Spring Collection (45 page)

“There are still two more hours till we have to leave for the Ritz,” April said, looking faint. “I haven’t eaten all day. I’m weak from hunger but I’m afraid I’ll throw up if I put anything in my stomach.”

“I have an idea,” Mike said. “Do you all play poker? No? Only me and Maude and Frankie? Well, we’ll teach the rest of you until you catch on. Then we’ll play for money till it’s time to leave.”

Justine gave me an approving nudge that unmistakably meant, “you done good.” I didn’t deign to reply to such an obvious truth, but called room service for some playing cards and platters of food. The next two hours passed quickly as some very fast, loose and highly unorthodox poker took over. Soon everyone relaxed enough to consume the food, and Jordan, a beginner, or so she’d claimed, ended the session by raking in over three hundred dollars. Mike sat next to me, occasionally
shooting a few pictures when he wasn’t trying to look at my cards.

“Stop cheating!” I finally objected.,

“But your cards are my cards, darling. Share and share alike. Wanna see mine?”

“Is that the way it works?”

“Sure.” I was about to take a peek at his cards, under the influence of his grin, and the way his eyes lapsed with pleasure when he looked at me. But Maude caught us and put a stop to it.

Now even the memory of that fun was almost forgotten. Maude and Gabrielle had gone ahead of us in the small Ritz elevator, and on the second descent Mike, Justine and I stood in the back, while Jordan and April stood in front of us, backs straight, shoulders squared, exquisite heads held high on their exquisite necks, looking totally confident and self-possessed. Only their hair distinguished them, Jordan’s dark Cherubim ringlets and April’s platinum nape. Suddenly Mike’s flash went off and I saw what he had noticed: the two girls were holding hands so tightly that it must hurt.

“Heartless cannibal!” I hissed at him. “Possible cover shot,” he hissed back at me and took another shot as the elevator door opened. “Go, girl, go!” Jordan encouraged April with a sudden smile, and the girls advanced, still holding hands, into the cigarette smoke-laced air of the white and pink marble reception room. In the background you could see stacks of little gilded chairs being carried by, three models so famous that they could be identified by one feature alone and dozens of black-clad proles who were either the Belloir et Jallot crew or people connected with the business of inserting girls into clothes.

“What do we do first?” I asked Gabrielle.

“The girls should report to Marco so he knows they’re here. I’ll take charge of them.”

“No, I will, Gabrielle,” Justine said quickly.

“No one who isn’t necessary is to be allowed backstage, and you’re not directly involved with showing the spring collection. It’s going to be a madhouse tonight.
I’m sorry but you’ll have to wait here, Justine. I thought you understood that.”

“Balls, Gabrielle. I’m going with the girls. And so is Frankie. They need us. And of course Mike and Maude have to be everywhere.”

“Mike and Maude, yes. But as for you and Frankie, it’s absolutely impossible.”

“Why don’t you go ask Marco?”

A minute later Gabrielle returned, looking as astonished as her features would allow. “He’s says you’re both welcome anywhere, so long as you keep out of his way. I’m sorry, Justine, I didn’t know an exception was being made for the two of you.”

“That’s okay. You couldn’t know. Come on everybody. Mike, remember, no photos of Ms. Schiffer naked, or even in her undies. She may be trapped in a look that she can’t change, but she’s not giving it away when she’s not being paid. It’s a rule.”

“Ah, shucks!” my beloved whined.

It was at that moment that Chicago struck up the first strains of their version of “Goody Goody” and I felt immediately corrupted with pleasure. It was strongly syncopated, extra fast, and with a beat so empathic that no one could miss it. Something about the music contained the very essence of expectation and dapper, light, uncomplicated fun. All around me people started to smile and with a gesture as natural as a child scratching a mosquito bite, Jordan swept April into a little dance step.

“Not so bad, this Chicago,” Gabrielle said in what was, for her, a deeply approving voice.

We threaded our way into the large beauty salon, which served very well as an improvised dressing room, since the enormous amount of beige marble counter space gave all the makeup artists and hairstylists room to place their tools, the lighting was brilliant, and by taking away all the leather chairs and replacing them with banquet chairs, an adequate space had been created for the dressers and the girls to make their changes.

As our little group paused in the doorway I realized
that I’d never guessed just how smack-in-the-stomach the collective presence of the top girls in the girl business would be. Now they weren’t clacking, one by one, in and out of Loring Model Management, each an individual, as I had come to know them. Now they were banded together in a cloud of heightened awareness of themselves that raised their power to the nth degree. As a group they were plunged into a dense atmosphere of dedicated self-absorption that was deeply knowing and totally privileged, in equal proportions. They were wrapped in the knowledge of their meritocracy, which consisted of the dead-simple fact that at this particular moment in time they were the chosen of the chosen, the anointed. Rules that bound other women had been suspended for them. Their faces, in spite of their youth, carried the weight of so much fantasy that walking into a room filled with top models was ten times more impressive than finding yourself backstage in the presenters’ makeup room on Oscar Night.

“April! Jordan! Stop gaping!” Justine hissed at them. “In six months you’ll both be as bored by this as they are. Can’t you hear them thinking ‘another day, another dollar’?”

“Nice try, boss,” Jordan muttered, unable to take her eyes away from the girls who were harem-esque as they sat, half in and half out of their Ritz peignoirs: chatting animatedly or intimately on cellular phones with their bare legs flung up on the counters as if they were alone; sipping out of bottles of Coke and Evian as they compared Filofax entries; scrutinizing their toenail polish, curling their eyelashes or inspecting the all-but-invisible veins in the whites of their eyes; a minority reading paperback books, one or two humanly imperfect enough to wear glasses; groups of them locked together in whispered gossip; clearly none of them interested in the clothes, since getting paid triple to show the work of an unknown designer must mean the stuff was a disaster. There were girls lighting cigarettes, girls putting out cigarettes and girls lost in a cloud of smoke. I blessed, for the thousandth time, the luck of
the draw that had given me three nonsmokers to chaperone. A scattering of girls turned to wave at Mike, several at Justine, but their eyes became blank as they passed over Jordan and April. We’re the original Broadway cast, their lack of interest seemed to say, we’re in and you’re out, make no mistake, the two of you are a couple of understudies, hired for a single day’s stunt.

“Where’s Lombardi?” Justine demanded.

“Probably behind those girls,” Mike said, pointing to a lineup of six models who stood in a row with their backs toward us, their legs hidden by a table. From our vantage point they were wearing identical suit jackets in a marvelous hyacinth-blue wool; snugly fitted, small shouldered, narrowly belted.

Justine herded the girls in Marco’s direction, her hands on their shoulders. “Jordan and April are here,” she said to him as he sat behind a table covered with accessories like a giant mosaic.

“They’re late,” he said, not looking at her.

“Paris traffic,” she informed him without apology.

“Take them to their dresser,” Lombardi said to Justine. “Put on the hats,” he ordered, turning away. I watched his assistants adjust close-fitting, hair-covering, pistachio-green felt cloches over six of the highest-paid heads in the world. Each cloche sported a single white rose and the skirt of each of the lightweight, elegantly pared-down suits was in a different length, from a slightly-less-than-fingertip mini to a skirt that ended at the ankle bone. The skirts had the same modified A-line shape, widening as they grew longer. Each of the girls wore sheer beige hose and identical medium-heeled black patent leather pumps. It was impossible to say that one length was more becoming or more fashionable than another. Marco stood up, giving Kate Moss’ knee-covering skirt a tug at the waistline.

“Divinity,”
he cooed at her.

“He never even looked at us,” April wailed as we
pushed backward through the crowd. “Didn’t say so much as hello.”

“It has nothing to do with you, he’ll come around,” Justine reassured her. “Not a dumb idea, those different lengths,” she commented to me, annoyed but honest.

“Fence sitting,” I grumbled, but I had to admit that if fashion editors still thought skirt lengths were any kind of an issue—and didn’t they all?—Marco had just made a dramatic statement, too convincing for the media to overlook.

We finally reached the two racks of clothes with April’s and Jordan’s name marked in crayon on a cardboard sign. The girls, their patience at an end, lunged for the clothes, paying no attention to the flustered, protesting dresser. They flipped through the racks like dogs chasing a rabbit, exclaiming with excitement, their yelps of approval growing louder and louder, while Mike photographed them looking like crazed shoppers on some game show.

“Girls, for God’s sake!” Justine protested. “Control yourselves!”

“Look at this,” April screeched. “A mohair cape in fire engine red, lined in pale pink satin and a dress that matches the lining … I crave it!”

“I’ve got the reverse, cape in pink, dress in red!” Jordan exclaimed.

“Hey, hey!” April exclaimed, holding up a wide-skirted, strapless lilac satin ball gown with an intricate pleated chocolate sash and a tiny, snug bolero covered with chocolate glitter, a dress worthy of a young Sophia Loren.

“I have it too,” Jordan breathed, brandishing a hanger with the same gown in biting brown, the sash in lilac and the bolero flashing lavender sequins. “Are we Wins?”

“Don’t know. Wow, princess coat, princess coat!” April squealed, showing us a flared, tucked and buttoned coat in a featherweight, dove-grey flannel with a deceptively demure sliver of a white silk dress. “A person could get married in this … Jordan, you?”

“Same coat, in apple-green tweed, one-shouldered dress in pale turquoise organza … look at this yellow velvet jacket over a lipstick-pink chiffon cocktail dress … yummy! But velvet for spring?—still, isn’t it exactly the
right
yellow? Justine, is this the most perfect yellow or what?”

“Let me try it on,” Justine begged, stripping off her own jacket.

“No way. You’ll get it dirty … here’s one in sky blue, it’s almost the same cut.…” Jordan threw the velvet jacket deftly at Justine and slipped fast forward through the masses of juicy, joyous, jubilant color on her rack, as if she had exactly one minute to shop for the rest of her life. “Look, just look, each dress has a coat or jacket, every cocktail dress or ball gown has a long cape or a coat or a bolero … somebody finally realizes that women spend most of their time in air-conditioning. Oh my God! Look at this!”

Jordan grabbed a ball gown in plaid taffeta woven in a half-dozen exquisitely melting pastels. “Hoop skirts! As I live and breathe! And the cape, did you ever see a more marvelous pink, oh, oh, here’s a hood lined in plaid!” She flung the cape around her shoulders, snuggled into the ravishing frame of the hood and preened beatifically in the mirror. “I’m never taking this off, not for anybody!”

April gave a hair-raising Confederate yell. By this time the noise and excitement generated by our two girls had aroused enough attention to set the superstar models to investigating the contents of their own racks, the same clothes they had been ignoring while making themselves comfortable and staking out their territory. Soon the entire dressing room was full of girls exclaiming and comparing, pouting in disappointment at the rare sight of grey or navy or black and, their superiority swept away by enthusiasm, posturing in delight behind a garden of pure, intense spring colors.

“Girls!”
Marco yelled, standing up. “Don’t exchange clothes! Don’t even
try on
another girl’s clothes! Stop it immediately! If you behave I promise
that as soon as they’re finished being photographed I’ll give them to you and you can trade to your heart’s content. There’s enough of my perfect pinks for everybody, enough daffodil yellows, enough new grass greens, enough apple blossom whites—put the hangers back where you found them, this minute! Pay attention to your dressers. Now, I want Karen, Kate and Shalom dressed in their first numbers, and make it quick.”

“That maggot is in pig heaven right now,” Justine whispered in my ear as she wriggled into the intricate column of Jordan’s bias-cut, lilac chiffon ball gown. “The girls have told him all he needs to know about his success. Nobody cares less about clothes than they do.” She wrapped herself in a sweeping Parma-violet cape with a deeply ruffled taffeta collar and hem. “How do I look? Is this me, mouse, or is this me?”

I was too busy trying to get into April’s slinky navy satin cocktail suit with Mae West white marabou collar and cuffs to answer.

I
heard the bell to my room ring at a delicious moment in a dream that vanished forever as, blinking and swearing, and falling out of my nightgown, I automatically staggered out of bed.

“Who the hell is it?” I barked through the door, in a way that made it plain that my much-needed and-deserved sleep had been outrageously disturbed.

“Tom. I didn’t want to wake you, Frankie, but Tinker insisted.”

“What time is it, for crying out loud?”

“Three in the afternoon.”

“Oh good God! Tom, wait a minute, I’ve got to put on a robe.”

As I splashed water on my face and quickly brushed my teeth, I found it damn near incredible that I’d slept so late. We’d all returned to the hotel at seven in the morning, granted, and then wound down over a gigantic breakfast in my sitting room, but still to sleep to mid-afternoon … I’d never done it in my life. I can imagine what my mother would have thought.