Fashionably Late. Olivia Goldsmith
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Название: Fashionably Late

Автор: Olivia Goldsmith

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Классическая проза

Серия:

isbn: 9780008154073

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ shrugged, but smiled. There was something hamishe about Bobby. He was warm, familiar, and very, very Brooklyn. ‘Not tonight,’ she told him.

      Bobby laughed. ‘We ought to talk,’ he said. ‘You ought to see the kind of numbers I’m talking about.’

      Jeffrey said his hello, someone else greeted Bobby, and then Karen and Jeffrey were free to wander off. When they were out of earshot, Jeffrey turned to look back at Bobby. ‘Can you imagine?’ he said, outraged. ‘The guy is selling schlock jewelry and polyester pull-on pants. I don’t care if he’s desperate to upgrade, he’s not dragging your name down. Look what happened to Cher, and she just did an infomercial.’

      Karen shrugged. ‘Still, it’s nice to be asked.’ She certainly didn’t consider the attention an insult. Her husband was a cutie, but he was also a snob. Of course, he could afford to be – his family was wealthy, German Jews with more than enough money in Manhattan real estate. He’d gone to private schools and had always been part of a more glittering world than she had. He’d always been sought after while Karen was just a girl from Brooklyn.

      She wasn’t interested in socialites. The people in the room tonight – the ones who actually attracted her, who fascinated her – were the other designers. She wanted to talk with them. Yet those she respected always made her feel shy. And although tonight she was being recognized by them, there was not a lot of camaraderie in the fashion world. While she admired Valentino’s gowns, and sometimes appreciated the exuberance of Karl Lagerfeld, she couldn’t imagine hanging out with them. They spoke at least four languages, knew all the best restaurants in all the best cities, owned palazzi and villas, and went to the opera for fun. Karen couldn’t imagine them seeking out her company to split a Diet Coke and a rice cake.

      Three of the fashion ‘walkers’ congregated against the doorway. John Richardson, Ashton Hawkins, and Charles Ryskamp were successful in their fields. Cultured, attractive bachelors, they accompanied society women to events like this when their own husbands were too busy or too tired or too dead. No matter what their age, it seemed that society women required events to go to, escorts to take them, and dresses to wear. Sometimes Karen wondered at it, but it did sell gowns.

      Slowly she and Jeffrey continued to make their way through the crowd to their table, where Defina Pompey was standing, tall and majestic as an ebony column. Karen and Defina had worked together for more than a decade. Fifteen years ago Defina had been the hottest runway model of the season and now, even with Linda Evangelista standing not too far behind her, Karen could see why. Her friend was still gorgeous, more beautiful than Beverly Johnson or Naomi Campbell on their best days. Today, when it was truly unchic to do a show without several black models, it was hard to remember that it was this woman who had broken ground for all women of color. Defina was deep in conversation with a painfully skinny, intense young woman dressed in black and an elegant Italian-looking man – Defina had a gift for languages and spoke flawless Spanish, Italian, and French, but she still knew how to communicate with the homeboys.

      Defina looked across the table and flashed a smile at Karen. She was wearing a white silk jersey gown that Karen had designed for her. With it, Defina wore the wrap jacket that did great things for any woman who wanted to camouflage a thickening middle. Defina, in the days since she’d left modeling, had broadened and matured in all senses of the words.

      ‘May I introduce you to someone who would like to meet you?’ Defina asked smoothly. She turned to the Italian and dismissed him with a ‘ciao’ and a gracious smile. Then she sidled over to Karen, the little black fashion wraith fighting the crowd behind her. ‘This one is so green she actually thinks Calvin and Anne Klein are related. Should we tell her they’re married, and Kevin is their son?’ Defina suggested, sotto voce. The wraith got closer, extended a skeletal arm, and put out her bony hand. ‘Karen, meet Jenna Nuborg. She’s a freelance fashion writer who would like an interview. I told her you’d love to.’

      Defina had put a little too much emphasis on the word love though only Karen would pick it up. Defina knew how much Karen hated to be bothered by the fashion reportorial tyros. God, they could be stupid and annoying. As if that wasn’t enough, they were most often oversensitive and quick to take offense. But Karen had no illusions: it was the fashion press who had put Karen here tonight. After years of effort, Karen had managed to survive in the cut-throat world of haute couture, but it wasn’t until Jeffrey had insisted on hiring Mercedes Bernard to do their public relations work that Karen had really broken from the pack and become a national, and perhaps almost an international, name.

      ‘Do you mind if I ask you some questions?’ the Nuborg woman asked. Her voice was as thin as her arms. This was no time for an interview, but before Karen could think of a pleasant way to put the woman off, the girl continued. ‘What, in your opinion, is the sexiest part of the female body?’ she asked. Defina, standing behind the reporter and towering almost a foot over the Nuborg’s head, smirked at Karen.

      ‘Her mind?’ Karen asked, as if the question had been a riddle.

      The girl didn’t smile. Too intense for that! ‘What is your biggest unfulfilled desire?’ she asked relentlessly.

      Karen’s smile faded. Without thinking, she moved her hand to cover her stomach, as if to shield her empty womb. She remembered Dr Goldman tomorrow. She blinked, paused, and told herself to get a grip.

      Before Karen could begin to answer or make an excuse, tall, pale Mercedes Bernard floated over. ‘Jenna. It is Jenna, isn’t it?’ the PR woman was a genius at remembering names, and while the pre-party arrival noise crescendoed around them, there in the glittering ballroom of the Waldorf, Mercedes began to detach the Nuborg mollusk from Karen’s side. ‘Perhaps later would be a better time for this,’ Mercedes was saying, her cool but pleasant smile already in place. Mercedes projected an aura of noblesse oblige. Though she spent her business life trying to cadge publicity and snag the best coverage from a host of egomaniacal fashion editors and journalists, she managed somehow to retain her dignity. The industry ‘poop’ on her was that ‘Mercedes bends but never stoops.’

      The Nuborg turned once more to Karen. ‘Which is better: elegance without sex appeal or sex appeal without elegance?’ Karen opened her mouth, but Mercedes’s long white hand took the reporter by her bony, black-clad shoulder and firmly turned her away. Karen sighed with relief. She knew that some day she would have to sit down and pretend an interest in those clichéd questions, but at least she didn’t have to do it right now. Later, she would kill Defina – but she’d be careful not to spoil the white dress.

      ‘Where do they get those questions from?’ Defina asked innocently, wrinkling her brow. She looked over at Karen. Then she got serious. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just fooling around. I didn’t know she would …’

      ‘That’s okay. It’s nothing,’ Karen told her.

      Defina widened her eyes. ‘Smile pretty at Nuclear Wintour,’ Defina told her, and Karen flashed a grin at Anna Wintour, arguably the most powerful woman in fashion publishing. Anna was shrewd and tough and glamorous and difficult. She had a lot of nicknames, but Mercedes, the most literate among them, always called her ‘The Wintour of our Discontent.’ Needless to say, Mercedes only said it behind Anna’s bony back.

      At the next table, Karen could see Doris and Donald Fisher. He had started The Gap stores, and he, along with Peter Haas Senior of the Levi Strauss family, probably pushed more denim than anyone else in the world. With them was Bill Wolper of NormCo, the fashion conglomerate that was more successful than anyone else in the market. Everyone knew that big-time fashion wealth had come from the mass market. The real money had never been on Seventh Avenue. As Jeffrey reminded her over and over, ‘Henry Ford got rich making Fords, not Lincolns.’ СКАЧАТЬ