Legacy of Lies. JoAnn Ross
was not on the lights, or the joyful season. Her concerns were more personal. And far more urgent.
She was on her way to the atelier of Yves Debord to try again to win a coveted position with the French designer. And though she knew her chances of winning a position at the famed house of couture were on a par with catching moondust in her hand, even worse than failing would be to grow old and never have tried.
Emerging ten years ago as haute couture’s enfant terrible, the designer had been immediately clutched to the décolleté bosom of the nouveaux riches. Fashion celebrity oozed from the perfumed corners of his atelier, glinted off the windshield of his Lamborghini, glowed from the crystal chandeliers in his many homes.
Hostesses in Los Angeles, Dallas and New York fawned over him. He skied in the Alps with movie stars and was welcome at presidential dinner tables in Rome and Washington and Paris.
During Alex’s student days in Los Angeles, the Fashion Institute had shown a documentary about the designer directed by Martin Scorsese entitled Pure Pow: The World of Debord. Enthralled, Alex had sat through all three showings.
She now paused outside the showroom to catch her breath. Adrenaline coursed through her veins at the sight of her idol’s name written in gleaming silver script on the black glass.
“You can do it,” she said, giving herself a brisk little pep talk. “The answer to all your dreams is just on the other side of this door. All you have to do is to reach out and grasp it.”
She refused to dwell on the fact that after months of daily visits to the bureau de change to cash her dwindling supply of traveler’s checks, she was almost out of funds.
Her night job, serving beer and wine at a Montparnasse nightclub, barely paid her rent. The hours, however, allowed her to search for work in the fashion houses during the day, and if sleep had become a rare, unknown thing, Alex considered that a small price to pay for a chance to fulfill a dream.
Throwing back her shoulders, Alex lifted herself up to her full height of five feet seven inches and then, with her usual bravado, entered the showroom. Behind her, the door clicked shut with the quiet authority of a Mercedes.
The front room, used to greet customers, was a vast sea of cool gray. Modern furniture wrapped in pewter fabric sat atop silvery gray carpet that melded into the gray silk-covered walls. Marie Hélène, Yves Debord’s sister and house of couture directress, was seated behind a jet lacquer table.
She was dressed in black wool jersey, her platinum hair parted in the center and pulled into a severe chignon at the nape of her swanlike neck.
When she recognized Alex, she frowned.
“I know,” Alex said, holding up a gloved hand to forestall the director’s complaint. She pushed back her hood, releasing a thick riot of red-gold hair.
“You’ve told me innumerable times in the past six months that there aren’t any openings. And even if there were, you don’t take Americans. But I thought, if you could only take a look at my work—” she held out her portfolio “—you might consider showing my designs to Monsieur Debord.”
Alex’s chin jutted out as she steeled herself for yet another cool rejection. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
To Alex’s amazement, Marie Hélène didn’t immediately turn her away as she had all the other times. “Where did you say you studied?” she inquired in a voice as chilly as her looks.
“The Fashion Institute. In L.A.”
“Los Angeles,” the directress said with a sniff of disdain, as if Alex had just admitted to being an ax murderer. “You’re very young,” she observed, making Alex’s youth sound like a fatal flaw. “When did you graduate?”
“Actually, I didn’t. I felt the curriculum put too much emphasis on merchandising and too little on technique.” It was the truth, so far as it went. “Besides, I was impatient, so I quit to go to work in New York.”
She felt no need to volunteer that a more urgent reason for leaving school had been her mother’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
As soon as Irene Lyons had called her with the dark news, Alex had gone to the registrar, dropped out of school and, with a recommendation from one of her professors, landed a job with a Seventh Avenue firm that made dresses for discount stores.
“New York?” Marie Hélène’s brow climbed her smooth forehead. “Which designer? Beene? Blass? Surely not Klein?”
“Actually, I worked for a company that made clothing for department stores.”
She lifted her chin, as if daring Marie Hélène to say a single derogatory word. While not couture, she’d worked damned hard. And although her suggestions to bring a little pizzazz to the discount clothing were more often than not rejected, she was proud of whatever contribution she’d been allowed to make. After her mother’s death, no longer having any reason to remain in New York, she’d followed her lifelong dream, making this pilgrimage to the birthplace—and high altar—of couture.
“But I continued to design on my own,” she said, holding out the portfolio again.
When the directress continued to ignore the proffered sketches, Alex steeled herself to be rejected once more.
Instead, Marie Hélène rose from her chair with a lithe grace any runway model would have envied and said, “Come with me.”
Unwilling to question what had changed the director’s mind, Alex rushed after her through the labyrinth of gray walls and silver carpeting. They entered a small Spartan room that could have doubled as an interrogation room in a police station. Or an operating room.
Though the steel shelves on the walls were filled with bolts of fabric, there was not a speck of lint or dust to be seen. Open-heart surgery could have been done on the gray Formica laminated plastic table in the center of the room.
Beside the table was a faceless mannequin. Marie Hélène took a bolt of white toile from one of the shelves, plucked a sketch from a black binder, lay both on the table along with a pair of shears and said, “Let us see if you can drape.”
“Drape? But I came here to—”
“I had to dismiss one of our drapers today,” the directress said, cutting Alex off with a curt wave of her hand.
Her fingernails were lacquered a frosty white that echoed her glacial attitude. A diamond sparkled on her right hand, catching the light from the fixture above and splitting it into rainbows on the white walls. Those dancing bits of light, were, along with Alex’s crimson cape, the only color in the room.
“I discovered she was sleeping with a press attaché for Saint Laurent.” Marie Hélène’s mouth tightened. “Which of course we cannot allow.”
Uncomfortable with the idea of an employer interfering in the personal life of an employee, Alex nevertheless understood the paranoia that was part and parcel of a business where the new season’s skirt lengths were guarded with the same ferocity military commanders employed when planning an invasion.
“With the couture shows next month, we must hire a replacement right away,” the directress continued. “If you are able to drape properly, I might consider you for the position.”
Draping was definitely a long way from designing. But Alex wasn’t exactly in a position to be choosy.
She glanced down at the black-and-white pencil sketch, surprised by its rigid shape. Debord had always favored geometric lines, but this evening gown was more severe than most.
“Is there a problem?” Marie Hélène asked frostily.
“Not at all.” Alex flashed her a self-assured smile, took off her cape, tossed it casually onto the table, pulled off her red kid gloves and began to work. Less than five minutes later, she stood back and folded her arms over her plaid tunic.
“Done,” she announced as calmly as she could.
Marie