“Madame Jolène had my gown commissioned for a client.” I played with the edge of my measuring tape. “I didn’t even know until I saw it just now.”
“How did it look?”
“It looked...” I thought for a moment. It was beautiful. But there were things—subtle things—that had been changed. The skirt was fuller, as was Madame Jolène’s signature. The bustline was higher to provide more coverage, and the gold pattern in the jacquard was softened, the drama mediated by smaller swirls. Even though the dress was mine, Madame Jolène had commercialized it.
“It looked different. Too different. I’ve been dreaming about creating that sketch, and now it’s done.”
Sophie listened, running her hands through her black hair and wrapping the ends around her fingers.
“I see,” she said. A glint, like a white flame, lit up her eyes. “We are similar, you and I. We have to do things our way.”
My hands, which had been fussing with my silk and measuring tape, stilled. Similar? Sophie and I? Hardly. Aside from her also being a contestant, I didn’t think we could be more opposite.
“Not really,” I said. “You’re at the top of the competition. Everyone already knows it. I’ll be fortunate if I get to do a few designs before I get sent home.”
“That’s hardly the future I want,” Sophie said. “I don’t like designing for someone else.”
“What do you mean?” I stared at her, perplexed. “You’d give up designing if you have to do it under Madame Jolène’s label?”
“I’d never give up designing. I might as well try not to breathe,” Sophie said. She pulled her legs back up onto the windowsill, wrapped her hands around them, and then rested her chin on the tops of her kneecaps so she seemed to only be face, arms, and legs.
“Then what else would you do?”
“I don’t know.” She gave a small sigh, stretched out her legs, and picked up her magazine once again. I sat back on my heels, staring at her. I’d always thought that I was the only one who felt held back at the Fashion House. I’d never thought anyone else—especially Sophie—might feel the same way.
I picked up a straight pin, but instead of slipping it into my silk, I played with it, pressing my finger lightly against its sharptip. Enough for its sting to register, but not enough to break the skin. The calluses from home—from scrubbing floors, weeding, lugging casks of beer—were disappearing, leaving my fingers sensitive and soft.
For a moment, I let myself think about home. My mother still hadn’t written me, even after I’d sent the money home. It could only mean one thing: she was mad at me. The thought followed me everywhere I went. It was a shadow I couldn’t shake, darkening everything with its presence.
I wondered what she was doing now. She probably was sitting at the kitchen table, poring over the ledger. She recorded everything in there: the sales, whether they were for a dinner for five or a single pint; the payments due to the beer vendors and the bank; the dates our keg shipments would arrive. Everything went into that book, and she spent hours analyzing the numbers, seeing where she could cut, where she could spend, when she could schedule things. Above all, she was a shrewd businesswoman.
I stopped still. A businesswoman. No one had ever shown her how, just like no one had ever shown me how to design. She had figured it out, bit by bit, and with no money or support from anyone else.
A realization flashed in my mind like a zigzag of lighting, nearly making me drive the pin into my skin. I let it drop to the floor.
My mother, against the odds, had opened the Moon on the Square—and even though it was hard work, she ran it the way she pleased.
Perhaps, just perhaps, I could do the same thing. Only not with a pub.
With a fashion house.
I saw it: a beautiful showroom lined with gowns in shades of purple, green, and gray. It would be my domain, where I could design whatever I desired and be judged on my work alone, not on where I came from. I wouldn’t have to fight for respect in a place that didn’t want me or even saw me as a future designer. I wouldn’t have to worry about limited competition time or sabotage or having to make a wedding gown from a silk I would never have picked.
Yet... why hadn’t anyone done it before? The vision couldn’t appeal to me and me alone. In Britannia Secunda, where good fashion sense was akin to nationality, there had to be droves of other girls who wanted the same thing. But, as far as I knew, there had never been two fashion houses at one time.
“It’s too bad there is only one Fashion House,” I said, trying to sound glib. “Have people tried to start others?”
“Yes.” Sophie didn’t look up from her magazine, but I waited, hoping she wouldn’t fall into one of her strange silences again. “But Madame Jolène has the Crown’s favor. And while the Crown isn’t as powerful as it was before, it still wields lots of influence. A few fashion houses tried to spring up in the past several years, but they can never get financing from any of the banks, and theAvon-upon-Kynt Timesnever reports on any of their designs.”
“So, Madame Jolène will always control fashion in Avon-upon-Kynt?”
“Probably.” Sophie was still focused on her magazine, but she hadn’t flipped a page for a while, and her gaze didn’t move. She’d stopped reading some time ago. “Though I must say, I don’t think she’s as untouchable as it seems. If someone wore something new, or if a collection started without funding from the bank, it could gain enough traction to evade Madame Jolène’s reach.”
“You really think it would be that easy?” I asked, my mind whirling faster than ever before with thoughts, dangerous thoughts.
“A lot of Madame Jolène’s power comes from the impression that she has it,” Sophie said, unaware of my internal frenzy. “As it is now, though, the Fashion House is the only way to design.” She shut the magazine cover, but she didn’t pick up another one. She remained languidly lounging in the window seat. Though her body was loose and relaxed, she frowned, a line of focused attention rising between her brows. Abruptly, she looked at me. “Why?”
“No reason,” I said quickly. What on earth was I thinking? I rubbed my aching forehead, the weight of the day descending on me. I was tired. Too tired. My anger made the idea of starting my own fashion house seem viable. But that’s all it was. An angry, exhausted fantasy. Even if it was possible, I didn’t have the means or knowledge necessary. I was new to the city, new to fashion.
