‘BABY BOY, FASHION IS NOT FOR ADVERTISING YOUR FAVE SEX ACTS ON YOUR SHIRT. UNH-UNH, NO IT’S NOT! YOU WANNA SHOW A LITTLE SKIN? THAT’S HOT! YOU WANNA SHOW SOME OF THOSE TIGHT, YOUNG CURVES OF YOURS? THAT’S HOT. CLOTHING IS NOT FOR TELLING THE WORLD WHAT POSITION YOU PREFER, BOYFRIEND. NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND?’
‘But, Nigel!’ A look of defeat was carefully constructed to disguise how pleased he was to be the center of Nigel’s attention.
‘DON’T “NIGEL” ME, HONEY. GO TALK TO JEFFY AND TELL HIM I SENT YOU. TELL HIM TO GIVE YOU THE NEW CALVIN TANK WE CALLED IN FOR THE MIAMI SHOOT. IT’S THE ONE THAT GORGEOUS BLACK MODEL – OH MY, HE’S AS TASTY AS A THICK, CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE – IS ASSIGNED TO WEAR. GO ON NOW, SHOO. BUT BE SURE TO COME BACK HERE AND SHOW ME WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE!’
James scampered off like a recently fed bunny rabbit, and Nigel turned to look at us. ‘HAVE YOU PUT IN HER CLOTHING ORDER YET?’ he asked no one in particular.
‘No, she won’t choose until she has the look-books,’ Emily answered, looking bored. ‘She said she’ll do it when she gets back.’
‘WELL, JUST BE SURE TO LET ME KNOW AHEAD OF TIME SO I CAN CLEAR MY SCHEDULE FOR THAT PARTY!’ He took off in the direction of the Closet, probably to try to catch a glimpse of James changing.
I’d already lived through one round of Miranda wardrobe ordering, and it hadn’t been pretty. When at the shows, she went from runway to runway, sketchbook in hand, preparing herself to come back to the States and tell New York society what they would be wearing – and middle America what they’d like to be wearing – via the only Runway that actually mattered. Little did I know that Miranda was also paying particular attention to the outfits cruising down the runways because it was her first glance at what she herself would be wearing in the upcoming months.
A couple weeks after returning to the office, Miranda had handed Emily a list of designers whose look-books she’d like to see. As the usual suspects rushed to get their books put together for her – their runway photographs often weren’t even developed, never mind airbrushed and bound, before she demanded to see them – everyone at Runway was put on alert that the books would be arriving. Nigel would need to be ready, of course, to help her flip through them all and select her personal outfits. An accessories editor should be on hand to choose bags and shoes, and perhaps an extra fashion editor to ensure that everyone was in agreement – especially if the order included something big, like a fur coat or an evening gown. When the various houses had finally pieced together the different items she’d requested, Miranda’s personal tailor would come to Runway for a few days to fit everything. Jeffy would completely empty out the Closet, and no one would really be able to get any work done at all, since Miranda and her tailor would be holed up in there for hours on end. On the first go-round of fittings, I’d walked by the Closet just in time to hear Nigel shouting, ‘MIRANDA PRIESTLY! TAKE THAT RAG OFF THIS SECOND. THAT DRESS MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A SLUT! A COMMON WHORE!’ I’d stood outside with my ear pressed to the door – literally risking life and limb if it were to swing open – and waited for her to upbraid him in that special way of hers, but all I heard was a quiet murmur of agreement and the rustling of the fabric as she removed the dress.
Now that I had been there long enough, it seemed as though the honor of ordering Miranda’s clothes would fall to me. Four times a year, like clockwork, she flipped through look-books like they were her own personal catalogs and selected Alexander McQueen suits and Balenciaga pants like they were T-shirts from L. L. Bean. A yellow sticky on this pair of Fendi pencil pants, another placed squarely over the Chanel skirt suit, a third with a big ‘NO’ plastered across the matching silk top. Flip, stick, flip, stick, on and on it went, until she had selected a full season’s wardrobe directly from the runway, clothes that had most likely not yet even been made.
I’d watched as Emily had faxed Miranda’s choices to the different designers, omitting any size or color preference, since anyone worth their Manolos knew what would work for Miranda Priestly. Of course, merely being made to the correct size wasn’t enough – when the clothes did arrive at the magazine, they’d need to be cut and tucked to make them appear custom-made. Only when the entire wardrobe was completely ordered, shipped, snipped, and delivered expressly to her bedroom closet by chauffeured limousine would Miranda relinquish last season’s clothes and heaps of Yves and Celine and Helmut Lang would find their way – in garbage bags – back to the office. Most were only four or six months old, stuff that had been worn once or twice or, most often, not at all. Everything was still so incredibly stylish, so ludicrously hip, that it wasn’t yet available in most stores, but once it was last season, it was about as likely to show up on Miranda as a pair of pleather pants from Target’s new Massimo line.
Occasionally I’d find a tank top or an oversize jacket I could keep, but the fact that everything was in a size zero was a bit of a problem. Mostly we distributed the clothes to anyone with preteen daughters, the only ones who had a shot in hell of actually fitting into the stuff. I pictured little girls with bodies like little boys strutting around in Prada lipstick skirts and slinky Dolce and Gabbana dresses with spaghetti straps. If there was something really dynamite, really expensive, I’d pull it from the garbage bag and stash it under my desk until I could smuggle it home safely. A few quick clicks on eBay or perhaps a little visit to one of the upscale consignment shops on Madison Avenue, and my salary all of a sudden wasn’t so depressing. Not stealing, I rationalized, simply utilizing what was available to me.
Miranda called six more times between the hours of six and nine in the evening – midnight to three A.M. her time – to have us connect her to various people who were already in Paris. I fielded them listlessly, uneventfully, until I went to gather my things and try to sneak out for the night before the phone rang again. It wasn’t until I was climbing exhaustedly into my coat that I caught a glimpse of the note that I’d stuck to my monitor just so this very thing wouldn’t happen: CALL A, 3:30 P.M. TODAY. My head felt like it was swimming, my contacts had long before dried to tiny, hard shards covering my eyes, and at this point my head started to throb. No sharp pains, just that nebulous, dull kind of ache where you can’t pinpoint the center but you know it will build and build in a slow, burning intensity until you either manage to pass out or your head just explodes. In the frenzy of all the calls that had produced such anxiety, such panic, from across an ocean, I had forgotten to take the thirty seconds out of my day and call Alex when he’d asked me to. Simply up and forgotten to do something so simple for someone who never seemed to need anything from me.
I sat down in the now darkened and silent office and picked up the phone that was still a little wet from my sweaty hands during Miranda’s last call a few minutes earlier. His home line rang and rang until the machine picked up, but he answered on the first ring when I tried his cell phone.
‘Hi,’ he said, knowing it was me from the caller ID. ‘How was your day?’
‘Whatever, usual. Alex, I’m so sorry I didn’t call you at three-thirty. I can’t even get into it – it’s just that things were so crazy here, she just kept calling and—’
‘Hey, forget it. Not a big deal. Listen, now’s not really a great time for me. Can I call you tomorrow?’ He sounded distracted, his voice taking on that faraway quality of someone talking from an international payphone on the beach of a tiny village across the world.
‘Um, sure. But is everything OK? Will you just quickly tell me what you wanted to talk about before? I’ve been really worried that everything’s not OK.’
He was quiet for a moment and then said, ‘Yeah, well it doesn’t seem like you were all that worried. I ask you one time to call me at a time that’s convenient for me – not to mention that your boss isn’t even in the country right now – and you can’t manage to do that until six hours after the fact. Not really a sign of someone who’s genuinely concerned, you know?’ He stated all of this with no sarcasm, no disapproval, just a simple summary of the facts.
I was twisting the phone cord around my finger until it cut off the circulation entirely, making the knuckle bulge out and the tip turn white; there was also