“Ouch!” Alice cried out as I knocked into her. I didn’t stop. I held the feathers up to the fabric in my cart. It matched well. Maybe a littletoowell, but I didn’t have time to question myself. There were small sacks hanging next to the bins, and I took one, stuffing four handfuls of the feathers inside.
Now I just needed buttons and maybe some trim and I would have everything required to make a coat. My hands were slick with sweat. I didn’t know if it was from the time limit or the fact that I wasn’t even sure what I was going to design. The wheels of my cart screeched as I hurried to the side wall, where tins of buttons, trims, and appliques sat in stalls, displayed almost like fruit at the open-air market that came through Shy every spring.
Sophie stood by one of the stalls, holding up a black jet button. She turned it this way and that, as though she had all the time in the world. With a slight shake of her head, she set thebutton down and then picked up a black enamel one. I paused for a moment, pulled into her calmness. Her cart sat next to her, several bolts of fabric arranged neatly inside it. I glanced at my cart. My single bolt of navy wool stuck up out of it, and one of my sacks of feathers had tipped over. It was as messy and disorganized as I felt inside.
“Only five minutes left, ladies!”
Five minutes?Where on earth had the time gone? With fumbling fingers, I grabbed some brass buttons. Their sharp edges dug into my skin, but I didn’t have time to be careful. I wasn’t sure how many I needed, so I took several, dumping them into one of my feather bags. Breathing hard, I glanced around, at a loss. I needed more than buttons to adorn my coat.
Desperately, I grabbed some braided cord, a length of gunmetal-colored chain, and a spool of black fringe. Did I need more?
This is all wrong.
The thought hit me hard, and even though I shouldn’t have wasted any time, I leaned against one of the stalls. I was grabbing elements for a design that didn’t even exist. That wasn’t what designers did. It wasn’t whatIdid. How had I ended up like this? How had I gotten so lost?
“Two minutes, ladies! I suggest you head back to the front to avoid disqualification.” Francesco’s bellow reached through the basement. For better or for worse, everything I would use for my first Fashion House Interview challenge was in my cart, and I couldn’t change it now. As I reached the front, my heart was as heavy as an iron weight.
I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d already lost.
The maids took our carts up to the sewing room, so when we got there, our items and sewing kits were laid out on individual cutting tables. Mannequins stood next to each table. I recognized my table instantly from my bolt of plain navy wool and mismatched assortment of buttons, cord, chain, and fringe.
The other girls streamed past me to their tables. Within moments, the room filled with the sounds of heavy sewing scissors slicing through cloth, the rustle of fabrics being unfurled, and the rattle of buttons and beads scattering across tabletops. I touched the navy wool.
Get yourself together.
Navy coat. Full skirt, voluminous collar, detachable cape trimmed with cord.
With a deliberation I didn’t feel, I picked up the heavy paper inside my sewing kit and the measuring tape and began to measure out my pattern.
Sophie’s table was nearest mine, and when I saw her unpack her materials, I stopped mid-snip, startled. Instead of the black silk, feathers, and buttons from earlier, she carefully sorted through fabrics of dusty rose, dark gold, and light brown.
“You switched your colors,” I said, unable to stop myself.
“Hardly,” she replied, picking up the pattern paper. “I had them the whole time, hidden underneath the black fabric. I didn’t want anyone to copy me.”
“Those colors are so...” I faltered, staring at the cornucopia of hues spread across her table. The pinks had undertones of tan and sable, while the browns were the exact shade of milky tea.
“Like fall,” Sophie finished for me. “Everyone uses dying leaves as the color inspiration for fall. They use red, orange, and black... but these are the true hues of fall.”
Her color scheme was warm, whispery, winsome. It made me think of a wheat field just at sunrise, when the sky is punctuated with soft pink clouds rimmed in yellow and the wheat stalks gleam like gold. Ky, though she might have tried to sabotage Sophie, hadn’t anticipated this. And neither had I. I glanced at my plain navy and my stomach twisted.
“I thought you would use black,” I said.
“If I was designing for myself, I would. And it would’ve been fantastic. But this is for the Fashion House Interview,” Sophie said, her tone turning hard and bitter. “One must go for the unexpected, obviously.”
She’d pushed her decoy black fabric to the edge of her cutting table, but now she stared at it longingly. Then, without saying another word, she began setting out her buttons.
Slowly, I turned back to my table. The image of my first coat—the nude-and-black one—rose in my mind. I forced it away, even as it called to me. With a motion more decisive than I felt, I cut into the pattern paper.
I thought a full day devoted to designing would be more than enough to create a coat. Back in Shy, I’d never had such a block of time to design anything. Even on Sunday, when our pub wasclosed, we were scrubbing the dining room and kitchen clean and getting things ready for the coming work week. My creativity happened in stolen moments, often interrupted by the need to check the taps and wash the pint glasses. But even though we had the entire day and the following morning until noon, the minutes flew by.
As the day ended, I stepped back to survey my coat, my neck and feet aching from the work. My fingertips were raw from hours of manipulating the heavy wool and holding the sharp edges of the brass buttons in place as I sewed them on. I didn’t dare think about my appearance, but I could tell that my hair was a mess of wisps, and my dress clung to my sweaty body. I’d long since kicked off my heels, and my feet were grubby from walking around barefoot.
At least I wasn’t the only one who was worse for wear. Cordelia impatiently blew errant strands of hair out of her face, and Alice wiped her brow with some extra strips of her lace. All the other girls had also taken off their heels, including Kitty, who’d fretted that we weren’t supposed to. All of them except Sophie.
I looked at the different coats. Alice’s was covered in Chantilly lace and white swan feathers. Kitty’s coat was traditional blue toile, and Cordelia’s menswear coat was in that navy fabric she’d snagged from me.
Sophie’s stood out, as did Ky’s. Ky’s coat was a dark plum with a jagged hem and crane feathers accenting the waist. She’d stitched the wordHappinessacross the back of the coat and embroidered a crane just beneath it.
