Business Elena:
Grey silk shirtdress (Perfect Dress sample)
Snakeskin courts (Ferragamos via Svetlana)
Large purple tote (Marc Jacobs via Century 21)
Total est. cost: $160
‘We long way from Manhattan now.’
As Elena stood in the hallway urging Annie to hurry up because otherwise they would miss the train, Annie explained at speed to Lana that Ed was in the café downstairs working his way through the muffin menu.
‘He’s expecting you to go and join him. I’ve told him to wait there for you. Then you have to look after him until I get back. He’s flown all this way!’ Annie was flooded with guilt: ‘Now I have to go off for the afternoon.’
She really didn’t want to be in a factory for possibly four or five of the precious hours that Ed was here on his surprise visit. But Elena needed her and Annie was going to have to put business first. It was the reason she was here. They would all just have to get on and deal with it.
‘We’ll have a wonderful evening … and the whole of Saturday and Sunday. And he’ll enjoy being with you today,’ she added, to try and calm her guilt. ‘He’s in the café,’ she repeated.
Lana, freshly showered – it was a teen thing, teens had showers whatever the time of day, maybe because they had no routine – stood holding her towel about her, hair dripping into a little pool on the floor. She knew that when her mother was this wound up it was best to just stand and listen, nodding frequently.
Then, all of a sudden, Lana’s towel slipped and Annie found herself faced with a full frontal view of her daughter’s full frontal waxing.
She gasped, and it was hard to recover the conversation from there.
‘Probably on his fifth muffin …’ Annie attempted, but then she just had to blurt out: ‘A Brazilian? Have you seriously had a Brazilian? Here? In New York?’
All the things that this meant whirled around Annie’s head. You didn’t have a Brazilian just for yourself, you had a full frontal scalping to show off to someone else, that much was fact.
‘Lana, you’ve not known this guy for very long,’ Annie said gently. ‘Really I should sit you down on the sofa and we should talk right now … but I have to get into a cab with Elena.’
‘You’re talking all New York,’ Lana said with a smile.
‘You’re looking all New York,’ Annie replied, pointing low.
‘Muuuuum, you’ll have to step back a little and leave this to me. I know you want me to look after myself and I will. Now go. Go!’ Lana insisted, ‘I’ll look after Dad for you, even though he probably has a map in his wallet of all the music shops he wants to visit now that you’re out of the way.’
‘Probably.’
Annie kissed her daughter on the forehead. Even in her heels, she had to reach up to do that now. ‘See you later.’
Pittsfield, Connecticut was not Manhattan. This was obvious as soon as the cab had pulled away from the station and Annie and Elena, along with their fabric rolls, were being driven through a suburban landscape of long streets, grocery stores and houses hidden behind gardens and fences.
‘Those cute little mailboxes with flags,’ Annie heard herself pointing out.
‘Ya,’ Elena was intrigued by this different scene too, ‘we long way from Manhattan now.’
The factory was a low brick building right on the outskirts of the small town. A row of cars sat in the joyless car park. Peeling paint and faded signs showed that there had almost certainly been better days at Fashion Parade Inc.
Elena paid the taxi fare and then the two hauled their fabric towards the reception.
The man at the door didn’t exactly scream ‘fashion’. In his baggy checked shirt, faded beige cords and small gold-rimmed glasses, ‘Grampa’ was the word more likely to jump to mind.
But Brad Barrington seemed pleased to see them at first. He shook their hands, ushered them into his neat office and made some small talk.
But when they lifted the fabric up onto Brad’s big table, along with the design sketches and thin paper patterns that Elena took out of her bag, he didn’t look quite so enthusiastic.
‘Making up these patterns in stretchy jersey will be difficult,’ he pointed out. ‘Take the gathered sleeve there, with the bow at the end. I don’t know if we can do that, for example.’
‘Maybe you could give it a try?’ Annie asked encouragingly.
‘I’d rather not. We’ve got a very narrow time frame here.’
‘We have to have the sleeves like this,’ Elena insisted. ‘It is supposed to look like upmarket and chic, but in sweatshirt material. This is the style.’
Brad Barrington scratched the back of his head and took a long, appraising look at the sketches.
Silence. One of those silences when clearly no one wanted to back down.
Annie and Elena stole a little glance at one another. They weren’t going to give in. If Brad here wanted their business he would have to give the dress sleeves a go.
‘All right …’ he said finally, ‘I’ll give them my best shot, but I can’t promise they’ll come out OK. Could we have that in the contract? If they don’t work, then we’ll put something simple on there, a button cuff maybe?’
‘Yes,’ Elena said, ‘but tight button cuff, then much looser sleeve gathered into it.’
Annie was impressed with the way that Elena was so on top of all the details.
‘Well, if you ladies would like to get comfortable in the waiting room, drink a coffee or two, I’ll take some of your fabric and your paper patterns and we’ll go make you a dress right now so you can see what it’s like.’
‘Now? Really?’
Annie couldn’t believe it would be so quick.
‘Yes, really. Settle in over there, read through your contract with us and I’ll come back with the first finished product. Have you brought labels for us to sew into the dresses?’
Elena snapped open her bag and handed over an envelope.
It was not even twenty minutes later when Brad returned with the dress.
Annie jumped up from her chair and headed towards him, desperate to take a look.
Turning the hanger this way and that, she showed the dress to Elena. ‘Look at the seams, so straight, so cleverly done. Ooh, I love the way the skirt flares out.’ Although it was a straightforward shirtdress, the panels of the skirt were cut diagonally to give plenty of flippy movement.
‘How are the sleeves?’ Elena asked, her deep voice still solemn.
Brad held them out for her to inspect. ‘They didn’t go as badly as I’d thought. In fact we got very close to your original design here, we’ve just shortened the ties a little to make it a bit easier to handle.’
‘And this you can do on all the other ones?’ Elena asked.
‘Yes … yes, I think so.’
‘Good.’ Elena didn’t go over the top with her approval. She was touchingly businesslike.
‘Try it on,’ Annie urged her, ‘just slip it on over your dress and we’ll get an idea of what it’s like.’
Elena stood up and slipped her arms into the grey sleeves. She buttoned up the front and did a twirl for Annie and Brad.
Annie could see now how genius these dresses were going to be. She loved the chic, uptown colourful, silky numbers that Perfect Dress had been producing so far, but this was the fantastic downtown version. A slouchy, casual but totally pulled together look which everyone was going to love. Heels, a belt and a beret, it could do the school run, even the office at a push. Leggings, flats and a slouchy bag, and it was totally sexy weekend.
‘I love it!’ Annie said. ‘Isn’t it cool?’ she asked Brad, but she sensed the term was slightly lost on him. This was a man in a checked shirt and saggy cardigan.
‘It’s a nice design,’ Brad said professionally, ‘your designer’s really thought the pattern through. It works. Apart from the sleeve, it’s all very simple.’
The contracts were signed, the delivery dates were agreed and as they climbed into the taxi, Annie felt truly optimistic about the dresses for the first time since she’d touched down at JFK.
‘I hope you’re pleased,’ she told Elena. ‘I really think this is going to work, and he’s promised to get everything to us in time for the first due dates!’
‘I have to go and show the new dresses to the clients, make sure they still want these dresses, even though they are different from the ones they ordered.’
‘But they will,’ Annie enthused, ‘I’ve worked in fashion for years and I know that these dresses are absolutely perfect for right now. They’re really going to sell.’
Elena still didn’t look especially happy and Annie wondered if it was to do with Sye. To Annie’s knowledge Sye had barely been in touch from his model shoot. But he was due back in town tomorrow, so surely the lovely couple would be able to make up then.
They sat silently for a while, then Elena’s phone began to ring. She looked at the screen and issued a totally Svetlana-like ‘Tschaaa’ of disapproval.
Sweeping her hair out of the way, she pressed the phone to her ear.
‘Sye, yes, hello. How are you?’
Annie tried not to listen, but she was in the back of a cab with not much choice. Well, especially as the conversation now took an unexpected turn.
‘I am very busy, Sye,’ Elena began. ‘I don’t think I have time to see you this weekend. I don’t know when I’m going to have time to see you … no not next week. Sye … maybe not ever.’
There was a pause, which Annie assumed must be Sye objecting. But to her amazement all Elena said in reply was ‘No, I don’t think so, Sye. No. Goodbye.’
With that, she hung up, stuffed the phone quickly into her handbag … and burst into tears.