Читать книгу Fashionably Late - Olivia Goldsmith - Страница 7
ОглавлениеFashionably late, Karen Kahn and her husband, Jeffrey, walked past the flash of photographers’ lights and into the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue. Karen felt, for that moment, that she had it all. Tonight was the annual award party and benefit held by the Oakley Foundation, and Karen was about to be honored with their Thirty-Eighth Annual American Fashion Achievement Award. If she couldn’t arrive fashionably late here, where could she?
Stepping through the lobby and into the Deco brass elevator, alone together for the last moment before the crush began, Karen looked at Jeffrey and couldn’t repress a grin. Soon, she’d be among the crème-de-la-crème of fashion designers, fashion press, and the wealthy society women who actually wore the fashions. Despite all of her hard work, despite dreaming that this could happen, Karen could hardly believe that she was the woman of the moment.
‘It’s taken me almost twenty years to become an overnight success,’ she wisecracked to Jeffrey, and he smiled down at her. Unlike Karen, who knew she was no more than ordinary-looking, Jeffrey was handsome. Karen was aware that tuxedos make even plain men good-looking, but she was still taken aback by how much they did for a looker like Jeffrey, who was both sexy and distinguished in his formal clothes. A lethal combo. The gleam of the black satin of his peaked lapels set off his thick pepper-and-salt hair. He was wearing the cabochon sapphire shirt studs and cuff links she had given him the night before. They perfectly matched the washed-denim blue of his eyes, as she knew they would.
‘Not a moment too soon,’ he said. ‘It’s important to schedule your Lifetime Achievement Award before your first face-lift.’
She laughed. ‘I didn’t know that. Lucky it turned out that way. Although if I had the lift first, I might still be considered a girl genius.’
‘You’re still my girl genius,’ Jeffrey told her, and gave her arm a squeeze. ‘Just remember, I knew you when.’ The elevator reached their floor. ‘And now, see how it feels to really hit the big time,’ Jeffrey told her.
Before the stainless and brass Art Deco doors opened, he bent down and kissed her cheek, careful not to spoil her maquillage. How lucky she was to have the kind of man who understood when a kiss was welcome but smeared makeup was not! Yes, she was very lucky, and very happy, she thought. Everything in her life was as perfect as it could be, except for her condition. But maybe Dr Goldman would have news that would … she stopped herself. No sense thinking about what Jeffrey called ‘her obsession’ now. She’d promised herself and her husband that tonight was one night she’d enjoy to the utmost.
As the elevator doors rolled aside, Karen looked up to see Nan Kempner and Mrs Gordon Getty, fashion machers and society fund-raisers, standing side by side, both of them in Yves Saint Laurent. ‘You’d think they could have put on one of my little numbers,’ Karen hissed to Jeffrey, while she kept the smile firmly planted on her face.
‘Honey, you’ve never done glitz like Saint Laurent does,’ Jeffrey reminded her, and, comforted, she sailed out and air-kissed the two women. One was in an oyster white satin floor-length sheath with gold braid and a tasseled belt – a lot like curtain trimming, Karen thought. Perhaps Scarlett O’Hara had been at the portieres again. The other was in black lace shot with what looked like silver, though, since it was on Mrs Getty, it must be platinum, Karen joked to herself. Both women took their fashion seriously: Nan Kempner had once admitted in an interview that as a girl she had ‘cried and cried’ at Saint Laurent’s when she saw a white mink-trimmed suit too expensive for her allowance. The legend was that Yves himself had come down to meet the girl who cried so hard.
The foyer was already crowded with the usual backdrop of men in exquisite black wool and women in every sort of fabric and color. Funny how men always clung to a uniform. Only the Duke of Windsor had the fashion nerve to wear colored formal wear; midnight blue rather than black. But if men didn’t display much overt fashion, they certainly controlled this world. Despite her success, and the success of a few other women designers, Karen knew that the business was owned and controlled by men. And most of those in control were here tonight.
In addition, tonight there was a larger-than-usual gaggle of paparazzi. Fashion seems to have become the new entertainment, Karen thought, not for the first time, but it still surprised her. There was rarely a fashion event that didn’t draw a wild mix of society, Hollywood, and the rock world. She controlled herself and didn’t do a Brooklyn double take as she was pushed against Sly Stallone, who was there with his latest model. Paulina the Gorgeous stood beside her husband, Ric Ocasek. Clint Eastwood stood beside Frances Fisher, who looked great for a woman who’d just dropped a baby. The Elle Halle camera crew were also there, apparently busy trying to get a shot of Christie Brinkley. Billy Joel didn’t seem to be with her, but David Bowie was there, with Iman. And that, Karen thought, was only in the foyer.
An enormous noise came from the ballroom itself, which was where Karen and Jeffrey were headed. In a matter of moments, Karen greeted Harold Koda from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute, Enid Haupt, one of the wealthiest and most charitable of the New York doyennes, Georgina Von Etzdorf, another designer, and bald-headed Beppe Modenese, who worked to polish the Italian fashion industry’s image in the United States. They passed Gianni Versace, standing next to his sister and muse, the impossibly blonde Donetella. And still Jeffrey and Karen hadn’t yet made it to the ballroom. This event was definitely going to be a success, Karen thought, and she was happy not only for herself but for the fashion business in general.
‘Well, the gang’s all here,’ Karen smiled. ‘At least they didn’t give a party for me where nobody came.’
Before she had a chance to exult, they were interrupted: ‘Oh my, if it isn’t Kubla Kahn,’ said a waspish voice behind them. Karen winced, turned around, and was staring into the wizened face of Tony de Freise, another Seventh Avenue designer, but one whose star was fading.
‘It’s Karen Kahn,’ Jeffrey corrected.
‘Yeah, and it’s a hell of a pleasure dome she’s decreed,’ Tony sneered. Looking around, he paused, and his mouth tightened. ‘They did this for me once. Don’t let it go to your head. They just build you up to tear you down.’ He shrugged and turned away. ‘See you on the slopes.’
Karen sighed, but tried to keep her smile visible. There was professional jealousy in every business, but there seemed to be a little more jealousy in fashion. Karen wasn’t sure why that was. Belle, her mother, had once described politics back in the teacher’s room at grammar school by saying, ‘The fighting is so dirty because the stakes are so low.’ Perhaps the fighting in the fashion world had become so dirty because the stakes were so high. In the eighties, fashion had become global; the take was bigger than ever before, and it seemed as if the knives had been sharpened.
‘Well, that was a pleasant omen,’ Karen whispered. ‘I feel like Sleeping Beauty at the banquet when the Bad Fairy appeared.’
‘Oh, forget the Bad Fairy,’ Jeffrey told her. ‘No one pays attention to Tony anymore.’
‘Yeah. That was his point.’
Karen realized all at once that this new visibility would also make her more vulnerable. Other designers could take shots at her now. There were those rare few who continued to go their own way. Bill Blass, probably richer than any other American designer (with the exception of Ralph Lauren), was always friendly, open, and noncompetitive. He’d been one of the first of the established fashion moguls to be nice to Karen. If his talent wasn’t huge and his clothes were sometimes uninspired, he’d be the least offended to hear it. Geoffrey Beene, a true original, was another who went his own way. His clothes were inspired, an example of true artistry, and perhaps that was one of the reasons he was an iconoclast and always above the fashion fray. In school, Karen had learned a lot by simply looking at Geoffrey Beene’s designs.
Karen smiled and decided to shrug off the de Freise incident. Now she’d have to face the rest of the mob. She and Jeffrey walked into the ballroom and were engulfed by their own competitors and co-workers. There are nice people here, Karen reassured herself. Then she saw Norris Cleveland.
Karen tried to spend most of her time and energy in the workroom, out of the gossip and back-biting arena. She also tried not to compare herself or her work to anyone else. But if there was one woman in the business she disliked, it was the one approaching her right now. Norris Cleveland was, in Karen’s opinion, worse than a bad designer. She was the kind of designer who gave fashion artists a bad name. She was lazy and derivative; the worst of her clothes were either dull or unwearable, but … The ‘but’ was that Norris had a genius for having friends in the right places and getting her parties, quips, nights on the town, and her newest line placed in all the right newspapers, magazines, and television shows. Of course, calling them her clothes was an act of charity: Norris stole a little from here and a little from there. Lately, it seemed Cleveland had been imitating Karen’s style. The worst part was that she even copied badly! But Karen was determined not to let anything or anyone spoil the night. She smiled at Norris, or at least she bared her teeth.
Norris was as bad at business as she was at design, but a few years ago she had married Wall Street Money and her company had been saved by a new inflow of cash. If the word on the Avenue was true – that Norris’s husband was getting tired of both writing checks and of being referred to as ‘Mr Cleveland’ – it did not seem to have dimmed Norris’s smile tonight. She came at Karen with her arms open, revealing her painfully thin body encased in a sheath of yellow jersey. Now, as Norris made a kissing noise at each ear, Karen heard cameras begin to click. Somehow cameras always followed Norris Cleveland. Karen wondered if they were real press, or simply ringers on the society designer’s payroll.
‘Congratulations, darling,’ Norris said, in that breathy, exclusive-girls-school monotone that was so prevalent among the ladies who lunched – a sort of Jackie Kennedy Onassis with emphysema. Norris had always been pleasant to Karen, but on some deeper level, she could feel the woman’s envy and distaste. After all, Karen was nothing but an upstart. ‘I’m so pleased for you.’ Yeah, right. Norris then turned to Jeffrey and put her hand on his arm. ‘You must be very proud,’ she said to Jeffrey, and for some reason, when Norris said it, it sounded like an insult. Cameras flashed again, and Karen wondered if she’d be cropped out of the picture when it ran in Town and Country.
Jeffrey just laughed. ‘Norris! What a dress!’ was all he said.
She kept smiling. ‘Well, you’re not the only ones celebrating tonight. Have you heard? I’m about to launch my perfume.’
God, how much money did her husband have to throw away? Karen wondered. A perfume could not be launched for less than ten or fifteen million dollars. A good launch cost triple that. And only the good ones lasted.
Karen hated the perfume business. It was a cash cow for a lot of the fashion merchants, and had been since Coco Chanel invented the deal, but it was well known that it had brought only money and pain to Coco. Still, it would be perfect for Norris. Without feeling a moment’s guilt, she could sell packaging with her name on it to desperate people who vainly hoped for romance.
‘Best of luck,’ Karen murmured, and was delighted when Jeffrey moved her forward. ‘I hate her,’ Karen told her husband out of the corner of her mouth.
‘She knows that,’ he answered.
Karen and Jeffrey moved smoothly through the crowd. It was wonderful, even hard to believe. Everyone said hello to her. She was definitely the Cinderella at this ball. And if she had spent most of her life on her knees in her workroom, tonight was the reward, the recognition for all that work.
‘Serious Money ahead,’ Jeffrey whispered, and nudged her. ‘A pillar of the community.’
Bobby Pillar, the guy who had singlehandedly created a new television network and was now launching his own shopping channel, was moving toward them. Karen had met him once or twice before, but now, beaming, he approached her, his hand outstretched. ‘The It Girl!’ he cried, and instead of shaking her hand, he hugged her close. She was surprised, but after all, he was Hollywood. Always trendsetters, they’d given up air-kissing in the nineties – it was replaced with full frontal assault. Now Bobby surveyed her proudly, as if she was an invention of his own. ‘So? When are you going to create a line for me?’
Karen 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.’ It was only in the last dozen or so years that top-of-the-market Seventh Avenue American designers – who made Lincolns – had built enormous empires. And they had done it by moving out and down. Lincolns had been downgraded to Fords – bridge lines – for the malls. People like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and a half-dozen others had created fashion empires larger than any that had come before. Now Karen stood on the brink of an opportunity potentially as vast. And sometimes it frightened her.
But the faces around her table were all supportive ones. Aside from Jeffrey and Defina, she could smile at Mercedes, who had brought an obviously gay male friend. Mercedes came from the generation that always had male escorts for social events. Everyone knew Bernard was a lesbian (though no one ever mentioned it). Only Defina had the nerve to once refer to the woman as a ‘Mercedes diesel.’
Casey Robinson, their vice-president of marketing, sat next to Mercedes and he was with his gay companion Ray. Karen sighed again and had a flash of gratitude that she had met and married Jeffrey early on in her career. So many women in her business bemoaned the lack of heterosexual men in the industry.
Karen smiled at Casey, Mercedes, Defina, and the others. All of the people at the table tonight had helped her get there. When she learned she’d earned the Oakley Award, Karen had decided to have these people surround her and share in her success. She had not invited her family. They hadn’t contributed in the same way, and somehow their presence always complicated things. Just this once, Karen had decided to keep the night for herself, to share the event with her mother and sister only after the fact. She felt a little guilty about it, but as her friend Carl had explained, ‘The choice is between inviting them and spoiling your evening, or not inviting them and having a great night but feeling guilty. I say go with the guilt! Guilt is like a muscle. Learn to use it.’
As if the thought of Carl had conjured him up, Karen saw her tall, fat, balding friend making his way toward her. The table wouldn’t be complete without Carl. Since the days at South Side High School, back in Rockville Center, Long Island – which both she and Carl still called ‘Lawn Guylind’ – he had been her biggest cheerleader. Actually, her only cheerleader. Certainly, neither her mother nor her younger sister were supporters of Karen’s dream to make beautiful, fabulous, comfortable clothes. Belle was too practical, too critical for dreams, and poor Lisa, younger than Karen, needed support and couldn’t give any. Only Carl, with his crazy optimism, his sense of humor, and his mother’s sewing machine, had supported Karen’s ideas. He was her earliest fabricator and ally. Now his bulk crossed the last part of the Waldorf dance floor and he enveloped her in his big embrace.
‘Brava, brava, brava!’ he boomed, and smacked kisses on both her cheeks.
‘Grazia,’ Karen responded, exhausting all of her Italian vocabulary with that single word. It had been agony for her to learn French, which Jeffrey had insisted she do for her career. Karen was no Defina when it came to languages. She still spoke English with the heavy, adenoidal tones of Nostrand Avenue (where her family lived before her father could afford Rockville Center).
‘So how did you achieve this enormous success?’ Carl asked in a mock announcer voice, holding up a butter knife from the table setting as a faux microphone.
‘I guess I just kept my nose to the grindstone for a long time,’ she answered, too modestly and sweetly.
‘Oh, is that what made your nose like that?’ he asked. ‘Let’s get a picture of it.’ Carl popped out a tiny camera. He handed it to Jeffrey. ‘Yo, Defina. Get over here! I want a picture with the stars of the evening.’
Defina smiled and obliged, but Karen saw Jeffrey’s expression tighten. Why hadn’t Carl asked her husband too? Sometimes Carl could be incredibly undiplomatic. Karen was always aware the Jeffrey could be made to feel like an appendage, when the truth was he had made all her success possible. But to Jeffrey’s credit he obligingly held up the camera and squinted.
‘The Three Musketeers and their mid-life crisis,’ he said as he flashed the picture.
‘Isn’t that a book by Dumas?’ Carl cracked.
‘I think so,’ Defina said. ‘But I can never remember if it’s Dumas père, Dumas fils, or Dumas the Holy Ghost.’
‘Hey, guys, you’re confused,’ Karen explained. ‘Even I know that it’s Casper the Holy Ghost.’
Jeffrey shook his head at their foolishness. ‘Could you behave like celebrities instead of tourists for just one evening?’ he asked.
‘Speaking of celebrities, I saw John Kennedy Junior in the lobby,’ Carl whispered. ‘I nearly passed out. I swear, he is a real and present danger to the gay community. The boy could cause cardiac arrest.’ Carl began breathing hard with actual or feigned excitement. It was difficult to tell with Carl. ‘Oh, to be Daryl Hannah for just one night!’ he cried.
Karen rolled her eyes at him. ‘Behave,’ she warned. Carl was obsessed with the Kennedys, or pretended to be. He was probably the only person in the country who could name all the Kennedy cousins of this generation. It was a parlor trick he did, kind of like naming the wives of Henry the Eighth or the seven dwarves, except it took a lot longer.
By now most of the people in the ballroom had taken their seats, and Carl joined the Karen Kahn team at the table. He picked up a glass and when one of the waiters brought champagne, he cleared his throat and got serious. ‘Let us all toast this year’s winner of the coveted Oakley Award,’ he saluted. Karen was touched. Then, on cue, everyone at the table pulled out a slice of toast and lobbed them across the table at her – even the sedate Mercedes. Then they all collapsed in giggles. All except Jeffrey.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he said. He obviously hadn’t been privy to the gag. ‘A food fight at the Waldorf Astoria?’ He shook his head while Karen couldn’t stop laughing. Tears came to her eyes and she had to use a napkin to make sure she didn’t blot her mascara.
Suddenly the mistress of ceremonies, Leila Worth, began speaking from the podium set at the corner of the stage. ‘If I may ask for your attention,’ she cooed over a sound system that had to be set on supermax to be heard over the braying and whinnying of the mavins of couture. The fashion crowd was a loud one. At last they settled down.
The next part of the evening was a blur to Karen. There were the inedible couple of courses of food and the blah, blah, blah of several speakers who talked about the Oakley Awards and the industry and fund-raising. There was the buzz of conversation that rose to an almost unbearable din between each speaker, and the predictable music – some Lester Lannin knock-off band. Then the lights dimmed and Leila Worth got back behind the podium.
‘Tonight we are gathered to honor an American fashion great.’ Goose pimples ran up Karen’s arms and down her back. Was that her? She looked down at her plate of untouched chicken divan and wild rice. She was a fashion great? She didn’t know if she was thrilled, embarrassed, or upset. Maybe all three. Did Coco Chanel, Karen’s idol, feel ambivalent when she was fêted? Probably not, but then Chanel was a fashion great. Karen sat there feeling like both Miss America and an imposter. She tried to focus again on Leila’s words. After all, you didn’t get a Lifetime Achievement Award every day.
‘In the last twenty years, American fashion has become the fashion of the world,’ Leila was saying. Karen wondered how the French and Italian designers in the room felt about hearing that! If it wasn’t completely true, it was more true than it had ever been before. America was the place that had created a system that could move a designer’s vision out to virtually every corner of the world. It had taken three decades, but the Oakley Awards had been one of the mechanisms that had focused the attention of the fashion magazines and buyers on American designers. Leila could be excused the hyperbole.
‘Nobody represents American fashion, nobody knows American women, better than the designer we are here to honor tonight. In the last decade, the continuous flow of beautiful, luxurious, and wearable clothes has never stopped coming. No one has a greater mastery of form, a deeper understanding of the subtleties of color, and no one has been more industrious or creative in her search for the right material, the unique material, the original material, as Karen Kahn. Here are some examples.’
The spot focusing on Leila went black, and from out of the wings the parade of tall, gorgeous women began. Leila’s disembodied voice continued, describing some of the designs and their importance or originality. Now, in the semi-darkness, Karen knew what to do with her eyes. She drank in the spectacle – a collection of the work she had done in the last decade. Karen nodded at the big-shouldered sheath dress and matching knit jacket, the unconstructed blazer and sleek cropped pants, even the bias-cut silk knit evening gown, though evening wear had never been her strongest suit. The clothes on the models moved, they reflected the light, and they seemed both a decoration and an organic part of the beautiful bodies they draped. That was the trick, the riddle, that Karen was always trying to solve – how to conceal, reveal, and yet also be a natural extension of a woman’s body.
With most of these clothes, she thought, she had succeeded, and just for once, for this delicious moment, she could sit there and be happy with her work. She was no wunderkind – hell, she was hitting middle age – but if she felt that she’d been overlooked for years, now that she was finally being recognized she’d just consider it fashionably late. Karen could sense that the audience felt her vision, and when the last number – the previous season’s rich cocoa cardigan and legging outfit in wool with a simple chiffon undertunic – swirled off Leila called out her name. Karen rose effortlessly and walked across the gleaming empty dance floor to the stage.
The ovation sounded thunderous, but so was the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. She hoped her hair looked all right; she knew that the satin pants and cashmere jacket she was wearing, the latter trimmed in satin banding, would catch the light and throw it back to the audience. She ascended the steps and turned toward the audience. The spots blinded her, but she was prepared and tried to look out at the darkness behind them without wincing. Leila hugged her, and the applause surrounded the two of them, a clichéd tableaux from every award ceremony that had ever come before. Karen looked over the room full of everyone who was anyone in the fashion world.
‘Thanks, friends,’ she began.
Jeffrey and she were getting ready to leave when Willie Artech approached their table. Willie was another designer, slightly younger than Karen, who also had been juggling an emerging Seventh Avenue business. About five years before he had been the hot guy, but underfinancing and missed delivery dates – an absolute mortal sin in the rag trade – had taken the luster off his name. So had AIDS. He stood there now, alone, in a tuxedo that was far too big for his wasted frame.
‘Congratulations, Karen,’ he said. He raised a glass unsteadily. ‘We who are about to die salute you.’
Everyone at the table, most of them in the process of gathering their things, stopped.
‘I’d hoped to get the award tonight, but homosexuality isn’t as fashionable as it once was.’ He shrugged. ‘Res ipsa loquitur. That’s Latin for “the facts speak for themselves.”’ Willie grinned, his head skull-like. ‘Pretty appropriate, don’t you think? A dead man speaking a dead language.’ His voice dropped, and he bent his head. ‘This was a hard night. I’d hoped to win. I don’t have any children. I would have liked to leave behind something that would make sure I’m remembered,’ he whispered.
‘I’m sorry, Willie,’ Karen murmured.
Carl stood up. His lover had died just two years ago. ‘Let’s go, Karen,’ he said. Jeffrey, who had been off to fetch coats, returned and helped Karen into hers. The table broke up, leaving Willie standing unsteadily alone.
Defina took Karen’s arm. ‘Don’t take it personally,’ she whispered. ‘You know how it is with gay men designers: it’s always “chére, chére la mére.” And tonight you got hit with his mother stuff.’
Despite Defina’s attempt at comfort, it was an unpleasant ending to a wonderful night and Karen felt an immediate stab of guilt. Somehow she knew how Willie Artech, the spectre at the table, felt.
‘Jesus,’ Carl said as they exited the room. ‘In the face of eternity, who could care so much about an award?’
But Karen, clutching the Oakley plaque, her hand once again protectively over her belly, could understand how someone might.
