The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (20 page)

There was no going back. I was no prodigal daughter, and there was no father who would spy me across the acres and run off to slaughter a calf. The only possible justification for all I had done lay now in my happiness, or at least in my success. I tried very hard not to think about words like
selfishness,
although they edged into my thoughts one way or another.

Madame Annelle became a whirlwind. She found new solutions to boning, to drape, to a diagonal line slashing across the bosom. Some nights I sewed till midnight, my mind mercifully filled with the intricacies of passementerie. And Madame Annelle's reputation swelled. Her customers awaited their opportunity to complain at the recital by Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink that their limbs ached so, after the long fitting demanded by their temperamental
modiste.

If I could have managed it, I would have required longer fittings still. I was studying fashion as if I were going to pass a test and on scraps of leftover velvet practiced a new hemstitch until I could sew five inches a minute. I made sample dresses to show clients: ball gowns, bathing costumes, anything that interested me. Freed from the unvarying fashion needs of shop girls, I vowed never again to make a plain shirtwaist, and my days became a slow riot of fabrics and trims, undersleeves and over-skirts. Lingerie dresses had just come into fashion, and I learned to save the daylight hours for the close white-on-white embroidery that gave body to the yards of muslin. Two years before, I would have saved such light cloth for undergarments.

Lingerie dresses were just the start. Memorizing every silhouette in
Vogue,
I sewed evening dresses, day dresses, high waists, no waists, trim, buttons, lace. I thought about clothing the way I imagined Diamond Jim Brady thought about food, planning his next meal while eating six lobsters and drinking ten bottles of champagne. Sewing, I was in a kind of ecstasy, and even though there was not one moment of my day that was improper, I breathed harshly and had to keep dampening my lips.

Fashionable ladies in the 1910s confronted a new world. Not an issue of
Vogue
came out but that showed dresses with Persian trim at the hem, wraps inspired by Egypt or Japan, startling ideas about the shape of a back. Fresh simplicity of line existed beside an opulence of layers and drapes, dresses constructed like tents whose openings could be peeled back, layer on layer. Hungry to learn the secrets of such clothes, I spent evenings creating paper patterns from the magazine drawings. When the time came that a client wanted an evening dress with sleeves that fell over her arms in ripples of silk and net, I would be prepared. Until that occasion arose, however, Madame Annelle's customers desired, ordered, and persisted in wearing suits.

Suits were proper, customers explained. They explained this many times. Perhaps the ladies of New York or Philadelphia might embrace a giddy new wrap; those ladies had Mrs. Astor's Four Hundred as a bulwark against vulgarity, the place where the newness of fashion became commonness. Los Angeles needed a bulwark of its own, what with the Catholics filling the churches on every corner, and the unseemly new temples where perspiring preachers in shirtsleeves claimed to speak in tongues, such an unpleasant idea.

The ladies of Los Angeles were mounting a genteel war against breaches in comportment, and proper suits were the front line in their battle. No matter how haughtily Madame Annelle fought, how silkily she persuaded, she could create only what garments clients ordered. The afternoon I rode the streetcar home, my lap filled with tan wool for five afternoon suits, my jaw was clamped hard as a horseshoe. Even the farm wives of Mercer County had shown more appetite for style, and more adventurousness.

At home, I studied recent editions of
Harper's Bazaar
—fluttering tunics by Poiret, bell-shape sleeves that extended to the knuckle, intricate fabrics that looked as if they'd been unpacked from a caravan and were still dusted with spices. When Mrs. Belle Jenks opened a public library at her house, I spent half a day there staring at an encyclopedia etching of full, silken trousers made for a Chinese concubine. For days I could not stop thinking about the fall of the cloth over the inside of a thigh, a thought not crowded out when another of my ladies desired yet another tailored suit for afternoon calls. "This is Los Angeles, not Paris," she said, a point that had not been lost on me.

All of us knew about Paris fashions, displayed for anyone who attended the moving pictures.
Pathe's Weekly
featured close-up photographs of lampshade tunics, boned at the bottom so that the hem floated around the wearer's knees, and turbans to replace old-fashioned picture hats. Sometimes I would emerge from the movie house addled; years after I saw it, I recalled clearly a fur-trimmed wool-on-wool coat whose hem gathered to a point at the front.

Moving pictures ran through my thoughts, day and night.
The One She Loved, Gold and Glitter, Artful Kate, The Stain
—I went at least once a week. Watching Lillian Gish extend her hands in supplication, I was plump with gratitude for my own safe life. Looking at Florence Lawrence's mass of wavy hair, so heavy that her head often tilted back to expose her pearly throat, I pondered her reported near-death on a St. Louis streetcar; she was later found alive and was claimed by Carl Laemmle as a star. Now the
Examiner
was running huffy editorials about publicity and the sanctity of the public trust. Watching her cast up her timid gaze in
The Broken Oath,
I yearned to protect her tremulous innocence. At the same time, I paid attention to her costumes, which cleverly revealed the line of her tiny waist while still appearing demure.

I followed
The Adventures of Kathlyn
to see how the big-eyed heroine could escape mortal peril week after week, and of course I watched the newsreels, but the first reason I paid my nickel was to see one-reel dramas like
Desert Love,
for which the actresses wore billowing harem pantaloons. The gathers at the ankle were set with a cuff, both cunning and efficient. Someone had designed all those pantaloons, as well as the tiny bodices. More moving pictures were being made every day, and someone would need to design costumes for all of them.

Cautiously, I made inquiries. The only channels I knew were carved by my customers, the wives of bankers and water commissioners. But the wives of bankers and water commissioners traveled in scrupulously observed circles defined to the east by Pasadena and to the west by tony Bel-Air. Their circle did not pass through the newly annexed area called Hollywood, a cluster of streetcar stops northwest of downtown, not far enough away to be exclusive, not near enough to be familiar.

Despite the name, with its suggestion of leafy country lanes inhabited by squires on horseback, Hollywood spilled over uneven dirt hills that fostered little more than garter snakes and prickly brush. Until its recent skip to fame, Hollywood had mostly been a trash dump. Now the papers were full of talk about
The Squaw Man,
which had been filmed one hundred percent in Hollywood, even the scenes that were supposed to take place in England. Local audiences tried to spot Los Angeles landmarks, but no one yet had been able to do so—a triumph of careful camera angles, the
Examiner
said. As far as I was concerned, Mr. De Mille's triumph had lain in his ability to convince viewers that a quarter-acre of scrubby ground, dust actually rising around the actors' feet, could represent an earl's estate. "Filmed in Hollywood!" Mrs. Wicket said, and laughed brittlely. Like all of my clients, she thought the pictures were low.

If she thought her disapproval would dim the luster of the new movies and their birthplace, she miscalculated. Ice-cream parlors featured Hollywood sundaes. Butler's Department Store displayed a pretty blue tango shoe with a Hollywood heel. The
Examiner
ran excited advertisements for serials, reminding readers that they could not fully enjoy the installments to come if they had not seen the thrilling early episodes, filmed in Hollywood! Hollywood actors, Hollywood galas, Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood: the name existed as if Paradise had opened suddenly among us, and while girls clustered around shoe-store windows and debated how they might afford the new heels, the refined ladies of Los Angeles were lining up against Paradise. Some of them even wore old-fashioned low boots to bespeak their intolerance—a truly silly gesture, given the heat. Los Angeles, they liked to tell me while I fitted their suits, did not need further coarsening. In a one-reeler seen by Mrs. Doyle, a girl had worn a costume so sheer that her waist was clearly visible. "Honestly, Madame. What do you think of a thing like that?"

"I would like to meet the costumer who created such a design," I said.

"Mrs. Abigail Hoyt," said Mrs. Doyle. "I read about her in the newspaper. She comes from Ireland." She sniffed, then smiled at me. "We might expect such a thing from an Irish woman?"

"
Oui,
" I said. Mrs. Doyle had already twice explained to me that her own name was a modification of the impeccably British "Dunley," an explanation I accepted without comment, as I accepted her broad, freckled face and red hair.

I carried her opinion to Mrs. Donlavey and to Mrs. Mortimer, asking while I adjusted Mrs. Donlavey's train and the neckline on Mrs. Mortimer's blouse if they had heard of a Mrs. Abigail Hoyt. They frowned at the mention of a Hollywood woman and had never heard of her, or claimed not.

Only vivacious Mrs. Homes brightened when I mentioned the name. Mrs. Homes was wild about the pictures and was what we would later call "starstruck." She often went four times a week, seeing the same picture so many times that she could act out for her
modiste
every scene in
A Mother's Prayer.
Now, in response to my diffident query, her face grew bright. "Mrs. Abigail Hoyt! They say that Carl Laemmle himself is afraid of her. He questioned an order she made on feathers for the costumes of dancing girls, and she stormed out, leaving half the girls standing in their chemises." Mrs. Homes raised her eyebrows. "Don't you suppose that Mrs. Hoyt was a favorite with all of the men employed on the set that day?"

"I saw that picture—
The Fatal Choice.
The dresses were held up with nothing more than satin ropes at the shoulder. Mrs. Hoyt should be a great favorite with men everywhere."

"She performs a public service, you might say." Mrs. Homes cut her eyes roguishly.

"I might, had more of the shoulders on display been of public benefit." I liked Mrs. Homes, so when she directed me to raise the overskirt of her new evening dress, allowing the gauze under-layer to show more clearly, I said, "No."

"My. You are secure in your opinions."

"The velvet needs a full extension in order to fall properly. Cut too short, it will flap." This was not even remotely true; Mrs. Homes had paid for excellent cloth that would fall like cream no matter how it was cut. But Madame Annelle was made out of suggestion and shrugs and the turn of a shoulder, and from such a creation
no
was a more useful word than
yes.
A pity I had not known that when I married Jack, I thought fleetingly.

"Mrs. Abigail Hoyt would make it higher, were I to ask."

"I think not, madame. It is said that Carl Laemmle himself is afraid of her."

"If I promise to introduce you to Mrs. Hoyt, will you raise the overskirt?"

I inserted three pins at the hem before I said, "I will make you new cloth gloves, lovely for the theater." When Mrs. Homes laughed, I made sure she saw my smile, modestly turned toward the ground, obscurely French in its small curve.

It would have been foolhardy to expect that Mrs. Homes might remember this conversation, not even a promise. Girls who waited for their employers to recall gauzy offers were girls asking for disappointment. So I was surprised and touched to find Mrs. Homes waiting with Mrs. Abigail Hoyt's card when I returned for her next fitting. "Do not imagine that acquiring this was a pleasure," she said. "Mrs. Abigail Hoyt would have me know that every girl who comes to California imagines she might be a professional seamstress. Her work, she says, is very exacting."

I allowed myself a raised eyebrow. "I am sure she knows the quality of her work." Anyone sitting in a movie theater could see the hasty seams on costumes and even, once, an unfinished buttonhole.

"Not until I removed my cloak and showed her my gown, the purple one you made for me, did she show any interest. I don't mind telling you, it was still grudging."

"What did she say about the dress?" I said.

"She said the overskirt should be higher."

When I left her home that afternoon with orders for two new evening dresses, Mrs. Homes pressed my hand. "Don't forget to tell me about your meeting with Mrs. Hoyt," she said. "You have embarked on an adventure."

"California," I murmured, and pressed her hand in return, rare warmth from Madame Annelle. For a moment I felt close to Mrs. Homes, as I had used to be close to the shoppies—girls whose lives were like mine. No one now had a life like mine. Madame Annelle existed only in the parlors of her customers. No family. Not even a beau. No one had reason to think of me softly, not in Los Angeles and far less, heaven knows, in Kansas. For a moment, the idea leaped in my mind like an imp that I had been mistaken in coming to this city, that I had made nothing but mistakes all my life. Mistakes on mistakes. Every step a blunder, and every blunder carrying me further from decency. It was amazing I could hold my head up in public. If the upright ladies of Los Angeles had any idea of Madame Annelle's past, they would not let her onto their streets, much less into their dressing rooms.

But this was Los Angeles. Everyone knew that Mr. Allen, the subcommissioner, had met his wife in a Denver dancehall, even though she liked to finger her diamond necklaces and vaguely speak of her family jewels. Many jokes were made about her family jewels. Los Angeles ladies took up and cast aside accents, coats of arms, names: Mrs. van Horne had been Mrs. von der Horne when I started sewing for her, and Mrs. von der Horner before that. At the simplest reference to cities or train travel, I had seen clients pause, cast down their eyes, turn away; I knew what these gestures meant. No one could survey the shards of her past without regrets. And if everyone had regrets, they meant nothing; they were as common a condition as breath. No matter! On the ride home, I blinked tears back and fingered Mrs. Abigail Hoyt's card, with her address on Vermont Street, such a desirable neighborhood. "Pay attention," I murmured to myself, although I hardly needed a reminder.