Fashionably Late (50 page)

It was hard to believe that clothes could generate such hysteria, but there were, Karen reminded herself, fortunes hanging by a thread. Last season the twenty-three couture houses had employed 2,424 people who had spent 273,416 hours working to produce 1,461 outfits. They estimated that they’d done a million and a half embroidery stitches at Lacroix, and used 350,000 sequins at Yves Saint Laurent. Maurizio Galante alone had used 9,000 pearls. When Karen looked at the beauty and the detail of the work, she felt as if she might swoon. You simply couldn’t get that kind of quality back in New York, despite Mrs. Cruz.

Yes, Paris was more than art or craft. It was money. A lot of money.

A major part of the French economy was based on fashion’s hegemony. It wasn’t just the couture houses, but the huge perfume empires that owned the fashion houses. One company, LVMH, owned not just Dior, but Lacroix, Givenchy, and Vuitton as well. And there were the enormous fabric mills that sold to high-fashion clients all over the world.

They created and maintained the illusion of glamour that was published by the international fashion magazines and bought by women worldwide.

No wonder that when Yves Saint Laurent was about to go under, the government bought him out. It was a matter of practicality. Saint Laurent had been the Chrysler of France.

Despite the government support, the French had lost ground to the Italians in recent years. Gianfranco Ferre had taken over Marc Bohn’s job as head of Dior, Armani ruled women’s wear, and much of French manufacturing had migrated to Italy. The French had never quite grasped the concept of working together in a factoryţor anywhere else.

The Italians were the masters. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t even a word in Italian for designer. They were called sartos, which meant “tailor” and was a bit of an insult. Now, Armani, known as The Monk, ruled fashion worldwide, and the beau monde bought more high-style, high-priced clothes from Italians than from anyone else. But the Italians, though they could design and produce quality clothing, still didn’t have the fantasy, the flair, the complete artistry of the French.

Americans were accused of lacking it all: no artistry, no flair, and no production. Karen’s workrooms were a dying tradition. Only Jimmy Galanos still could produce that kind of quality. And when it came to bridge lines, well, Karen rolled her eyes at the problems she’d had.

Everyone knew that in America production costs for fine garments were ridiculously high, and quality low. So here in Paris, Americans were seen as interlopers, nothing but merchandisers. Calvin Klein and Donna Karan were accused of being watered-down Armani, and de la Rent was scoffed at as a Romeo Gigli without balls. The French looked with disdain on anything American, except the dollar.

And dollars weren’t enough. There wasn’t a good hotel in Paris that wasn’t completely booked during the shows, and it was impossible to reserve a table at any of the better restaurants: all were filled.

Fashion was a cash cow, and it was milked by the French. Xenophobia aside, it was no wonder the French were not ready to welcome an American female interloper.

* “Okay,” Karen yelled as she strode out from the hotel and along the arcade of the Place des Vosges. “What’s the desastre du jour?” In a hectic five days, Jeffrey had done wonders as an advance man. He’d made final arrangements for the show at the Grand Palais and also rented the space and arranged for tent rentals at the Place des Vosges.

Defina, Jeffrey, Casey, Carl, and Jean-Baptiste, their French liaison, were standing in the courtyard of the Hotel Grenadine deep in conversation. Since New York, in three frantic days, her team had managed to pull everything back together. Defina had taken spare white tulle and dyed it black with indelible Waterman ink. Mrs. Cruz had laboriously re-created the headdress, and Stephanie had been rehearsed while Tangela had been threatened and tamed to a point of suspicious meekness. Lisa had immediately agreed to the Paris trip, and had barely bothered to ask Leonard’s permission. She’d left Tiff behindţa punishment for her bat mitzvah performanceţand come with a virtually empty suitcase to fill full of Paris clothes. Carl was planning on shopping as well. Meanwhile, he was doing some great hair things on the girls.

Now Karen walked into the tent and looked about at the vast white expanse. The tent was made from some kind of high-tech fabric, some form of plastic, and it had a tautness to it that gave it an almost architectural elegance, like a huge white cloth cathedral. Karen had checked it out the evening before, but overnight her elves had been busy. Now the place was decorated, no longer a pristine canvas.

Her name was on everything: across the entrance to the tent, on the label of all the clothes, on the invitations, the show programs neatly placed on the folding chairs, and in huge letters spread across the enormous arch behind the runway. She stared at it with satisfaction.

But all at once, it didn’t look to Karen like her name anymore. The writing seemed foreign, the combination all wrong. For an eerie moment she felt the way a stroke victim must feel, learning to re-identify once-familiar letters. That’s my name, she told herself but, after all, the name wasn’t only hers. It was Jeffrey’s last name, not her own, and though she had never wanted to use Lipsky, she realized now that even that wouldn’t be her real name. The letters danced before her eyes. She couldn’t make sense of them.

Ka,en felt a stomach-lurching panic. She was about to take her biggest gamble and launch herself on the international fashion stage. Her name was worth millions to Bill Wolper, or even to Bobby Pillar, and she couldn’t even recognize it. Was this what they called an identity cnsis?

Or maybe a panic attack?

It’s nerves. Just nerves, she told herself. But anything could go wrong, and usually did. She thought of a fringe designer, Gregory Poe.

He found fame byţamong other thingsţcreating purses that weren’t just like the Pepto Bis mol pinkţthey actually had Pepto Bismol between two layers of vinyl. Unfortunately, the vinyl and the Pepto Bismol didn’t agree with each other. One bag exploded all over a Vogue editor’s Balenciaga. This business was hard. Marc Bohn was dumped after more than thirty years at Dior. Tony de Freise had gone under. Norris Cleveland’s perfume debacle was putting her into receivership. What will explode on me, Karen wondered. She averted her eyes from her name. She felt as if she might begin to laugh or cry, and that once she did, she wouldn’t be able to stop. Tightening her hands into fists that were hidden in her pockets, she closed her eyes and counted her breaths. She got to ten, began again, and told herself this was all just the tension catching up with her. After a third series of breaths, she opened her eyes andţto her reliefţinstead of the dyslexic dancing letters, she saw her own familiar name once again.

The others joined her. Karen forced herself to look the facilities over. She calmed down. She didn’t want to give herself a kunna horaţthe Yiddish equivalent of a hexţbut things seemed to be going smoothly. The invitations had all gone out and been received and now, as they all stood together in the white tent, Mercedes strode into the empty white space to join them.

“I think we’re in very good shape,” she said. “The problem with the shows so far this year is that there were only two kinds of things: things that are unwearable or things that everyone already has. People are either outraged or bored.” She paused and allowed herself a small grin. “And the crowding at the Louvre was worse than ever.” In fact, there had been an actual riot. Karen had heard some journalists say it was dangerous to go. “I think our two-show strategy is going to work,” Mercedes continued. “We’re the talk of the town. Enough people have told enough other people to have figured out the deal, but no one can figure out which is the A list and which is the B list. It’s driving them all crazy.”

Karen laughed. “That’s because there is no A list and B list, thanks to you.” It had been an all-night task for Mercedes to divide up the attendees so equally in status, wealth, and clout that no one would be able to decide if they’d been snubbed. Snubbing was death, and the French were notoriously difficult about seating and protocol. Karen remembered at one show last year the prime minister’s wife refused to sit beside Princess Caroline of Monaco. But there would be no snubbing here. Both shows would be A-list shows. Now, thinking of the confusion they’d caused, Defina giggled with Casey and even Jeffrey smiled. The strategy had also doubled the number of front-row seats, always most desirable and at a premium, though the people in them were stepped on by the photographers.

Still, at every show there were only forty front-row seats and eighty fashion heavies who felt they merited them. It was the first chakra on the way to fashion paranoiaţhad you been assigned a good enough seat?

Now VIKInc had twice as many good ones to dispense! The only question left was which show Karen would appear at and, after long consideration, she had come up with a solution. She was going to open the black show, although it was the tradition for the designer not to appear until the end. “But I’m breaking my tradition by doing black, so it makes sense. And anyway, if the black wedding dress on Stephanie does what I expect it to do, there will be pandemonium afterward. They won’t need me. So I’ll rush back over here and close the Place des Vosges white show.”

Everyone approved, even Mercedes, who was the most worried about how all this would be taken. They certainly didn’t want to alienate the French or the fashion press in their first Parisian outing. But Karen knew that there was no longer any choice at this point, and a calmness descended on her. Everyone knew their jobs and she would simply have to trust that they would do them. So when Lisa and Stephanie stepped out of the hotel doorway and onto the cobbles of the courtyard, Karen turned to smile at them. “If everything’s under control, I’m going to take off for an hour with my sister,” she told the group. “Casey, I’ll meet you at the Grand Palais at noon.” He nodded. He and Mercedes were going to handle the show there and Defina was doing the Place des Vosges. Karen turned to her. “Is Tangela all right?” she asked.

Defina shrugged.

“She’s broken up with her boyfriend. I don’t know how she feels, but I feel great.”

Karen smiled and patted her friend’s shoulder. “Well, I’ll be back to help you in an hour.”

Le Marais had been a warren of tiny streets and ramshackle old buildings that had once been the equivalent of London’s East End slums.

But then the Pompidou Center and urban gentrification had kicked in, and in the last decade Le Marais had become the hippest and most charming quartier in Paris. The Place des Vosges, a perfectly preserved sixteenth-century square, was the centerpiece and around it were arrayed all the charming shops, fashionable bistros, adorable cafes, slick boutiques, and nouvelle restaurants that anyone could ask for. Karen could have stayed at the haute elegant Crillon, right on the Place de la Concorde, or the luxurious George V, off the Champs Elysees, but Le Marais was younger, hipper, and a lot less pretentious.

If Karen was also a little intimidated by the grande hotels and established fashion houses in the tonier quarters, she wasn’t admitting it.

Now, the three of them, Karen, Stephanie, and Lisa, took off, single file, along the narrow sidewalk. They passed a greengrocer, and an old-fashioned cafe that still had the tin-covered counter and unmatched battered chairs of a neighborhood gathering place. Everything seemed so charming, so pretty, in the watery morning sun. Colors looked different here in Paris light. Karen was glad she wasn’t doing colors in her show. They wouldn’t have translated well.

For her, this was more than a business gamble, it was a dream that she had made come true. She’d justified the expense to Jeffrey with the argument that this would put them in the big leagues, truly part of international fashion, but that wasn’t her real reason for the show.

For her, this was keeping a promise she’d made to teenaged Karen Lipsky back in Rockville Centre, Long Islandţthat some day she’d have a show in Paris, just like Coco Chanel. She smiled at everything around her.

It was really happening.

The streets here were so much cleaner than in New York. One of the small Parisian street-cleaning machines trundled by, sucking up litter like a Zamboni with an eating disorder. A boulangerie displayed skinned rabbits in the window. Karen turned away from the dead lapins and to Stephanie. “Are you nervous?” she asked.

“Not really,” Stephanie said. But she was pale and her eyes looked a little blank.

“Did the two of you have breakfast yet?” Karen asked. And when Lisa shook her head, Karen led them to a patisserie that had a dozen tiny tables. “The pain all chocolate is unbelievable,” Karen told them.

“And the croissants ain’t bad either. What will ya have?”

“I’ll try a real French croissant,” Lisa said happily. “No Sara Lee.”

“Nothing for me,” Stephanie told them.

“Oh, Stephie. You have to have something. Aren’t you starving? You didn’t have anything on the plane.”

“Well, plane food.” Stephie waved her hand dismissively.

The girl was probably nervous, but she had to eat. Karen ordered an infusion, which always sounded so medical but was only a French herbal tea, along with three croissants. Stephanie and Lisa drank their cafe all lait but Stephanie barely touched the croissant that Karen insisted she order.

“This is so exciting,” Lisa said. “I mean, it’s so French.”

Stephanie rolled her eyes and jerked her head, throwing her hair half over her face in embarrassment. “Well, it is Paris. Did you expect it would be Spanish?”

Karen smiled at her sister. “Did that sound stupid?” Lisa asked.

“But you know what I mean,” she said. Karen nodded understandingly.

“Do you think I can get by, shopping without knowing any French?”

“They understand American Express,” Karen told her. “Just wave your card and point. Most of them speak English anyway, though they don’t always like to admit it. I confuse the hell out of them because my French is so good. Lucky they can’t tell that my English is so bad!