Chapter 8 #3
“This is a whole new market for us,” Pam said, excited. “How did you come up with it?” She wondered if Eugenia had been seeking advice from consultants. The new line didn’t sound like her at all and it was hard to imagine her doing it, or even coming up with the concept.
“Sofia wore one of her crazy outfits. Distressed denim overalls, with a pink tulle skirt and sequin heart appliques. After Eloise stopped complaining about it, she got inspired, and the next thing I knew she handed me a folder full of sketches, and I knew it was the right way to go.” It was one of the things Pam loved about Eugenia, how open she was to new ideas, always reaching and stretching.
The new high-end daywear line was the evidence of it, and it was beautiful.
But this was a leap of faith off the high diving board, and a real tour de force, with a great chance to be a commercial success.
It was a brilliant idea and just what they needed to expand.
“Where are we going to sell it? Department stores?” It was better suited to that market, but they needed orders to do it for next season, and Eugenia wanted to move a lot faster than that to test the market.
“Eventually, but that would be for next spring. We can take orders at the Seventh Avenue showroom and do some kind of presentation during Fashion Week if I can get the pieces made fast enough. I want to get it out there quickly. I’m thinking of a pop-up, maybe in SoHo, or maybe we just turn the Madison Avenue store around for a couple of weeks, and see how we do uptown.
Or we could do both. We don’t have anything new in the store right now anyway.
” They had made one sale on Madison in the last month, which was disastrous, and she had practically given a gown away on sale to a good customer.
“This is going to be so new and fresh,” Pam said.
She had a teenager’s body herself and looked young for her age, and she and her daughter often traded clothes when she wasn’t working.
She could easily see herself and Izzie in matching outfits from what Eugenia was describing.
Pam was gutsy enough to wear it, even at forty-four. She loved variety and fun clothes.
“I’m calling the factory this morning, and I want to look at fabrics this afternoon.
No high-priced denim, maybe we put together some one-of-a-kind combined vintage pieces, but mostly I want to make items we can mass-produce in bulk, so we make some real profit with it.
Do you want to help me pick fabrics this afternoon?
” she asked her, and Pam jumped at it, but she had no one to leave her daughter with.
Izzie was off for another two weeks, until she started school.
“Can I bring Izzie?” Eugenia thought about it, and then realized it was a great idea.
“Definitely, she can be our market advisor. That’s perfect.”
“I warn you everything she picks will be pink or purple.”
“That’s exactly what we want, and a lot of sparkle, ruffles, and bows. Girly. Nearly kitsch, but not quite. We can catch the wave on that, there’s a big market out there we’ve never explored.”
Pam smiled. “I don’t think your couture clients are ready for that.”
“My couture clients are hibernating, but don’t kid yourself, they’re buying mass market items online. I want their daughters and granddaughters now, and Izzie can point us in the right direction on that.”
“And Sofia. It sounds like she is the inspiration for the whole line.”
“Exactly.” They made a date to meet after lunch at a huge wholesale fabric market at the lower end of the garment district. Eugenia had never been there but she knew where it was. Eventually they could buy in volume, but she wanted to see what their bestsellers were first.
They met that afternoon and Pam’s daughter was the poster child for who Eugenia wanted their youngest clients to be, with a little more sophistication for customers in their twenties.
It was a hot day in New York and Izzie had on pink denim shorts and a crop top with sparkly hearts on it.
She had on the latest trendy sneakers, which looked used and cost eight hundred dollars, which Eugenia thought sinful for a child her age but Pam said she had to have them to keep up with her friends.
Izzie was carrying a sparkly heart-shaped purse and had braces on her teeth, and long straight blond hair like her mother’s.
Pam was wearing white shorts and a pink T-shirt with a silver heart, pink Manolo flats, and a white Chanel bag she’d bought secondhand.
It was a modified youthful look suitable for her age.
“Okay, Izzie, tell us what you love,” Eugenia told her.
They looked at bolts and bolts of fabric, at least half of it pink, some lavender, pale blue, a little white, lots of metallics, fabrics with silver threads, a great red.
Every fabric they picked popped, and Izzie had a great eye for color and for what her peers would love.
Eugenia was fascinated by some of her choices, and trusted her advice.
They picked some great patterns and stripes.
They bought the fabric on the spot, got a good deal on it, and took it to the store in three cabs, with Izzie in one.
She was having a ball. They put it all in the haute couture fitting rooms, which were big enough to use as temporary stockrooms. Their patternmaker was coming in the next day, delighted to have work again.
The designs were going to be simple at first, with variations on the theme.
This collection wasn’t about chic, it was about young and fun, and Eugenia wanted the fit to be right.
She wanted to play with some of the fabrics and see how they draped and held up.
They had work to do, and the factory had promised that if she got the fabric and the patterns to them by the end of the week, they could produce a modest first run very quickly.
Eugenia was moving fast with Pam’s help.
Pam was used to multitasking, and following her boss at full speed.
It had been a very productive day, and Eugenia thanked Izzie for her help, and asked Pam to get her a pair of her most coveted trendy sneakers to thank her.
Izzie was thrilled and said she knew just the ones she wanted.
“What are we doing about a pop-up?” Pam asked her before she left, and Eugenia looked pensive.
“I have a crazy idea. I want to empty the store and fill it with the Cotton Candy line for a couple of weeks.” Pam wasn’t sure about the store, but they weren’t selling any gowns at the moment. As long as it was temporary, she approved.
Eugenia had another idea too. The next day, she searched the internet and found a company in the Bronx that rented carnival and vending machines.
They had a great vintage-looking cotton candy machine and she rented it and hired the operator to go with it, to make cotton candy and hand it out on Madison Avenue for two weeks.
She assigned Pam to get the permit, which the vendor said was easy.
It was all falling into place. The fabric hadn’t been expensive, and the factory was giving her a good deal, as they wanted her business if she went into mass production with it.
The factory owner was desperate, and people were grateful now to have a job and get work.
By the time Patrick picked Eugenia up at her apartment for dinner, she had been working on the project for two days, and the patternmaker and an assistant were busy in her couture atelier. Austin Wylie had emailed her the contract and she’d sent it to her attorney to check.
She told Patrick all about it, as she poured him a glass of wine and he admired the view from her apartment.
It was modern and airy, the décor mostly white with colorful contemporary art.
She had some of the same artists he did on the boat, although his collection was more impressive, but he liked what she had too.
He sat down with a smile, admiring her. She was wearing a pink silk summer dress and high heels.
He had come from the office, and wore a light beige cotton summer suit with a blue shirt.
He had showered at the office, and was freshly shaved for their date.
She loved his looks with his thick salt-and-pepper hair.
“You didn’t waste any time,” he said, impressed by what she told him. The Cotton Candy project, and the influx of money from Austin Wylie, which gave her some security, had energized her.
“It’s a long way from what I usually do, but I’m loving it. My assistant’s fourteen-year-old daughter was my market consultant on the fabrics. If you’d told me two years ago I’d be designing for fourteen-year-olds, I’d have laughed at you.”
“You may wind up with an even bigger success than you had before. Volume is a big deal with the internet now. Fashion was a huge moneymaker before the pandemic, and it will be again.”
“We’ll see where it goes,” she said, open to anything, which she hadn’t been before. She’d had very definite ideas about how far she would go and what real fashion was, not unlike Eloise, but not quite as rigid. “How were your meetings?” she asked him.
“Encouraging,” he said. “It’s interesting how people react when you hit a rough spot.
There used to be people calling day and night, begging to talk to me.
The minute they smell trouble, they run like hell, and it’s surprising who won’t take your calls.
I’m getting used to it, but it startled me.
It’s shortsighted of them. The tables turn fast in business, especially at this level.
I found it humiliating at first. Now, after a year, I don’t care.
The minute it hit Page Six that I had seventeen empty buildings, the dogcatcher didn’t want to know me, but now the brave ones are coming back, and they figure I may have some winning cards up my sleeve.
I hope they’re right.” Eugenia was touched by how open Patrick was about his fall from grace and how painful it had been.
She had experienced the same thing in the world of fashion.
People weren’t as nice to her or as respectful as they had been before, and it hurt her feelings too.
Like him, she had gotten used to it, but she noticed, and she would remember.
She had just decided not to show at the next haute couture show in Paris in January, to skip a season and show again in July, to give the haute couture market time to recover.
She thought it would be the last to come back to normal, and didn’t want to show to an empty hall, which would be expensive and embarrassing.
With her Eugenia Ward brand, she was going to focus on high-end ready-to-wear for the next year, and Cotton Candy at the low end, if it looked promising. She was about to find out.
He took her to Elio’s on Second Avenue, which was doing a booming business with a sidewalk terrace.
It wasn’t romantic, but it was fun and noisy and crowded, and they both loved it.
The food was good and it was easy, and they walked back slowly to her apartment, which was a long enough walk for them to continue their conversation.
He had a town house on Seventieth Street, not far from her.
As they approached her building, he stopped and kissed her and asked the question he had wanted to ask her all night, and hoped it wasn’t too soon.
He wanted to spend time with her, and they were both busy in the city, and worked late.
He never left his office early, in good times or bad.
Particularly now that he was networking to find buyers for some of his buildings.
“I’d love you to come to the boat this weekend,” he said cautiously. “Maybe it’s too soon to ask, and you can have one of the guest staterooms if you like. It’s the only place I really disconnect from real life and all the problems, and you seem to love it as much as I do.”
“Who wouldn’t?” she said with a smile, thinking about the invitation.
The offer of the guest stateroom didn’t make it seem shocking or premature.
By normal standards, it was early in the relationship to go away with him for a weekend, but she loved the idea too, and he wasn’t forcing her to sleep with him.
He wanted to share his world with her, and he had been a perfect gentleman with her so far, and nothing but kind on the day she’d spent on the boat with him.
“I’d love it,” she responded to his invitation, and he kissed her again.
“I promise to behave myself,” he said earnestly, and she believed him.
She had no reason not to, and it sounded like a fabulous weekend.
She could hardly wait, and again she had no intention of telling her kids.
Her private adult life was her business and not theirs.
She had met the first man she’d been attracted to and really liked in a long time, and he seemed to like her.
Where it would go no one could predict. They were both struggling with overwhelmingly complicated business situations and had almost lost everything they’d built.
It was a common bond between them, and he was helping her with good advice and she was grateful for it.
They were working twice as hard now to salvage what they could.
And at their ages, she didn’t feel she owed her children any explanations.
She walked into her apartment thinking about him.
Having met Patrick seemed like a gift, and spending the weekend on his yacht, nothing short of a miracle.
Maybe the tides were finally turning. She enjoyed his company more than she’d expected to.
She trusted him, and was willing to take a risk.