“Well, Lisa,” said Magda, extending a graceful arm, “here are the Model Gowns. Do you by the way know what is a Model Gown?”
“Well,” said Lisa, “not exactly. I’m not sure—”
“Very well,” said Magda, “I will explain to you. These frocks are all unique. There are no others like them in all this city. Oh, if you were to go to Focher perhaps you would find one or two, I don’t know, that woman is capable of anything, but as far as we are concerned there can be no others of their kind in Sydney. A woman who buys one of these frocks knows that she will not meet another wearing the same frock, which is so terrible a thing to happen to a woman, even if she looks better in the frock than her rival. So to say. So we have the exclusive right to sell the frock in Sydney. You might find it at Georges in Melbourne, that is all. Who goes to Melbourne? So that is by the way.”
“Yes,” said Lisa, bemused. “I see.”
“And the stock is all here. We do not keep different sizes of the same model,” Magda continued, “for then of course the frock would cease to be unique. Do you see?”
And Lisa nodded, and gazed at the frocks, whose chiffon and taffeta edges frothed out in their luminous ranks around her.
“Now let us look perhaps at a few of these frocks,” said Magda, “and you will see what such a Model Gown looks like. Let me see. We have our day frocks here and our costumes, as you would say I suppose our suits, here for instance this Irish linen, it is Hardy Amies, so very well cut, I would like it for myself but on the other hand I am not at my best in the English style, it is for a thin woman with no hips, I cannot understand why, English women are all made in the shape of a pear. Never mind. It is nothing to me. The French, they cut to fit a real woman with hips and a bosom, but they make her look slim nonetheless: that is artistry. There is no one to touch them, my God, it is a remarkable civilisation. I hope you have learnt some French at your school, have you?”
“Yes, oh yes,” said Lisa, “I took French for the Leaving Certificate.”
“C’est bien,” said Magda. “Nous parlerons quelquefois français, non?”
“Je lis un peu,” said Lisa, “je ne parle pas bien.”
“You will come and see some French evening frocks, en tout cas,” said Magda, “which will interest you I dare say more than the costumes or the day frocks. For a jeune fille, the romantic. And we have some English ones too of course, they are not bad, see what you think. Here is Hartnell, he is the dressmaker of the Queen as you know, Amies again, also he makes for the Queen, and a Charles James—magnifique. Now some French, you see—Jacques Fath, ravissante, a little Chanel, she has such wit that woman, and the great Dior. Who can touch him?”
Lisa stared, more bemused than ever; her head began to swim. She had lately come to see that clothing might be something beyond a more or less fashionable covering; that it might have other meanings. What she now but dimly and very oddly, very suddenly, saw was a meaning she could not before have suspected: what she now but dimly, oddly, and so suddenly saw was that clothing might be—so to speak—art. For these frocks, as each was named and held out briefly before her gaze by Magda, seemed each to exist in a magical envelope of self-sufficiency, or even a sort of pride; each of these frocks appeared to her however ignorant still lively intelligence to be like—it was astonishing—a poem.
“Gosh,” she said, “golly.”
Her hand reached out, gently, tentatively, and she touched the many-layered skirt of a pale evening frock.
“Are they very expensive?” she asked, her eyes large and fearful.
“Ho!” snorted Magda. “Ha! They had better be expensive. My God! You will see my stock book very soon and then you will know. But with such a frock, the price as you may one day appreciate is part of the charm. Now I will tell you something else, one or two things, and then you had better go back to those Cocktail ladies, and later I will speak to Miss Cartright again and will suggest to her that you will come to me in the mornings, when it is not so busy here, to help me with something I am going to explain.”
And she led the way to the Louis XVI table and pulled out the drawer.
“Voilà!” she said. “Here then is my stock book. Now then. As you know, the abominable sales will begin on the second of January and I too must put my stock on sale. So it is time to review it. Now you see, here are listed every one of my frocks, their names, their wholesale and their retail prices, and you will be most kind to make out a little ticket for each one which is not sold yet—you see we make a tick in the last column here when a frock is sold—with the price on it, and when all that is done, we will go through the stock and I will decide on the sale price depending on how long the frock has been here and its condition and so on. Then you will write the sale price beneath the old price so that the ladies know they get a great great bargain. And first of all you will arrange all the frocks of each section in the same order as that in the stock book, you see, which will be more convenient, we will know where we are. And of course you will always make sure that your hands are quite quite clean before you come in here and touch these so-expensive frocks, ma petite. Okay?”
And she smiled brightly, thinking to herself that it was very nice to have a little assistant, even a thin pale little schoolgirl like Lisa, who knew nothing; in fact, it was very nice to have the charge of so ignorant a little girl, for she, Magda, could teach her everything, and suddenly now, she, Magda, realised how pleasant it was to give instruction, to fill an empty head with knowledge, drop by precious drop: cut, style, taste; Amies, Fath, Dior.