Smack.
“Ouch! I am not a pin cushion.”
A skinny creature with the neck of a giraffe twisted away from me, ripping the delicate fabric I was trying to piece together around her skeletal arm right out of my cramped fingers. And if that weren’t bad enough, she turned and smacked my hand.
Did someone really just smack my hand? I hadn’t been smacked since I last engaged in some sort of infraction like rolling my eyes or sassing an adult.
The freak of nature who stood before me, said hand smacker, who got paid thousands of dollars to scowl and slink down a runway wearing my fashion designer boss’s creations, failed to realized I was the one holding the sharp objects. With large sewing shears hanging on a ribbon around my neck and a handful of straight pins between my fingers, I could cripple her if she didn’t start to show me some respect. Her sharp elbows were no match for my weapons.
Well, straight pins couldn’t cripple anyone, but I liked to imagine they could.
Twice a year during New York Fashion Week, my boss, one of the top designers in the world, had a big runway show. And I was one of the many junior designers who were turned into office bitches for a week, doing all the shit work that made a runway show come together perfectly.
The newspapers, magazines, and cable programs that covered the shows only portrayed the pretty side of the production—beautiful men and women sashaying down the catwalk in their perfect hair and makeup, under the best lighting money could buy, and with some of the loudest freaking music you’d ever hear outside of a nightclub.
What the public didn’t know, however, was that the shows, which took more work than building the Egyptian pyramids, and cost thousands of dollars, were over in minutes.
All that work for ten or fifteen minutes of pomp and circumstance.
If that’s the case, why bother? I asked when I was the new girl on Forest’s team. And after staring at me like I had two heads, one of the office snots explained it this way: if you do show during Fashion Week, you may or may not be noticed (but hopefully you would). And if you didn’t, people would draw all manner of conclusions about you, your collection, your business, and your general ability to walk the face of the Earth with your head held high.
So you kind of had to show.
Not that my boss minded the incredible burden it put on his staff, nor the money that was sucked out of his coffers. He didn’t have to do the shit work, nor did he have to work for a pittance like the rest of us because the company’s money went to impressing the editors of Vogue and Elle, rather than being used to pay us minions. Ah, the benefits of ownership.
But hey, no one forced us to work there. No, we were pretty much complete idiots all on our own.
But at that particular moment, I was a desperate woman. With the start of the show only minutes away, my boss was on the other side of the room shaking hands and air kissing celebrities, fashion press, and other Important People while discretely glancing over his shoulder in my direction. And his look told me all I needed to know. It was on me to make sure the first model supposed to walk in the show was in her outfit and ready to go, no matter what it took. Things were such a scramble in the run-up to a show like ours that regardless of the state the garments were in—open seams needing to be sewn, missing zippers or buttons, it didn’t matter—they were still paraded down the runway. All it took was a needle and thread and occasional glue to get them to stay on the bodies showing them off. That left us pinning, sewing, taping, and gluing up to the final minutes.
This ‘business as usual practice’ was not normally a problem, except that at that moment, I was dealing with the biggest prima donna super model on the planet. Translation—major pain in the ass. Just days before, the tabloids reported she’d beaten a cab driver over the head with her purse because he dropped her off on the wrong side of the street.
I guess I was lucky I got off with a mere hand slap.
“I’m sorry,” I explained to the twig, trying not to choke on my words. That’s what those of us in the office who were buddies called the models behind their backs. Twigs. Like Twiggy, that famous model from back in the day.
Anyway, the twig looked down at me as if I were lower than the dirt on the bottom of her shoe. And because I was desperate to get her on the runway, make my boss look good, and keep my job, it was a role I was temporarily willing to play.
“Look at my beautiful girl,” my boss cooed as he floated over to us.
The twig rolled her eyes dramatically. “Oh, Forest! It’s been such a day. And now look at me. Just look at me,” she whined.
Forest and I looked her up and down. If there was something we were supposed to acknowledge, it was lost on me. The woman looked perfect as I pulled one more stitch, knotted my thread for security, and stepped back to let Forest admire his masterpiece.
He stepped in front of me since I’d worked my magic and was no longer needed. He took the twig’s hands in his own and leaned close to murmur something in her ear.
Whatever it was, he’d done the right thing, because her face instantly brightened. She was ready to walk, and he led her by the hand to the backstage area where the rest of the models had assembled. In the moments before they were to go on, they looked bored, not to mention hungry, standing there with their arms crossed and chatting amongst themselves.
What did models talk about with each other?
“You’re so skinny. Wow.”
“Oh no, you’re much skinnier. And prettier, too.”
“No way, you’re prettier…”
And on, and on…
Anyway, I could only guess what they conversed about, because they didn’t talk to me, or any of my coworkers, unless they wanted something like a glass of water or a carrot stick to suck on.
Deafening show music began to play as people with headsets ran around like maniacs, and the first set of models marched out onto the runway in Forest’s latest designs. I waited where he and the twig had left me—she’d return in moments, and I had to help her into her next outfit. While cooling my heels, I waved across the room at my coworker, Muse, over on the men’s side, dealing with male models and their outfits. I envied his job. Working with the guys was a breeze compared to some of the bitches I had to contend with.
My twig returned with a light sheen of perspiration on her forehead, which a deft makeup artist dabbed away. Not to make excuses for her bitchiness, but I knew the runway lights were hot and being sewn into a garment was not exactly comfortable. As soon as she held still, I took my stitch ripper and ran it up the seam I’d just sewn to close her in. With a couple pushes and pulls, I slipped the garment off and helped her step into the next one.
I stood back to make sure she was good to go and nodded. She ran to line up again with her group, shook her head and rolled her shoulders, and plunged into the spotlight.
Since each model was to wear only two outfits, I was pretty much done. I sneaked out the back of the stage to stand unnoticed in the audience and watch the show just like the few hundred guests attending that morning.
The models came marching down the catwalk, first the women and then the men, all wearing the same disinterested expression, which was exactly what Forest wanted. And if Forest was happy, we were all happy.
Twig after twig did that weird runway walk models do where they take longer than natural steps, putting each foot in front of the other to create a funny sway that made them look both awkward and badass at the same time.
Then, the male models came. They had their own weird way of walking, too, where they moved their shoulders back and forth in a pseudo masculine move that no normal man would ever actually use.
But I had to say, as odd as their runway walk was, they were freaking drop-dead gorgeous. While a lot of the male models were androgynous to the point of actually appearing interchangeable with the women, our shows always used the butchest men Forest could find. Actually, he didn’t find any of them. The agency that helped us put on our shows found them. Forest just approved them; a job he relished.
I found an empty seat and settled into it, making sure I was in the shadows where no one could find me. I had to see as many of the outfits as possible come down the catwalk, especially the men’s wear ones I had worked on, but I didn’t want Forest to think I was slacking. He was actually an awesome guy and great boss, but during the shows, he’d whip himself into an insufferable lather, for which he’d later apologize.
During the last show we had, when we were backstage and the models and guests had all left, he bent over a trashcan and puked his guts up.
Because fashion was glamorous, right?
