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Amelia and I have had a strange relationship since we first met in fashion school and worked on a joint project. I think we’re supposed to be rivals. Or frenemies. I never quite understood.
But in this moment right now, I realize I don’t care what we are. Whatever energy I had invested in my competitive edge with my peers before I left for Spruce, it’s changed now that I’m back.
Something about this whole world has become … secondary.
“I saw your pieces backstage,” I tell her.
Amelia glances at me, stiff-lipped, listening.
I give her an honest smile. “I liked your choices. I think your use of leather in the pants of your first and second looks was quite smart, especially the way you worked it into the accessories, too.”
She bristles, crosses her legs, then shrugs. “I’ve done it before. It’s my thing.”
That’s as close as you get to a thank-you from her. “Good luck today, Amelia.”
A moment passes. Then, quietly, she says, “You too, Lance.”
The lights go low, a spotlight flips on, and the tall and stylish Ms. Andrews appears. In contrast to the cold way in which she runs her business, she takes the runway like a glorious goddess with a heart of gold and greets the audience warmly, preparing them for the “incredible”, “provocative”, and “moving” showcase they are about to witness.
The room swells with some kind of trance-hop music, and the show begins. One by one, models walk the runway. I observe each piece with curiosity, since I didn’t get too good a look at everyone’s work backstage. Some of them are pretty impressive, fashion-forward ideas I surely couldn’t have come up with. One of the pieces even makes me smile as the model casually slinks down the runway like she dresses like this every day. Maybe she does.
When Amelia’s first model comes out, her hand seizes mine at once, and with wide eyes and held breath, she watches her models one by one. I smile as I keep hold of her hand, being her support as she endures the torture of watching her work being stared at and silently scrutinized by the room of experts. Our rivalry—if it ever existed at all—is nowhere to be found. In this moment, we’re just friends at the end of a road.
My models immediately follow hers.
I’ve imagined this day a thousand times. I’ve imagined this very moment a thousand times, too—the moment my pieces grace the grand runway and fall upon the wise, cool, inspecting eyes of the big names in this room whom I’ve always admired and looked up to my whole career.
It’s strange, how it’s nothing like I pictured it’d be.
Even the way I feel right now.
I mean, I’m proud of my work. I’m very proud, in fact. Even the last-minute third look I had to come up with, thanks to Carly’s surprise departure from the program. Even if there wasn’t a bunch of important people watching this runway show right now, I’d be privately satisfied with my accomplishments.
But I thought I’d feel more outwardly proud. I thought I would be watching the audience’s reactions to my work, studying them, waiting for gasps of awe, searching for the astonishment, craving the validation that I’m a force to be reckoned with. Instead, I’m so calm, I might as well be at the movie theater kicking back with a bag of popcorn and a Coke.
So what has changed inside me?
“Wow,” utters Amelia as my third model, featuring the extra look I had to make, strolls off the runway.
I glance at her.
She turns to me, her eyebrows raised with surprise. “You …” She lets out a light sigh, cracks a smile, then stiffens right up as she meets my eyes sharply. “You really outdid yourself, Lance.”
Her reaction surprises me. She isn’t normally so revealing with her praise. I wonder why we’ve been awkward and cold to each other all these years. What did it gain us, this contention of ours, this arrogant, unsupportive enmity between us?
What are these fashion world habits of mine turning me into?
“Thank you,” I tell her at last.
We let go hands, and the show goes on.
I’m on the curb outside the building, watching cars go by as I listen to the city wake up around me. The show is over—the show I’ve waited my whole career for, the show that has been built up to me since the day Ms. Andrews brought me onboard.
A circle of praise dances around my head as I gaze up at the blue sky and the sun overhead, hidden behind clouds. Praise I got from Emile Von Clare about how my pieces “shone with a tactile brilliance befit for both a king and a commoner, a bridge between worlds, a noteworthy exposé of social divide.” Whatever that means. Praise from Luke Raymond Moorhead, who called my work “all I was looking for yet nothing like I imagined”. Praise from the six-and-a-half-foot-tall and stoic Henri Thibault Brodeur, senior editor of one of the biggest fashion magazines in Europe, who said I had a unique take on contemporary deconstructionism that both moved and disturbed him, as he felt my work was “a deeply provoking and evocative commentary on how we see the world as both advanced and yet still so-far-behind from what it should be”—and he wanted to see more from me. I blinked, had a moment’s thought of, “How the hell did he get all of that from just my three garments strutting down the runway?” then shook his hand and thanked him.
