Read Online Spring Collection by Judith Krantz - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Judith Krantz
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him shyly.
He made her feel young again, bless him. But to rip a seam! Ah well, he was full of passion, this Italian, but he needed a haircut.
“For certain! Those were the days. Until tomorrow,
ma toute belle
, I count on you.”
As he took the staircase down, Marco thought that it would be at least a week before Ginette started threatening to leave again, speaking of her fatigue and her advanced age. Perhaps two weeks, if he was lucky, because he needed her skills. When it came time to fit the samples on the models that tiresome old hag would be invaluable.
He should have taken his coat, he realized as he walked a few blocks. It was so sunny that he had been fooled into thinking it might, just for once, be warm in this city, but no, it was a true Paris cold, mean and damp under the deceptive sunlight. He turned into a little Italian restaurant where he sat at the empty bar and ordered a double espresso.
Oh Christ, he needed a rest! A change! And a rest or a change were the last things he could hope for in these next few weeks before the day on which his dreams either became true or he was shown up to the fashion press as a failure. Shown up before every important journalist and buyer from all over the world, shown up before CNN, shown up before
Vogue
and
Zing
and
Bazaar
, before the
New York Times
and
Le Figaro
and eventually before the smallest newspaper in the tiniest provincial town sleeping deep in the countryside of
la France Profonde
.
Why hadn’t he ever realized, in his flood of ambition, that no one was judged to the harsh public degree that a new couturier was? A fledging actor could play his first part without anyone knowing about it unless it was a success. A potential tennis champion could lose an early match without fearing ridicule from all sides. But every woman considered herself a judge of clothes.
Fashion had become the world’s most written about, most photographed spectator sport and each new collection was greeted with a chorus of praise or jest or indifference from the editor-in-chief of
Elle
to the shopgirls who worked at the Prix-Unique. He could just imagine them abandoning their counters to bend over the photos in the papers with the same serene yet beady-eyed, judgmental gaze adopted by those valued couture clients who were ritually seated in the first row next to the runway.
“Lombardi?—hmmm—never heard of him, somebody new I guess. What do you think? Yes, I agree, not my style, even if I could afford it. Oh, just look at Claudia in that cute little Chanel jacket … now I wouldn’t mind having one like that, would you? You could even wear it with jeans.”
Now that the moment he worked toward all of his life was almost upon him, was it possible that he couldn’t handle it, Marco asked himself, enraged at the scornful, dismissive words he’d conjured up. Was this the way other designers before him had felt before their first collections?
There was no way to know, no one to ask, for designers, like rival opera singers or two prizefighters before a boxing match, didn’t get together to share their inner feelings with each other. He tried to imagine the great designers having a fit of insecurity, as he was doing now, and failed. Saint-Laurent, of course, he’d made a fetish out of his ritualistic nervous attacks, the martyr to fashion, the tormented Christ-figure dying over and over for the sake of each new collection, but there was only room for one such genius.
Marco ordered another espresso, glad that he was still alone, that no one had yet arrived for a before-dinner drink. There were three dozen things he should be doing on this winter day that had turned to twilight outside the window, a hundred details he should be inspecting, and, yet, for the love of God, he didn’t even know who the three new models for his show would be. What excuse did Necker have to impose on him threegreen girls when he absolutely needed the security of using none but experienced models who
He made her feel young again, bless him. But to rip a seam! Ah well, he was full of passion, this Italian, but he needed a haircut.
“For certain! Those were the days. Until tomorrow,
ma toute belle
, I count on you.”
As he took the staircase down, Marco thought that it would be at least a week before Ginette started threatening to leave again, speaking of her fatigue and her advanced age. Perhaps two weeks, if he was lucky, because he needed her skills. When it came time to fit the samples on the models that tiresome old hag would be invaluable.
He should have taken his coat, he realized as he walked a few blocks. It was so sunny that he had been fooled into thinking it might, just for once, be warm in this city, but no, it was a true Paris cold, mean and damp under the deceptive sunlight. He turned into a little Italian restaurant where he sat at the empty bar and ordered a double espresso.
Oh Christ, he needed a rest! A change! And a rest or a change were the last things he could hope for in these next few weeks before the day on which his dreams either became true or he was shown up to the fashion press as a failure. Shown up before every important journalist and buyer from all over the world, shown up before CNN, shown up before
Vogue
and
Zing
and
Bazaar
, before the
New York Times
and
Le Figaro
and eventually before the smallest newspaper in the tiniest provincial town sleeping deep in the countryside of
la France Profonde
.
Why hadn’t he ever realized, in his flood of ambition, that no one was judged to the harsh public degree that a new couturier was? A fledging actor could play his first part without anyone knowing about it unless it was a success. A potential tennis champion could lose an early match without fearing ridicule from all sides. But every woman considered herself a judge of clothes.
Fashion had become the world’s most written about, most photographed spectator sport and each new collection was greeted with a chorus of praise or jest or indifference from the editor-in-chief of
Elle
to the shopgirls who worked at the Prix-Unique. He could just imagine them abandoning their counters to bend over the photos in the papers with the same serene yet beady-eyed, judgmental gaze adopted by those valued couture clients who were ritually seated in the first row next to the runway.
“Lombardi?—hmmm—never heard of him, somebody new I guess. What do you think? Yes, I agree, not my style, even if I could afford it. Oh, just look at Claudia in that cute little Chanel jacket … now I wouldn’t mind having one like that, would you? You could even wear it with jeans.”
Now that the moment he worked toward all of his life was almost upon him, was it possible that he couldn’t handle it, Marco asked himself, enraged at the scornful, dismissive words he’d conjured up. Was this the way other designers before him had felt before their first collections?
There was no way to know, no one to ask, for designers, like rival opera singers or two prizefighters before a boxing match, didn’t get together to share their inner feelings with each other. He tried to imagine the great designers having a fit of insecurity, as he was doing now, and failed. Saint-Laurent, of course, he’d made a fetish out of his ritualistic nervous attacks, the martyr to fashion, the tormented Christ-figure dying over and over for the sake of each new collection, but there was only room for one such genius.
Marco ordered another espresso, glad that he was still alone, that no one had yet arrived for a before-dinner drink. There were three dozen things he should be doing on this winter day that had turned to twilight outside the window, a hundred details he should be inspecting, and, yet, for the love of God, he didn’t even know who the three new models for his show would be. What excuse did Necker have to impose on him threegreen girls when he absolutely needed the security of using none but experienced models who
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