Extraordinary stories and men of style: the fashion victim (EPISODE 5)

"And when I am dead,

I want a shroud from Dior!”

Boris Vian - I'm a snob

I

I joined fashion like one joins the army. With the enormous belly that wanted to eat everything and the thought that I was going to set the world ablaze with the flamethrower of my ideas.

Mom didn't like seeing me leave. I can still see her head, heavy with grief, tilting from side to side when she told me that I was going to get lost. Wrinkles I've never seen before. Eyes red, swollen from unused rest. The goddess of worry my mother, with hands that won't let you go.

My mother's melodramatic tendency was fortunately offset by the virile constancy of my father who had always found it strange that a straight man would be so interested in such trivial clothing. However, in order not to make a fuss, he contented himself with a father's embrace, the beard that itches, the words that one does not say.

I felt like Alexander the Great and I was at the gates of Paris. I wanted the glory, the glitter, the millions of followers, I wanted to caress Choupette, speak on familiar terms with Karl, talk seriously about unimportant things, taste the sweet lips of models, raise my glass of champagne to frivolity and, of course, wear Balmain, Dior and all the others, without exception.

It was Monday and I was ten minutes early for my first day of work.

I arrived in the lobby of a building that could have fit my entire house. The milky walls shone naturally, dressed in the cold, diaphanous skin of the marble. On the sleek floor, my Gucci loafers sounded great. An asymmetrical chandelier like an imperfect planet, suspended halfway up, poorly lit the Doric-style columns that ran all the way around the hall, as well as lyrical moldings that snaked like ivy across the entire surface of the ceiling.

You had to go around the chandelier to reach the reception desk. On it, a black and white vase was filled with yellow roses. On the porcelain was drawn the melancholy and golden face of a Greek God. And on the wall behind the counter, a wall devoid of Doric columns, the big capital letters of the magazine's name, as if I wasn't already scared enough.

My voice seemed unreal to me when it ricocheted off the walls of the hall, to say that I was expected. The reception guy picked up his phone and called upstairs. They came to get me.

It was the boy I replaced: a skinny boy with dead eyes as if he were blind and he moved poorly because he limped in his Lanvin sneakers. He was wearing long, shiny black shorts, under which he had put on leggings, also black. The top consisted of a simple, slightly openwork knit sweater in a neon yellow that made her complexion even more terrible.

The editorial office was still empty at this hour. And we walked with ease through corridors that I imagined would be bursting with crazy energy when the time came. He took me to my office which was not an elegant room whose herringbone parquet floor was covered with a thousand sketches by my hand, scattered around a great designer's desk on which was placed a Pipistrello, Atollo or any one that one would have seen in a Douglas Sirk film, in the light of which I was going to make, write and create.

Instead, I had a plastic computer on a metal desk in the hallway. Almost in the middle of nothing. The toilets, at least, weren't very far away.

After explaining the basics of office life to me, he said to me:

- It's almost 10 a.m. and everyone will arrive. I'm going.

And, as I watched him go from his wobbly, sickly gait, he turned to say:

- Welcome to Hell.

And that's the last time I saw him. I think he wanted to deliver a scary, dramatic response for fun. Throw a paving stone, but not into the pond, rather directly in my face, just to terrify me like they had terrified him.

Since there was nothing to do but wait, I decided to go make a coffee and look around. I found a cup in the cupboard whose material was fine and the scroll design as if to represent a red wrought iron structure was beautiful.

I discovered rooms around an exquisite bazaar: glossy magazine covers on the tables and floor, and entire walls covered in photos. On these there were models in acrobatic poses, materials magnified a thousand times, abstract shapes in black pencil and silhouettes in charcoal on greasy paper. I continued my exploration, looking everywhere, as if the place itself was calling me.

There were black filming equipment in the corners, and knots of untidy cables protruded from their battered rolling suitcases. In yet another room, whose door was heavy to swing, my heart almost skipped a beat: I found racks filled to bursting with crazy clothes that I had only seen in magazines. The rest of the room consisted of a gigantic mirror. I passed my hand along the racks so that it touched everything and felt under the pads of my fingers the admirable materials, sometimes soft or rough. Under the fingers the wild silk suits, the plain linen shirts, light as flashy feathers, shiny, matte, reds and azure, stitched leathers with studs, a tuxedo in purple velvet with satin cuffs, sequin hippie flowers on white pants, some places of which were openwork with lace inserts, a shirt with an exotic pattern in cotton voile, a long, rich and warm coat all in sable.

I left the place with a slightly shaky step. I was surprised to see that the cup was still in my hands. I took a cold sip which made me grimace. Back in the kitchen, throwing the cold coffee into the empty sink, a drop that had slipped under my finger made me drop the cup in my motion. The fine porcelain exploded superbly. And that's when the newsroom rumbled with a loud sound of clothes moving and footsteps on the floor and I heard that there was now talk in every room I had visited. The walls were getting closer. I run away to my office before pretending to play on my phone.

I heard an “Ah!” sound and saw a slender man whose hair was bleached with hydrogen peroxide. He was walking towards me like he was Beyoncé, his arm broken in two by a large leopard print bag. Black glasses required. He was dressed in a yellow and red wool sweater on which “BLIND FOR LOVE” was written in capital letters and whose sleeves he had rolled up. The sweater was tucked into high-waisted, 50s-style pants, in a soft brown color and with a flea-tooth pattern in which there was a little red. The pants were held by a belt so long that the piece of leather fell vertically on his moving thigh. And, finally, he wore the fur mules that we saw everywhere and that made me drool with envy.

He held out a limp hand and said:

- Adam, I'm Kirsten's personal assistant. And, yes, it's Gucci. Follow me.

Adam was of Asian descent and you could tell he had done something with his makeup to make his eyes look less slanted. You could smell the powerful scent of his perfume when he walked near you and you could make out his white skin under a thick layer of rice powder. I thought it would have been perfect on glossy paper.

We walked through the door of his office, in front of which was mine. He tells me to sit down. When he himself sat down behind the modern plexyglass cabinet, it was as if the last piece of a puzzle had been put in place because Adam fit perfectly into the crazy decor he had created.

- Let things be clear. We are not at your service. It's completely the opposite. You are my assistant. You will do what I tell you. No, I say that because the previous intern had such an ego that he couldn't get through the doors anymore! You don't report directly to Kirsten, you don't talk to her if she doesn't talk to you. It's simple, right?

He paused, during which he raised his eyebrows, crossed his legs, lit a long, thin cigarette, and sighed sadly.

- It's a dream job that you have and you shouldn't be ungrateful. If you don’t like it, “bye-bye,” he says, pointing to the door with his arm outstretched and his wrist broken. There's no shortage of interns, as you know.

I then heard the office door creak open and it seemed to me that the corridors were suddenly silent. Adam's speech had already had a certain effect on me, but when I realized that it was Kirsten, the bittersweet voice of this magazine, the only voice that matters, who had just entered right behind me, my duties cerebral abdicated.

She passed, light, as if in perpetual suspension. Gravity was for others. She sat on Adam's desk with one buttock in the air and I saw the pale pink cloud of her floral perfume rising from her and leaving in long intoxicating tentacles through the window and the door.

While I was rambling, they talked for a good five minutes and I couldn't even hear what they were saying because I was preoccupied with the steady stream of sweat coming out of my body. My stomach was soaked and I thought it would start to show on my white shirt. A large drop rolled slowly down the top of my stomach when I saw that she was looking at me: her butterfly eyes were making my hair move.

In fact, she had intelligent black eyes and scarlet lips as if split in hard wood with a definitive gesture. Her hair was pulled back into a bossy ponytail. I don't know why but she immediately made me think of Cleopatra. She wore a man's shirt and discreet necklaces rested at the base of her neck. A thin caramel leather belt defined her silhouette into two harmonious sets. And then it was a skirt that came. It was flowy and loose and first beige and then pastel pink and then red. Finally, she wore some sort of light brown sandals with high heels.

She asked me abruptly:

- You wouldn't happen to know who broke my Hermès cup in the sink this morning?

I shook my head “no”. I couldn't do more or do better. If I had spoken I probably would have sold out. She turned to Adam, before going out, and said:

- I hope at least he can talk.

Once she was out, Adam said one last thing to me:

- Your job is to hold on. Have shoulders and go straight. That's all we ask of you. That and sorting the archives will give you a workout.

He then dismissed me and, turning around to close the door, I saw him at the window and, on his back, in the wool of his sweater, there was the drawing of a wolf showing its fangs.

*****

In the evening on the terrace, tickled by the orange light of a half-sun, I told my friends about my first day. I glossed over the most humiliating parts and emphasized the rest. One of them, who was an actor, said something like “Ah, that for example!”, because he was soon to appear in a period film and he was practicing how to say exclamatory words well, a friend was jealous and said it openly and another banged her hand hard on the table to express her admiration.

I did nothing to contradict them. Until then, I held my bet.

But at night, my body buried in my narrow mattress, on the sixth floor and far from home, I must admit that I couldn't wait for the alarm to ring.

II

       

The editorial meeting room was round like the table in its center. All the editors were around and looked like bombs about to explode. The September issue was due out soon.

The low sun burst through the window with its rays like bullets which ricocheted all over the round room around the oval table. No one dared to move for fear of being hit by a ray. It was very early and my yawn was interrupted by the entrance of Kirsten and Adam. The editorial meeting began.

Kirsten said delightful things like:

- The inspiration for the next shoot is Marilyn Monroe, you see. But Marilyn at the end of the evening rather. The mascara ran. She hesitates between finishing her glass of gin or the barbiturates. Maybe the subway gate could give out at any moment, you know?

And then also :

- We will also have to talk about camouflage. In its non-chaotic, almost poetic version. The motif ironically taken as revealing. Being seen. The cacophony of stains on the peaceful cotton canvas. I want to read things like this. I need you to think like Baudelaire, but fashion. Baudelaire in Ray-Ban.

Everyone was tense. At one point, Kirsten says:

- Daniel!

A sort of two-meter viking sitting not far from me jumped.

- For heaven's sake, you should not write that this or that item of clothing is, I quote, “rarely ugly”, even if it is true. I remind you that you are talking about an advertiser! Do you want to lose your job?

She said this when she had just placed her hands on the table, leaning towards Daniel, like a dragon preparing to spit its Greek fire.

- Daniel... Say instead that he is... I don't know... of an ambiguous beauty flirting with... um... with the insolence of clashing colors! It's not complicated after all! Think for a change.

The large viking was no more than five feet tall while the dragon dragoned. And then suddenly:

- And you there!

You were me.

- What do you think ? I don't think I've heard the sound of your voice in two weeks. What do you think ?

The head that didn't want to walk. Legs that didn't want to run. Mouth too small to speak. The seconds trotted tragically in their gold-plated dial. The worried eyes did not dare to meet. The dragon finally said:

- You see, I want to put young people to work, but they have no ideas. They are sterile. They are empty. Good !

The rest of the meeting passed in a dull, low fog and I was beyond nausea. It was like my stomach had nothing left to vomit up but it was trying anyway and my eyes were covered in a thick veil.

At the end of the meeting, as I headed to the bathroom, she grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear:

- Do you choose your clothes, young man?

Then, without letting me respond, she called out to an editor to compliment her on her outfit and the girl seemed to faint.

I went to the bathroom to wash my head clean. In fashion, eyes are made to cry. But I was more in a state of shock.

Above the marble sink on the edge of which the Aesop bottles were lined up, I imagined all kinds of stories in which I would kill Kirsten badly. The revolver at point blank range squirting brains monogrammed LV to the four winds. The rope breaking the floral balance of its scent by lacerating the neck. The Chanel tweed suit and pencil skirt devastated by gasoline and fire.

- Kirsten is abusive sometimes.

I turned to see a guy coming out of one of the stalls, buttoning his black jeans. His camel suede cowboy boots echoed loudly on the checkerboard tiles. It was the viking. He spoke French in a drawling manner with more pronounced consonants and it hissed between his teeth.

Daniel's face was that of a Viking, nothing more, nothing less. He says :

- You don't have to worry about it later. It happens all the time.

- How do you cope with this, I asked.

- At the beginning I had difficulty. But you can have as big an ego as you want, she will always win.

I looked at myself in the mirror, wondering if I could handle this every day. He positioned himself in front of the basin to my right and tapped the Aesop bottle twice with his large mercenary hand and the purple soap flowed into the hollow of it. He walked towards me to show me the soap. I looked without understanding. He tells me :

- Do you think it's Aesop soap inside the bottles? You talk, the mag' is so stingy that he hasn't bought any other bottles since I've been here. And the cleaning lady fills them with industrial lavender liquid at €1 per liter. That’s the fashion world. It's like this bottle.

He rubbed his hands, rinsed, and took a clean towel folded into four. He says :

- Keeping up appearances.

I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but the big Viking guy said things from the heart and if he could have told me the recipe for beef bourguignon I would have found it fascinating. He motioned for me to follow him and we soon found ourselves in the fitting room where the millions of clothes used for photo shoots are kept.

Daniel walked around the room and, from time to time, he threw clothes that now formed an expensive mountain at my feet. The clothes were sensational. At one point, he put an electric blue tuxedo jacket over my back and lifted me easily to position me in front of a mirror. Seeing me with this tuxedo jacket, I said to him:

- Isn't that a little flashy?

- No, it's perfect. It matches the color of your eyes. But these are only loans, eh! Not get excited. Even though no one would see it anyway. Everyone is so obsessed with what's coming out next season that we've already forgotten what's coming out this season. Come on, he added, it's time to look in the mirror and choose what you really want. An easy and boring life? Or the ability to borrow as many designer clothes as you want?

And he slapped me on the back with his monstrous hand and started laughing before walking out of the fitting room.

That evening, I walked through the lobby doors after sunset with my arms full of two tote bags that looked like Ikea moving bags.

*****

The dragon told me to come at 10am. So that’s when I arrived. The parade started at 10:30 a.m. It was Adam who was obviously supposed to come. But he was sick. Kirsten called me into her office and asked me some strange questions:

- What do you think of Balenciaga crocs?

Every day that I worked on this editorial, I told myself that it was the last. Kirsten's questions no longer surprised me. So, this time, I responded calmly and confidently:

- It's filthy, unwearable, no point. For me, the most beautiful creations are those that give more dignity to the person who wears them, I tell him.

- Where will the next Saint Laurent fashion show be?

- What do I know! No one can know until they get there. Vaccarello is surprising.

- Is Demna a vegetarian?

- I don't know about that and I don't care about it like knowing if Saint Laurent wore Moujik or if Kanye West is actually siphoned off or not.”

- Change your tone, stop being vulgar.

She threw a stiff piece of paper in my face with Adam's name written on it.

- Come to the parade tonight. Adam is sick. And I need someone from the magazine with me.

So, I took metro line 6, the one that hovered in the air just enough to see the Eiffel Tower, and stopped at La Motte-Picquet Grenelle. Then I walked because I still had time. I passed École Militaire and stopped at Invalides to take an Uber . That way, it didn't cost me too much and I didn't have to suffer the shame of coming on foot.

I finally arrived in front of the Grand Palais. Photographers began to crowd behind barriers. Because their muscles were tense. When they saw me coming, they weren't sure if they should take my photo or not. They looked at each other without knowing. I seemed too shy, too new, the type who enters a brothel for the first time.

However, I had spent a good part of the night putting together this outfit: Prada platform brogue espadrille in brown leather and with green edging on the sole, white mid-calf socks, anthracite short-skirt in cold wool, a shirt white poplin which was visible under the emerald wool sweater which could be tied into a knot with two sides on the stomach. Ray-bans and accessories. You could say I had it in my blood.

Quickly, things got crazy for good: Penelope Cruz in a pink Chanel suit dress, so beautiful that all the photographers paused contemplatively before taking her. Vanessa Paradis and her daughter like evil Siamese twins out of a Tim Burton film. And then someone, Charlotte Casiraghi perhaps, whose dress fabric was so transparent that you couldn't see it. No reflection in the light, no movement induced by the wind, nothing. Sumptuous and decadent. Gas crystal. A translucent envelope. The body hidden from view by ostentatious technical prowess. Avant-garde like a Whiteman monochrome. We had to be careful not to say that she was naked.

It was after this moment of grace that the swarm of bloggers arrived. They came out of bushes, from behind tree trunks, from mouse holes and from the trunks of Ubers . Casual courtship parades on the grandiose steps of the Grand Palais. The influencer's mackintosh canary. Silk pajamas and Birkenstocks. The shiny leatherette leggings and the chainmail dress. And then the green dress. Green praying mantis making impossible angles with her body in front of the photographer. We've never seen such an acute angle for a kidney failure.

There were also all the sketches of Richard Haines and the spirit of Bill Cunningham that could be seen hovering below all these people.

Suddenly, like cicadas that sense something approaching, the clicking of the devices stopped. A car with black windows slowed down in front of the entrance, stopped completely and a black pump came out. Kirsten, not far behind, was there. The cicadas could resume their photographic song.

I approached her and we passed the black wall and sunglasses of security with ease. She was not searched. We then entered the monument, the structure of which was made of glass roofs, domes, pendants and grey-green. Inside this art-nouveau vessel was a smaller one that Karl had modestly constructed. The floor was littered with carpets of dead leaves, real leaves that smelled of the forest, and leafless trees were arranged lengthwise so that the models could parade around them. Here and there, a few blooming tufts of moss made it look more real.

Kirsten whispers in my ear to follow her backstage. It was a blur of clothes shining on hangers and on the floor, corpses of fabric, cigarette butts, small empty vodka bottles, ribbons, safety pins. The girls running around in thongs and the makeup artists after them with their powder brushes to make them less beautiful because it was the fashion for ugly faces.

After greeting Karl, I sat in the row reserved for bloggers, the one furthest from the podium. It wasn't even serious. The influencers gave each other Instagrammable bows and blew boomerang kisses. And then the music started.

The models paraded to rock music and I didn't have enough eyes to see everything. I spent the fifteen minutes or so of the parade looking for the eyes of those who were standing with me just to confirm that what was happening was real, but no one ever wanted to see me. At one point, I even had to tap a scrawny guy in a purple suit and bowler hat on the shoulder, just to say:

- It's beautiful, isn't it?

He turned towards me, his face distorted by contortion and said, with a strong English accent:

- As always, darling!

At the end of the parade, Kirsten motioned for me to wait because she wanted to talk to Karl. I could easily have burst into tears because I was so excited by what I had just seen. However, I pretended to consult my calendar, my face impassive as if this parade had not upset me.

Suddenly, she beckoned me to come closer. Karl held his hands against his extremely wide tie. He had a beard and was of no age. Behind his dark glasses, his eyes must have been looking at me because he asked me a question:

- What did you think, young man?

Wow, that was so funny to me. My heart is fainting.

- It was great!, I said, trying to calm down a little. It was astonishing, sir. I mean solar!

He gave a quick smirk and wanted to say something but I was the first to speak:

- But if I can allow myself something... Sir...

- Ah, but allow yourself, young man. You must always allow yourself otherwise you never achieve anything in life. And call me Karl. Not sir. It's old-fashioned.

- I preferred your parade last year which was for me what you did best, Sir! The Eiffel Tower, right there. Coats with puffed sleeves. Flat hats. Well done, sir.

Karl and Kirsten exchange a look.

- You are confusing haute couture and ready-to-wear, my young friend, but it's not a big deal.

There was silence again and they walked away like lovers in a schoolyard. And then Kirsten came back to me quickly, and her outfit was moving gracefully and I could have loved it. She simply said to me: “Take your day.”

I walked slowly towards the exit. The steps were empty now. A photographer took my picture. I took the banks on foot, accompanied by the eddies of the Seine, without knowing that everything was already decided.

*****

That same afternoon I received a registered letter from the office. She simply said:

“Congratulations, you managed to get fired. I think Kirsten didn't like something you said at the parade.

It had to happen, I think we can say that you are not cut out for this environment.

Adam."

How could a single day be the best and worst of my life?

I found myself thinking about my mother and it made me hit the wall. I started thinking about the one I had replaced, who had said “welcome to hell,” and I typed harder. And then I continued. Soon I felt something warm running through my fingers. And the white wall was red around the hole that my knuckles were digging. I think it was bleeding hard.

Afterwards, I looked for an object that was going to break in a theatrical way, I looked for something that would make enough noise when I destroyed it, that would be able to account for the psychological state in which I was at this moment. When the vase shattered against the wall, it made a tiny noise and I had to take a lamp that I liked and smash it with all my strength on the electric hotplates in my makeshift kitchen.

There was a knock on the door and I said to fuck off.

When the lamp was completely destroyed, and all that was left in my red hands was the cable and the socket, I had, in my sick mind, constructed a plan of revenge which was to take place the very next day.

It calmed me down to think about that. In the evening, I treated myself to a delicious meal with the balance of any account I had not yet received.

III

Kirsten 's Uber arrived right on time.

The clicks of the photographers sang as usual.

She started to climb the steps.

I started running towards her.

I felt my heartbeat deep in my ear.

She wasn't very far away anymore.

I cocked my right arm and raised my hand, the bandage of which was red.

And on my hand a cream pie.

Kirsten turned towards me and put her hands on her cheeks.

I threw the pie which went very straight and was going to arrive hard.

The horror of Kirsten whose special diet forbids her to use cream.

And the heavy cake crashes right into his face.

The pool of cream all around her is off-white. Some people, trying to help her, slip on the pastry juice.

I'm here, out of breath. And around me more than twenty people. And my chest rises and falls. The cicadas resume their song. Kirsten, now on the ground, no longer has a voice. The sugar on his pretty wool jacket. And Daniel, the viking is there with her, he looks at me like I'm crazy. And the crowd that gathers points at me. And I'm definitely alone, with my cream cake.

Before leaving, I have this sentence and I don't really know why:

- The Hermès cup in the sink was me.