eleven

HERE’S AN IDEA © CHARLIE DEAN DESIGNS:

Find an old pair of cowboy boots and gild them with metallic paint, cover them with studs, and carve cool designs in the leather. Everyone should have a pair of apocalyptic cowboy boots for days when you need to walk on the moon.

DATE: MARCH 4

Days until fashion show: 61

I was so inspired by the workshop at Green Pastures Academy of Art and Amazingness that I spent nearly ten hours on Sunday working on mood boards and making notes and drawings for my ensemble. What I came up with was absolutely stunning and elegant. Glam, glam, glam.

I paced around my room for twenty minutes because repetitive action such as walking stimulates creative flow. Back and forth, around and round. I ran my hands over the fabrics of clothes hanging on the rolling racks. I stared at the images on my mood boards.

And just like that I thought of the perfect model. Her name is Bronwyn and she is next level. Not just the pretty, but raffinée, raffinée, raffinée. She’s the feature window in the Barneys of Life.

Bronwyn has tawny skin and golden hair and tiger eyes and is ultra-lean but somehow curvy and looks like the world’s most exclusive and thrilling pet. My dad watches a lot of drug movies, which is not a good choice, in my humble avis, but ça ne fait rien. His favorite drug film is called Scarface. It’s about a young man who hails from Cuba, very sweaty, like our landlord, Mr. Devlin, and highly ambitious, unlike our landlord. The young man in the movie becomes a major drug dealer and cokehead and there’s a disgusting scene in a shower with a chainsaw that should have scared my dad straight years ago, but hasn’t. Anyway, in Scarface, the drug dealer gets fantastically rich and essentially buys himself a gorgeous woman who is played by Michelle Pfeiffer, one of the world’s most élégante actresses. He also buys an actual, literal tiger, which he keeps chained in his yard.

Leaving aside the issue of healthy relationships based on shared interests as well as illegal animal trafficking and proper care of pets, Bronwyn reminds me of both the Michelle Pfeiffer character in the movie and the tiger. She prowls around the hallways looking bored and detached, and her beauty makes her seem rare and unexpected in the mundane surroundings of R. S. Jackson, although her fashion sense is not good.

She knows who I am because she introduced herself to me when I’d been at R. S. Jackson for only a few weeks. No one else had bothered. I was trying to get my leather briefcase (full funky ’70s, weighs about thirty-eight pounds empty) into my locker when she appeared beside me.

“Hey,” she said. “Do you do your own hair?”

I had arranged my hair into my favorite style with the two wings on either side of my head. A classic look but not one to be attempted by amateurs.

“Yes.”

“It suits you.”

“Thank you.”

“Where’d you get those threads? Around here?” she asked.

She was standing very close to me, and I was nearly overwhelmed and disoriented by the feeling I always get around the extremely beautiful. Like the secret was RIGHT THERE but also infinitely far away. What perspective would reveal the mystery? Should I examine the nose? The skin? The hair? The arch of the brow?

I will never stop trying to figure beauty out. It is life’s greatest challenge and its most enduring satisfaction.

En commun with other truly stunning people, Bronwyn had imperfections, but they only added to the overall effect. A small scar on the cheek. A tiny gap between her front teeth that was to die for. Pure Lauren Hutton!

“I made this,” I said, touching the fabric of my dress. Fitted, royal blue, with a narrow red belt and exactly the right red pumps and short red jacket.

“Holy crap,” she exclaimed. She sounded genuinely impressed.

Everyone passing by us watched Bronwyn as she talked to me.

“I think your look is rad,” she said. “But I couldn’t do it.”

“Oh?” I said.

“It’s too out-there.”

“Oh,” I said. Because en tout candor, what else was there to say to such a comment, made so casually? Out-there? Where was there? How far out was it? That’s the problem with the unfashionable. They don’t understand that to choose clothing in order to fit in is to die a little every day. If it was attention she was afraid of, she should know by now that for someone who looked like her there was no avoiding it. Bronwyn would draw stares until she died. The best she could do was take control of how she was perceived.

Perhaps her aversion to attention explained her outfit. Either that or Bronwyn was unequipped with style or taste. She had on a flannel shirt and leggings, the standard uniform of three-quarters of the girls at the school. Comfortable, fitting-in, thoughtless clothes. The leggings showed the butt, the flannel shirt showed the don’t care, the puffy boots showed . . . well, to be honest, Charlie Dean does not understand a puffy boot any more than she understands its sibling, the Croc. These were clothes best suited for a day spent at home. Alone. In the basement.

As I stood there in the hallway I imagined Bronwyn dressed in a custom Charlie Dean gown. Bronwyn, I’d like you to meet American Vogue! Italian Vogue! British Vogue! ALL THE VOGUES!

One day, I thought then, I would find a way to get Bronwyn into one of my gowns. Now I had my opportunity.

When Monday morning rolled around, I had several sketches ready, as well as sample swatches, mood boards, and pages of notes about finishing details plus hair, makeup, shoes, and jewelry.

But I couldn’t seem to find the best-looking girl at our school. Not a surprise, since Jackson is so huge. I checked the hallway where I’d sometimes seen her hanging out with her friends. I asked one of them if she’d seen her. The friend shrugged and said she hadn’t.

“Check at noon,” said a girl in a gray hoodie who was stooped over her phone. “She has volleyball on Monday mornings.”

When the noon bell rang, I collected my materials and went to find Bronwyn.

This time she sat among her friends wearing the exact same ensemble she’d had on the first time I talked to her. No makeup, hair in ponytail. Zero effort and still exquisite.

“Hello,” I said, trying not to feel awkward. “I’m Charlie Dean. We met last year?”

As I spoke I reminded myself not to turn statements into questions. That is not how successful people communicate. It was un peu tempting because Bronwyn and all of her unadventurously attired friends were sitting, legs outstretched to show off dreadful footwear, staring up at me.

“Hi?” said Bronwyn, who was unafraid to speak in question marks.

I swallowed and smoothed my jacket down my sides. I’d worn one of my favorite vintage suits: an Alberta-sky-blue blazer with pink edging and a pink wool pleated skirt with a substantial brown shoe. A total Margaret Thatcher meets Princess Diana by way of Barbara Bush number. My suit takes the Easter Egg risk, misses by the vane of a feather, and ends up pure power pastel.

“I wondered if you might like to, uh, model for me,” I said, going for the direct approach.

“I’m sorry, what?” she said, not sounding friendly at all.

I ignored her friends, who were staring at me with mouths ajar.

“That time we talked you said you liked my look. So I am hoping you will wear a dress I designed for you.”

“Uh, okay,” she said. “That’s a little random.”

One of her friends giggled.

I felt myself growing less able to talk. Less able to explain myself and my noble intentions.

“I need to find a model. For the dress. It’s going to be very beautiful. I need someone very special to wear it.”

This was all coming out quite wrong. Diana Vreeland would have said it in a way that would make every girl in that hallway want to wear my clothes.

If I didn’t have a collagen-saving policy against scrunching up my face I would have done so. Instead, I tried to stay still.

“Uh, I’m not that special,” said Bronwyn stubbornly.

“Sure you are,” said her friend. “She thinks you are, anyway.”

Charlie Dean would have bet two of her favorite suits that the friend was jealous of Bronwyn’s beauty.

“No, I’m not,” said Bronwyn. Her face was flushed. I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or the friend.

“I have—” I held up my portfolio case. It held the drawings of the dress in which I’d imagined Bronwyn and the swatches.

“No,” she said. “Thanks anyway. But I’m not really into it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I turned to leave, barely able to make my wooden legs move.

I’d only gone a few steps when I heard one of the girls behind me speak up.

“She’d like to get you into one of her dresses, Bron.”

“Shut up.”

“I think she probably wants to get in there with you.”

It sounded like all of them joined in the laughter.

I did not allow my posture to soften, even though it hurt to breathe. Just a little.