Holland
I run the Baronet satin under my hands, close my eyes, and inhale. “This is better than sex.”
Tanisha snorts softly on my right. She’s threading her sewing machine, readying her Bernina to coax the lilac fabric into a luxurious blouse with an ample cleavage-flashing effect that’ll cost more than some people’s weekly paycheck. Whether anyone will buy that shirt . . . I won’t know for at least two months.
But if I don’t sew the expensive shit and sell it for even more, then I won’t be doing much other than keeping the doors open.
“You clearly haven’t had the right sex,” Tanisha mutters as she pokes at the digital screen on her machine, likely to adjust stitch type and length.
A wall of fabric rolls is to our left. The cutting table lies in the middle of the space, with another table nearby piled with scraps. Waste not, want not is a mantra in a struggling business, and if we can make accessories to sell along with our clothing pieces, we’ll do it. Scarves, ties, and belts are easy enough to make with a higher profit margin if you do it right. And we have no choice but to do it right.
“No. I certainly haven’t.” I let out a wistful sigh. I haven’t had the wrong sex either, and certainly none that makes me want to pass up fondling an expensive satin. Smooth to the touch. A massage for the skin. I grew up with bedding made from material like this. Should I make a pillowcase for myself with the extra? I’ll do it tonight. “Why do you think I’m behind my machine so much?”
“Other than using it as an excuse to keep from weeding through the rotten seeds to find the good fish?”
I smile at her off-kilter saying. “We need that line on a shirt.” I cross to my desk, find a notebook, and jot it down. “Five percent?” They’re her sayings; she earns some of the profits.
“You know I don’t care.” Tanisha rises from her chair and peers at me over her reading glasses. “Eight.”
“Deal.” Father would frown at my lack of negotiation abilities with friends and coworkers. Tanisha’s both. She used to be an independent contractor, but she can get benefits through BommGirl, my plus-sized clothing brand.
We both know she can walk out the door and get snatched up by one of the thousand struggling designers in L.A. Her Sayings by T shirts are some of my best sellers. My line is built on bombshell fashion for the curvy girl, and curvy girls like snarky shit too.
She stuffs her reading glasses into her dark curls and goes to the cutting table with the satin. I’ve left everything satin to her. My other part-time employees passed on working with the Baronet, and since the padding in my company’s savings account isn’t as plush as the fabric, I didn’t force them and turned to my three full-time employees. Anna and Sahara gladly left the Baronet to Tanisha.
We’ve dubbed Tanisha “seamstress and sayings.” Anna Quan is “finance and fabrics.” Sahara Mack is “customer service and solitude.” That means we leave her the hell alone so she can save all her spoons for BommGirl’s clientele. Her energy is limited and we respect that. Profits have risen by ten percent since Sahara came on three months ago, and I would dig her a cave and pump coffee into it twenty-four seven if she asked me to.
If fashion week doesn’t pan out the way I need it to, then it won’t matter.
Sahara steps into the room, her dark-framed glasses perched on the end of her nose. She drapes an arm around a mannequin wearing a pair of casual shorts and a tie-in-the-middle shirt I’ve made for fashion week. I want to make the shorts in a color other than red to go with the cream top. I need to branch out, like with the T-shirt sayings. I have to appeal to my niche but also give them options.
And I have to appeal to a plethora of influencers who’ll talk about me far and wide. I need celebrity more than money—but the money would help. Just in case . . .
“Monsieur Taylor Green is here,” Sahara says.
Her flat tone speaks for all of us. I shamelessly poached Sahara from Taylor, offering her flexible hours and a less bitchy attitude.
I also recruited Tanisha from him. Anna has been with me since I grew too large to make all the orders myself. But she came to me from one of Taylor’s longtime friends in the industry.
The fashion world should be collaborative. Instead, it is cutthroat, brutal, and conscienceless at times. Foolishly, I thought I could leave all that behind. I could at least wield scissors against cotton-polyester blends and not other designers.
Though with Monsieur Green, it was tempting to pack my scissors when I talked to him. “You can hang out here while I deal with him.”
Sahara is already walking to the shag fabric sofa I ordered last year. She plops down and stares at the wall of neatly organized fabric like I often do when I’m drawing on my muse.
She hasn’t approached me about ideas, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one day she propped up a thousand designs for me to peruse and they were all exemplary. Perhaps she’ll strike out on her own. Outsell me within nine months and hire a Sahara of her own.
She may need to.
I have more looks for fashion week to make, but I have to deal with Taylor so Sahara doesn’t have to. Smoothing my hands down the cherry-red skirt of my dress, I’m grateful to be representing my brand. The clothes. The big curls in my platinum-dyed hair. I like the pinup look, and it works well with my body. Guys like Taylor hate my brand, but the style is the flagship of my business. It’s what I’m banking my future on.
To complete the look, I kick off the fluffy slippers with memory foam I wear at work.
I step into my black kitten heels. Retro from head to toe. I peek into one of the five round vintage mirrors hung in various places on the walls. I look like I just walked out of a 1940s catalog. I’d gravitated toward this look since I graduated college—so unlike how I grew up, yet with a nod to where I came from and what my dad’s real business is . . .
I know full well successful people fake it until they make it, and some just keep on faking. It was a hard lesson to learn, and I’m okay pretending to be something I’m not.
I strut to the lobby, leaving all of the insecurities from my upbringing behind. Taylor’s behind the desk Sahara usually sits in. A power move, but more annoying than anything. He’s got his fingers steepled and glares at the blank monitor.
“Monsieur Green. How nice of you to stop by.” My voice is a purr. Taylor detests me. He despises how well I’ve done in fashion. To him, I should’ve been nothing but a spoiled rich girl who didn’t know how to work for a living without being on her knees, and he resents that Sahara prefers my workplace over his.
Taylor’s sew shop resembles the crowded rooms often depicted by Hollywood. Rows of machines with dour-faced women concentrating on designs lacking style or signature. He
hires teenagers and undocumented workers just so he can pay them basement wages.
I have part-time seamstresses, and I don’t care who they are or where they come from as long as they do quality work for the quality wages I pay. Several of Taylor’s employees have left the full-time grind with him to work part-time for me—and still get paid more.
Taylor rises like a swan unfolding from the water, only his suit isn’t white feathers. He’s wearing a mint-green jacket with a pink pocket square and pants that could’ve been sewn onto his lean legs. He isn’t much taller than me, but he stares down his long patrician nose. “Ms. Gray.”
“What can I do for you?”
He probably wants to tell me to fold up shop. Leave L.A., go back to my Vegas penthouse, and quit pretending to be a savvy bombshell designer for women of all sizes.
He looks around my building and his mouth puckers as if he finds the surroundings distasteful. My place is smaller, sandwiched between an eatery run by the Gonzalezes, who refuse to let me pay full price, and a Laundromat. I installed a state-of-the-art ventilation system to keep the savory smells from one side and the perfumy fabric softener smells from the other from infiltrating my fabric.
If someone stands on the street and stares at my place, they’d think I’m a struggling wannabe. I’ve had moderate success. Just not the kind I need.
Money was never an issue, but I didn’t burst into the fashion world with a bang. Father gave me funding—with strings attached. Those strings may just as well be garrotes.
“Why aren’t you participating in L.A. Fashion Week?” Taylor asks in his cultured, nasally tone. He’s a theater kid from Wisconsin. How many hours did he put into losing the Midwestern accent?
And why is he asking about fashion week? “It’ll be too tight of a turnaround after New York, and I don’t want to show the same pieces.”
He inhales sharply. Isn’t he going to New York? His lips purse so hard color leaches from the thin skin. “Lorelei from Fits magazine is going, and she mentioned that you weren’t on the guest list.”
“I doubt she’ll miss me.” Lorelei shreds my designs. Her scathing reviews of my style, the garments’ construction, and
even what models I choose are hurtful. The things she said after a show two years ago were the one and only time I drank an entire bottle of wine in one night—paired with a pizza. The combination left my stomach with poor memories for years. Her reviews had hindered me in a way she couldn’t possibly understand.
“She’s . . .” He lifts his chin, peering down at me. A brow cocks as if he can’t help himself when he takes in my outfit. “A tough critic.”
Ah. So that’s why he’s here. Without me to dismantle seam by seam, Lorelei will attack Taylor. We aren’t networked. That’s the only thing I respect about the older man. He goes his own way and so do I, which makes us easy targets for people like Lorelei to stomp into the ground on her rise to fashion critic fame.
“Regardless,” he says. “I didn’t expect you to back down from a challenge.”
The snide hint in his tone scratches over my body. He’s goading me.
“I define success as being in a place to choose the challenges I take on. New York Fashion Week has a bigger footprint and a larger reach. My time is better used there.”
He sniffs. “Not many bombshells roam the streets of New York.”
Taylor’s svelte style is perfect for the crowd in New York that lives off caffeine and cigarettes instead of food. He makes nothing above a size four, and the branding choice has niched him into a wealthy crowd. A status symbol reminiscent of what my mother calls the Ally McBeal days—when women were pressured to be as thin as their eyebrows.
“You’d be surprised,” I murmur.
He sniffs again. “Until next time.” Spinning on his custom-designed shoes that I’d admire if he didn’t choose questionable manufacturing practices, he gracefully sweeps out of the shop. ...
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