A big problem to solve was where the show should be staged. Jess was still waiting to hear about the FIT auditorium. School was in its lighter summer session and she was hoping that one of her teachers would help her get it. But I insisted that it had to be held away from the school. Jess couldn’t seem to understand why.
“Because Designer X doesn’t go to school,” I said. “Designer X needs to appear fully formed out of nowhere and be fiercely fabulous.”
“Only there is no Designer X except on your blog,” Jess said wearily. “I’m just a freshman fashion student from New Jersey having her first independent show. I am not ‘fully formed,’ and I don’t have any fabulous connections.”
“Jess, you’re more than that. It’s not enough to design a great collection—you have to make a splash to get the right kind of attention.” I tried to think of alternatives for a moment.
“Doesn’t Sarrah work in an art gallery somewhere?” I asked.
“Please, not more Sarrah,” she said, shaking her head.
I hated bringing up Sarrah so much, but I was determined to make Jess’s debut incredible, and I knew that Sarrah was so infatuated with Jess that she would help.
“Yeah she works at Below the Line. It’s one of those storefront art spaces under the High Line. But can’t we worry about that later?” I could see that Jess’s eyes were glazing over. She seemed overwhelmed by it all.
“Sarrah has to get permission for you to have the show there,” I said. “And it has to be off calendar. Maybe on Fashion’s Night Out—that’s in five days—when everyone’s in town and the press is trying to find a good story. Something new. Can you be ready by then?”
Around the time we were freshman at Montclair High, Anna Wintour of Vogue started Fashion’s Night Out in New York City. It was the recession, and Anna Wintour hoped to save her industry and to help perk up sales in retail stores in Manhattan.
Almost immediately, it became a huge worldwide event and a prelude to fashion week. All the stores in the city that sell clothes stayed open until midnight, handing out free champagne. It was a great night for happenings and off-beat news stories.
“I don’t know,” she said, exhausted.
“The actual show is going to take all of a half hour. Promise me you’ll ask Sarrah?”
“That’s too much. I can’t promise anything right now. I’m too tired,” she said, collapsing onto the bed. I flopped down next to her. We were both ready to drop off to sleep.
Jess turned to look at me. We stared into each other’s eyes, as Jess admired her work on my hair.
“You’re the best friend … ever,” she said.
“No,” I began, “I’ll never be able to hold a candle to you.” But she never heard me.
Jess had fallen asleep.
My Jess. Then I dozed off, too.
The next morning I woke early. I let Jess snooze away. I tiptoed to the closet, stacked a few of Nan’s remixed dresses into a clothing bag, and then filled one of Jess’s monster bags with shoes and purses. If Tabitha and I partied every night for five days straight, I was ready.
As I was getting ready to leave, I realized that Jess had been watching me the entire time.
“Go back to sleep—you need to rest,” I said. But she got out of bed and walked over to the closet. She picked out a dress from her new designs. It was the first one I had tried on, her signature dress, soft orange chiffon with the tight blush silk skirt underneath.
“Take this,” she said, unzipping the clothing bag and placing the dress inside. Then she stretched to wake up.
“How can I?” I said.
“It’s a great dress. It will be fabulous at a party. Don’t try to tell me you’re not going to a party out there.”
“But it’s one of your originals, maybe the most important dress in your collection,” I said. “It has to be in the show.”
“Exactly why I want you to take it.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat on the stool I had sat on the night before when she was cutting my hair.
She took a long sip and peered at me over the coffee-mug rim. “Bring it back, okay?”
51
It was a clear blue Thursday morning, and I felt as if I were traveling to another world. I boarded the Hamptons Jitney at Fortieth Street with the summer hoards—urban surfer dudes, preppy boys wearing pink and green, giggling well-groomed tweens carrying Vera Bradley travel bags, and an eighties music fanatic playing “Small Town Girl” so loudly that I could hear every word through his earbuds.
But nothing could disturb the tranquility and excitement of escaping the city to visit the unexplored Eden of the Hamptons. Unexplored by me, anyway.
The Jitney was just a bus, honestly, but it felt like transportation for the privileged classes with attendants serving your needs and offering a choice of muffins or granola bars as well as orange juice, water, and Wi-Fi, the lifeblood of any blogger.
As we reached exit 70, the landscape and air changed. We passed through the towns of Southampton, Water Mill, Bridgehampton, Sagaponack, Wainscott, and East Hampton. Gazing out the Jitney windows, each town seemed more beachy than the one before. Hydrangeas were everywhere. The big blue flowers made me think of little old ladies and churches.
“On way 2 Hamptons. Darling will you be there this weekend ? :)” I texted Isak. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and I needed to lock him into Jess’s show. I waited for his reply.
“Hello DFC :) I’m off 2 Italie back in NY 4 FW,” he replied. Not until Fashion Week? That was unfortunate. But since we didn’t know yet exactly when Jess’s show would be, there wasn’t much I could do.
“Hope you’ll b back in time for Designer X ;)” I teased back.
“When ?! When ?! :)”
“Last minute ;) Will let you know.”
The Jitney pulled into Amagansett. As I stepped off the bus, the difference between the scented air-freshened Jitney and the beach air was so revitalizing it practically made me giddy.
As the taxi pulled up to the enormous mansion by the dunes, the balmy ocean atmosphere embraced me: clean, salty, with hints of lilac and privet. The clouds in the sterling-blue sky above were full but not threatening.
A stocky woman in a classic black-and-white maid’s uniform opened the door holding a barking, squirming Pomeranian—Galileo.
“We are so happy seeing you,” she said loudly in a thick Russian accent over Galileo’s yapping. “Miss Eden has been anxiously waiting. My name is Zoya. I welcome you.” She seemed very excited, but when she glanced down and saw my lonely roller and garment bag, she stopped, alarmed.
“Did they lose bags? You want I call them?” she asked. She seemed upset that I had so few.
“No, no, it’s fine,” I said, smiling. “These are my bags.”
“Really? But what will you wear?” she asked as we walked inside. I laughed. “Ah, maybe you go shopping spree?”
Galileo sniffed and remembered me as I walked into a lively, boisterous houseful of people. Even though Tabitha wasn’t there, she had plenty of houseguests. Balty was back, and I had to admit I enjoyed talking to him though he still ogled me. This time it was his sister, Flo, who kept him in line.
“Tabitha told me you’d be here this weekend,” Flo said, excitedly. She was wearing a lovely black one-piece swimsuit and huge red floppy straw hat that almost enveloped her entire body in shadow. I could see she had the kind of skin that would sunburn badly.
“I think you’ll be very pleased with what I’ve cooked up for you,” she said. “We can talk now if you have a moment.” There was a devious sparkle in her eye. I couldn’t wait to hear. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I was counting on her.
Balty soon drifted away, utterly bored, as his sister and I sat by the pool droning on and on about click-throughs, e-book links, RSS aggregators, AdSense, AdWords, lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Bottom line: it would take time, but if we worked together click by click, entry by entry, we could develop an income stream and potentially a worthwhile and profitable “brand” from my little blog. Flo Birkenhead’s excitement was utterly infectious.