – he wanted to keep the clients at any cost and as a result he was losing his ‘flair', his designs were becoming too safe and somewhat mediocre. He was disappointing his discerning clients, the clients who shopped in Paris, clients like Joy Fitzpatrick. This Irish girl had something, Colette could see that and it was only fair to give her a chance.

‘You can work exclusively on the dress until it is done.'

‘Oh, thank you, thank you, ma'am.'

‘But you had better get it
right
...' She nodded towards the fabric catalogues on the glass shelf. ‘...and you had better get on with it.'

Honor gathered up the heavy books and brought them into the atelier where she piled them on the edge of the cutting table. The girls were all out to lunch, so she would have some peace.

The dress itself would be simple to make: the fabric was the most important thing. It had to be the right texture, but most of all, it had to be the right green. The client was right, green was a difficult colour to wear and the least used in fashion, and yet Honor loved it. Green was organic, the colour of nature, but it was also the colour of Ireland, of home. Her hands flicked over dozens of books and hundreds of pages, before lingering briefly over light green worsted. Tightly woven wool was comfortable and soft, a popular daywear fabric but – no. It was too ordinary, too flat. True, she wanted something understated and not too flashy, but at the same time, this outfit had a point to make. Here was the tweed for the jacket: a deep moss with flecks of heathery purple, perfect, but still nothing for the dress itself.

Honor closed her eyes and asked her imagination to carry her back home, to a place she loved. There was a Protestant church on the outskirts of their town, a tall, grey, imposing building, barely visible from the road. Leading up to it was a short narrow path, lined by high trees, with dense ivy crawling up them, the ground a carpet of moss and twigs, clumps of curling ferns and the thick, glossy leaves of the rhododendron bushes.

Her eyes flicked open and she reached for the satin swatches until she found what she was looking for: a thick duchesse in a deep, leafy shade of green.

London, 2014

Zac Podmore was a twenty-one-year-old fashion student at Parsons in New York City. Like Lily he was an only child, and he was thrilled to discover he had an Irish ‘cousin.' Within minutes, they were Skyping.

‘I feel like Obama!' he said, jumping up and down in front of the screen in his cramped apartment, which looked even more cluttered with clothes than her own. He had a shock of blond boy-band hair and a pretty face to match. Lily searched for some trace of familiarity but couldn't find anything.

Zac told Lily the little that he knew about his late grandmother. She had been a stylish woman who even in her eighties dressed impeccably and smelt of, in his words, ‘Chanel-smoked chiffon'. While going through her things in his mother's attic Zac had found the
Vogue
cutting and some photographs of a beautiful dress she had commissioned in the 1950s. Thrilled to have found she was in
Vogue
he scanned and uploaded the cutting to his Pinterest page, which is where Lily must have sourced it from. The photographs, he still had.

‘I didn't put them online. My grandmother was very secretive about her past...'

The same as Old Joe.

‘...she never talked about her life before she met my grandfather, so I felt they were private. The
Vogue
cutting, though, I couldn't resist putting that up and now look! It led us to each other!'

‘Why do you think she was so cagey about the past?'

‘I don't know what the big deal was. I only discovered she was married to this guy Fitzpatrick, your great-uncle, when I found the
Vogue
cutting.'

‘My grandfather was the same. I vaguely knew he had an older brother but he was really cagey about his childhood. His family put him in an orphanage after his mother died and he never really forgave them.'

‘Wow, I don't blame him!'

Lily hadn't thought about it like that before and realized Zac had a point.

‘Except now I regret not asking him, you know? I think he might have told me more about himself if I had bothered to ask.'

‘Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Could be he would have lied or got mad at you,' Zac said. ‘You'll never know, so let it go. That's what my granny used to say.'

‘She was a wise woman.'

‘Guess she was. Death sucks. Granny died when I was fourteen and I still miss her like crazy.'

‘Joy's dress was so amazing,' Lily said. ‘I tried to find the original...'

‘Me too,' he said. ‘No luck?'

‘None.' Then she blurted out, ‘I'd love to make a replica of it, though.'

Zac looked at her, then went silent for a moment before saying, ‘Oh. My. God. That is an
amazing
idea.'

In that moment, Lily realized that she could not undo this crazy idea of hers. More than that, Lily understood that making The Dress had now grown from the niggling, impulsive notion she had in Gareth's shop into something that she actually wanted to do.

Zac agreed to email across all the pictures he had plus an interview with the designer, Honor Conlon, which his mother had found, published in a 1950s drapery magazine and detailing some of the technical elements involved which he thought Lily might find useful. They arranged to talk again the following week.

After they had hung up, Lily sat by the computer and waited for Zac's photographs. As each file came through Lily opened them one by one, and watched the images of an extraordinarily beautiful woman appear. They were amateur snapshots, taken outdoors in a woodland. Slightly fuzzy and in black and white, the detail was poor, but nonetheless they had an old-world glamour about them. Joy's dark hair was drawn into a high chignon and her face was tilted up in a pose both haughty and demurely feminine. Joy Fitzpatrick was the archetypical 1950s couture beauty.