forty-two

HERE’S AN IDEA © CHARLIE DEAN DESIGNS:

Dress like you are in love with you. You deserve the utmost care.

JUNE 14

Days after competition: 41

It was a shock when Mr. Carmichael invited me to meet with him otoko wa hito ni (which is Japanese for person to person, or man to man) at the Green Pastures Academy of Making Dreams Come True! (I’m so grateful that I’m going to be able to learn Japanese just like I’m learning French, thanks to Google Translate. The world is impossibly full of educational opportunities!) I don’t know what caused him to reach out. I don’t know why he asked if he could read this diary.

Because I have nothing but the utmost respect for Mr. Carmichael, who is a magnificent teacher and fashion person, I gave this book to him. He learned about my childhood, my parents’ struggles with drugs and with basic functioning, my mom’s death. He learned that fashion is everything to me and why I thought that dress was the right one for Mischa. He learned how and why I became a kidnapper and why abandoned malls and derelict buildings have something to teach us about beauty and damage.

When I first handed him this journal, back in May, right after the results of the competition were announced, I felt sick and exposed. But then I didn’t care because this book is the truth. On Wednesday he invited me to come and see him after school on Friday. He said it was chaos with the end of term, but to come anyway. He asked me to bring him my drawings and designs in progress. During that Friday-afternoon meeting, he gave this book back to me and said nothing about what was inside, which I appreciated. We talked about new designers we liked and old ones we loved. He told me how it was when he grew up in a small town in New Brunswick, one of the few kids of color, one of the only fashionable people in a town that didn’t care.

He told me how fashion kept him alive.

He invited me to see him the next two Fridays in a row and then, when school was nearly out for the year, he invited me to join the summer fashion intensive with the other candidates. Well, I nearly didn’t cope with the excitement!

Mr. Carmichael suggested I encourage John to come to the summer program, too. Since the fashion show John and I have had coffee a couple of times. We have good laughs about working retail. The Salad Stop sounds delicious but also like a hard place to work. My job at the makeup counter at Shoppers is much better. The clients there need me. But John doesn’t want to come to the summer intensive. He says he’s got a lot going on in his metalworking shop and won’t have time, and I think he’s putting together a portfolio for art college.

Still, I’ve promised Mr. Carmichael I’ll keep working on John!

At Mr. Carmichael’s suggestion, I also did something truly phenomenal.

I started an official Fashion Design Club! We meet at R. S. Jackson, and the club is open to the fashionably oriented from every high school in town! We only had time to meet once before exams started, but we have big plans for next year. Almost everyone from the competition came to the first meeting after school, and even some new people showed up, maybe because they wanted to see whom I would kidnap next. They soon forgot about that and were swept away by the power of creating style!

Jo is a member and, just as an aside, we have gone on five dates now and I think we’re officially seeing each other. This is an epic and marvelous and ultra-romantic story deserving of its own journal that I will never share with anyone because it is simply too wonderful and precious to me.

Cricket and Jason are secretary and treasurer. Madina came from her school in the north end, Ainslee even came over from Gabriola, where she is homeschooled, and Ellen, the girl who looks sort of like Audrey Hepburn and who doesn’t really speak, and the girls who look the same showed up. Everyone! We worked on designs together, shared fashion books and magazines. We have plans to watch New York Fashion Week on a laptop together, and study all the big designers’ shows next year. Mr. Carmichael has promised to come and give us a guest lecture on menswear in September. The only one who didn’t come was John, even though he was invited.

I think his heart is broken. His girlfriend is now his ex-girlfriend. I saw her holding hands with that big, handsome guy who used to be his best friend. No surprise there. I have never seen a human being look happier than that best friend of his. Except perhaps me every time I think about fashion club and summer school!

Poor John. The next time we have coffee I’m going to ask him to make a metal bodice for me. I think it will do him good.

I suppose I ought to say something about the home situation. My dad had a small relapse shortly after the show and is currently on methadone. He is attending his meetings; he has not sold everything we own or met a new, inappropriate lady, which is a relief. We are nearly a Hallmark household!

A few days after she dropped by to see us, Mischa left for Vancouver. Then my dad heard that she left her treatment program and disappeared. I have no idea where she is, but I wish her well and I will keep the Mall of Reborn Dreams dress for her until she comes back. The dress may be the capstone piece of my Resilience Rising Collection™.

To conclude this style diary, here’s something that every young person, fashionable or not, growing up in a difficult family needs to know: keep it together. It will eventually be over. You will turn seventeen or eighteen, and you can move out and start your own life. You do not need to take on the problems of your progenitors. Find something that makes your heart sing and your brain expand, and let it carry you past all the ugliness and over the low spots. Oh, it’s not easy. Certainly not. You will make mistakes, but you will overcome.

As Jo has gotten to know me better, she says she’s worried that if I’m not careful, I’ll turn into one of those brittle people who will smash into a thousand pieces if someone hits me just the right way. She’s so direct! It’s exhilarating! But she’s not correct. People thought the same thing about Diana Vreeland, and look at the amazing life she had.

I am strong. And I am stylish beyond all measure.

Allow me to leave you with a final thought:

So are you.

With love,

Charlie Dean