Fatshionista Page 8

  But the funny part was that he was just staring right back, with the same goofyish grin on his face. I would swear on Chanel that we were having a full-blown moment over here. My deluded fantasies were infiltrating my real life. Except for the undergarments. The Victoria’s Secret bra and Spanx I was currently sporting were a nice change from the impenetrable undergarments in my dreams.

  And on the subject of dreams, there was something about his appearance today that reminded me of my last dream. What was it? I kept stealing glances at him, trying to casually examine him from head to toe and figure out what was different. At some point in my sleuthing, he must have stopped talking because when I looked up, he was staring at me as if I were mentally unstable.

  Aha!

  “Your eyes!” I shouted, pointing at them and almost poked one out as I waved my finger in his face. He looked around the room at the other people and smiled as he pulled me over to the side of the room. “Your eyes are brown!” I said, as if I were Perry Mason cross-examining the murderer. Where did he get off having brown eyes? Fantasy Daniel had brown eyes, not real Daniel.

  He smiled at me in that same doctor-talking-to-a-mental-patient way. “Yes, Millie. My eyes are really brown. Sometimes I wear blue contact lenses. They are cosmetic; I don’t have to have them, so most days I don’t bother with them.”

  “You bothered with them every other time we’ve ever met.” Apparently I was intent on continuing the cross examination. In my head I knew this wasn’t a big deal, but something about having seen his real eyes in my dream was kind of freaking me out.

  He laughed and turned back to the samples to spread the rest of them across the table. “Is this really shocking to you, Millie? Tons of people were colored contacts. I sometimes get tired of these dull brown eyes staring back at me. You wouldn’t know since you have those sparkly green eyes.”

  I don’t know why it bothered me so much. I should have realized the first time I met him that they weren’t real. Very few Indians had anything other than brown eyes. I was so rattled that somehow sex-starved, dream Millie had realized this before conscious, alert Millie.

  “Oh, it’s no big deal. I was just surprised, that’s all. I was used to blue-eyed Daniel, but now there is brown-eyed Daniel, and I’m sure I will get used to—”

  “Are we going to be using the dress form or just the worktable? It’s going to impact which angle I use, so just let me know, okay?” Ryan shouting across the workroom was enough to remind me that I had more important things to do then discuss Daniel’s eyes. Or my eyes. My sparkly eyes. Sigh.

  “The table will work best. The sample sizes aren’t fit to the dress form, as I just found out.” And with that, it was back to business for professional Millicent Parker.

  Later that evening, as I was finally finishing the last of the emails, I couldn’t stop thinking about our afternoon together. Daniel was polite and attentive; he answered all my questions, and unlike most designers, he did not talk exclusively about himself. Much of what he talked about was his family and how growing up in India influenced his ideas about clothing and, in some cases, women.

  There were so many times during our conversation that I wanted to interject my own opinions about India. I, too, loved the country almost as much as Daniel. When I lived there while in college, I discovered a part of me that never existed in the States. It was a quiet part, a contemplative part that found order in chaos. Anyone who had ever walked down the street in Delhi was experienced in chaos.

  It was one huge melee of every form of transportation known to man. Walking, bike riding, bike rickshaw, auto rickshaw, oxen cart, moped, motorcycle, car, truck, and bus. But somehow it all coexisted. In the year I studied in India, I only saw one car accident, and that was because of a cow that walked into the road, causing a car to swerve and hit a truck.

  And the chaos didn’t end visually. The sound of the street, the car horns, the truck horns, the talking, the shouting, and the bike bells. The thick heat of the summer with the smell of rain or the cool smog of the winter, the smell of mothballs everywhere that people gathered, all wearing clothes they only bring out for one month of the year.

  India was a second home to me. My sponsor family quickly became my real family. I had more familial connections in India than I did in the US. I spent many nights Skyping with my aunties in India as they began their day and I ended mine.

  None of them could understand why I was still single or why I worked so hard or why I didn’t come and live in India. I had thought about it, many times. New York was not an easy place to live, especially when you had no family and your work life left little time to make friends. All my aunties had promised me a great husband with a good job who would not be marrying me just for a green card. They were sweet to look out for me, but they didn’t understand that establishing who I was and being happy with me was my first step to finding someone to share my life with.

  I did know that if I were to ever marry, it would probably be to an Indian man. One of my male friends at university in Delhi described for me his perfect woman. Unlike American men, it did not start out with a physical description and then include things like easy to get along with and lets me have my space. Instead, my Indian friend described a caring woman who took care of others when they were sick or needing help, a woman who found the joy and happiness in even the hardest day. A woman who would stand by him and stand by his family. A woman who would put her heart and soul into her family. This was his ideal woman. No age, no height, no hair color, no weight. It didn’t matter. That wasn’t what he was looking for.

  But I had decided in the beginning to keep my knowledge of India to myself. It did allow Daniel to feel as if he were sharing his culture and life with me and introducing me to that culture. It gave us a place to start, and it kept me from sounding like a know-it-all, which I knew was one of my less attractive qualities. It didn’t come from a place of wanting to seem smart; it came from a place of never wanting anyone to think I was stupid. I had grown up with people who made me feel less than adequate, and I had been fighting the urge to defend myself and overcompensate ever since.

  The elevator dinging pulled me out of my musing. I couldn’t imagine who might be here at this time of night; usually it was just me and the cleaning crew, but they had left hours ago.

  “Well, hey. You’re here awfully late. Working on something I should know about?” Scarlett leaned against the doorframe. She was dressed for a night out in a skintight Herve Leger bandage dress and sky-high Louboutins. While my internal, fashionable woman admired her ability to pour her cute little self into that dress, the fat kid in me wanted to smear cake all over her and run away.

  “Nope.” Maybe if I stared intently at my monitor, she would get the hint and walk away. And even if I was working on something, there was no reason she should know about it.

  “No, you aren’t working on anything, or no I shouldn’t know about it?” Now she had straightened up, almost looking life she was going to come into the room and settle in for a nice long chat. My defensive strategy coach had better come up with something fast.

  “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be rude. I was just in the middle of trying to answer an important email. No, I am not working on any project right now, just trying to catch up on all the emails that piled up last week while we were doing shows. What brings you to the office this late? You working on something I should know about?” Sometimes a great offense was the best defense.

  “Oh, no project; I was just hoping to run into you and get an update on how things were going with Daniel. I can’t ever seem to catch you at the office during the day, and I know Ryan said that a lot of nights you work late, so I was on my way home from dinner and thought I would see if you were here, and it’s my lucky night because you are.” And on that note, she gingerly lowered herself into my spare chair, almost as if she was concerned that it might somehow leave a mark on her dress.

  Great, it looked like she was settling in for a cozy little chat. “Thi
ngs are going well. Ryan got the proof shots of the samples that came in from Delhi, and we’re going to look over those in the morning and see how we can create a production around the colors and themes Daniel has asked for.” That should be vague enough, detailed but not too detailed. For some reason I just didn’t want to give her anything more than she was asking for. I had a feeling this was something of a fishing expedition, but I couldn’t figure out why.

  “As you know, Daniel’s sister McKenzie is a dear friend of mine, and I assured her when I brought Daniel to this company that I would personally insure his every need was being met.”

  McKenzie? Who named their child that? It was a dog’s name. Focus, Millie. Daniel? His needs? Yes, I was completely on board for meeting his every need. I just wasn’t born with the right equipment. But the closer we got, I might be persuaded to go buy whatever it was he needed and attempt to negotiate some type of mutually pleasurable agreement. Dear God, I had to go home and rest; I was talking crazy in my head. At least it was still in my head, but as tired as I was, there was no telling which gems of ridiculousness might fall out.

  “I was having dinner with Daniel tonight, and he seemed pleased with how things are going so far, but you know he’s still relatively new to this environment, so he may not realize if there are problems brewing.”

  With only two weeks in this “environment” herself, I doubted Scarlett would even know where the coffee was brewing in this office.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that Daniel feels like things are off to a good start. We’re still in the early stages of designing his production, but I feel confident he’ll walk away pleased, as do all of the designers I work with.”

  Scarlett leaned back in her chair, apparently getting a little more comfortable with the feel of the Naugahyde. “Funny you should mention that. We actually ran into one of your other designers at dinner tonight. She didn’t have many pleasant things to say about the company, or you for that matter. That was one of the reasons I wanted to chat with you; I had not been informed that we had a client who was severely dissatisfied with her show and one who, I might add, is being very vocal about that dissatisfaction.”

  Ahhh, well that explained the late-night visit and the cat who ate the canary grin she had been wearing since she first showed up at my door. It sounded like Tori Thomas Taylor was at it again.

  Tori Thomas Taylor was the daughter of one of the richest men in New York. She was completely without talent and completely without anyone in her life to inform her that she had none. I had the great misfortune to be asked to produce her first (and last) charity runway show for a private party hosted by her father. At the time I agreed to produce the show, Marta had only said it was for charity and it was being held on October 31st at the Four Seasons ballroom.

  When I arrived at the first rehearsal and saw the looks parading down the runway, I drew the only conclusion any sane person could have drawn: This was a Halloween fashion show with the highlight being these designs, which were a cross between Bride of Frankenstein and the Mummy. All gauzy wrapped dresses and gothic-looking nightgownish outfits. So I ran with it. Went full-out camp H-A-double L-O-W-double E-N spells Halloween.

  TT (as she preferred to be called) had been in Hong Kong that week at an opening for her actor boyfriend’s new restaurant and had communicated with me via text. She said she trusted us and felt assured we would be able to glean from the clothing itself what her message was for “her” public. Her first glimpse of what I had designed happened at the same time everyone else’s did: Halloween night.

  Later that evening, when in the middle of the show TT got up and screamed bloody murder and had to be removed from the ballroom was my first indication that maybe the fashion was not intentionally Halloween-themed—that maybe it was just a coincidence that her ridiculously horrible designs were debuting on the same night zombies, ghosts, and vampires came out to play. Either way, this was not my best professional moment, but I was vindicated by the sheer number of people who came up to congratulate us after the show. Many even thought that TT’s outburst and removal had all been part of the entertainment.

  Her publicist later confirmed that, and publicly they went along with the Halloween theme and said that had been TT’s intention all along. It was only in the four walls of this very office when TT, her publicist, her manager, her father, and Marta had all handed me my ass on a platter that anyone admitted any different.

  Ever since then, TT had been vocal about how unhappy she was with our firm, going so far as to claim that we held her back from all the crazy, ridiculous, campy Halloween stuff she really wanted to do and delivered what she considered to be a mediocre show to the New York fashion community.

  “Scarlett, as I’m sure you know, I have a sterling reputation at both this company and the community at large. Although to most people what we do behind the scenes is never seen, my peers in the industry know I do good work. TT is one example of an unhappy client. As she has never shown another piece of clothing in public since, I can only assume she has no idea what it is to work with another company. My feeling is that she would be unhappy with any company she worked with because she has no talent as a designer and we are production companies, not magicians.”

  Scarlett smiled as she stood up. “I’m sure everyone in New York is completely aware of your abilities. My concern is not you, Millicent, but this company. I am here to bring in business, business which consists of talented designers like TT, whom I also consider a friend. If you are not able to please the type of customers I will be bringing in, then maybe you need to think about whether or not this is the company for you.”

  My initial reaction was to hurl the letter opener on my desk at her back Indiana Jones style and cut her down mid-swagger. Thankfully I was an evolved, professional woman who did not allow silly claims from uninformed coworkers to get to her, so I settled for sticking out my tongue at her back while she walked away.

  With the hundreds of talented designers in New York, I couldn’t figure out why Marta had hired Scarlett to bring in talentless rich kids. If this was the way things were heading, bandage girl just might have a point. Maybe this wasn’t the company for me anymore. But if I didn’t work here, where would I go?

  I received offers from other companies after every fashion week. I had just deleted four emails tonight asking me to come in and discuss the opportunities that awaited me at other production houses. As much as I loathed Marta at times and as much as I was getting tired of feeling like I was running this company without getting any recognition or increase in salary, I did feel beholden to her.

  She was the only person who was able to look past my size and give me a job. Even in our small corner of the fashion world, where we operated behind the scenes and were rarely noticed by anyone except people in the industry, it was still assumed that if you wanted to work in fashion—any aspect of fashion—you needed to look the part.

  At 5’5” and 185 pounds, I had never looked the part. That was actually the first comment Marta made when I walked into the interview. She said, “I hope you realize that this job does not include a stipend for meals; you look like you are used to being well fed.”

  Yes, imagine bouncing back from that opening line in an interview. Thankfully, though, I had always battled weight bigotry with a sense of humor. I fired back that I had planned on just eating the models; I heard they were tasty and that they were so hungry they wouldn’t put up much of a fight.

  I think it was both the first and the last time I had ever seen Marta smile. It wasn’t my quick wit that she said got me the job, oh no, she couldn’t admit to anything that might sound like a compliment. She said the reason she hired me was I was big enough that no one would notice me or be threatened by me, but not so big that people would notice me and stare at my freakishly large size. And she was right. Yes, this was the Mother Teresa for whom I had slaved away for the last five years.

  But she was right. I thought of my weight as my super power; it rendered me
invisible to people in my industry, which was something that had certainly come in handy over the last year.

  TT or no TT, maybe Scarlett was on to something. Maybe it was time I looked at making a change in my employment. My only hope was that the change would be not just from one production company to another, but from one industry to another.

  CHAPTER 8

  Well, bitches, it was a quiet weekend on the fashion front. Your mama did spot the newest import from exotic India, Daniel Singh, on the dance floor at Club Ritz. He looked like he stepped right out of a Bollywood movie. The only thing missing was the kohl-eyed heroine by his side, something he would be hard-pressed to find in this club full of hot gay men. Oh well, I’m sure one of the drag queens would happily step in to play his love interest. Let’s hope his rumored resort wear collection is as fabulous as his dance moves.

  --March 16th “It’s just fashion, bitches” blog--

  Ugh, I shouldn’t have stayed up and watched Dhoom 2 for the billionth time. There was something about the sparks between Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai that called to me last night. Maybe it was my own lack of late-night fantasies. Ever since the sample day, Daniel had yet to make another appearance in my dreams. At first I was relieved because I wasn’t waking up drenched in sweat trying to rip my underwear off, but I had kind of started looking forward to our nighttime adventures, even if they were only in my head.