Chapter 6
Ever-cool Paula:
Shaggy black, sparkly, short-sleeved sweater dress
Knee-high, rubber-soled plum-coloured boots
Super-sized gold hoop earrings
Stacked gold, silver and semi-precious rings
Neon nails
‘One more size 6 Chanel-alike skirt suit is going to send me over the edge,’ Paula declared, dropping something candy-pink and nubbly with bright golden buttons onto a knee-high pile of scarily similar items.
‘I know, babes,’ Annie sympathised. ‘It’s like the 1980s has opened her wardrobe and vomited the contents into our laps.
Is this how long people hang onto old clothes for?
I mean the eighties! That is a long, long time ago now.
And they haven’t even sent us ra-ra skirts, they’ve sent us the kind of suits Melanie Griffiths wore in Working Girl.
Can anyone make any use of these? I mean, I know eighties fashion is having a moment, but that’s for the twenty-somethings and I don’t think we will have many of them shopping at our high-end luxury show. ’
‘I think we just keep searching through everything we’ve got,’ Paula said, although they had now been in this small warehouse unit for four hours and the piles of clothes on the tables marked ‘sale rail’ and ‘donate’ were looking a lot larger than the table marked ‘fashion show’.
And there weren’t too many bags left to go through.
‘All Svetlana’s things are still in her house,’ Annie reminded herself as well as Paula, because spirits were definitely starting to flag.
‘And everything that she is putting into the sale is amazing. I’ve personally weeded it from her wardrobe and it’s all fantastically good – and almost all post-2005 too.
’ As she said these words, Annie realised with astonishment that 2005 was twenty years ago now…
How could that have even happened?! How could something from 2005 now be ‘vintage’?
And how could Paula, who had once been her twenty-something assistant at The Store, now be a sophisticated woman of the world who ran her own events company?
When realisations like this struck, Annie felt about a hundred years old.
‘The fact is,’ Paula began, ‘we could do with many more quality items, Annie, the really good stuff – properly headline items. There is hardly anything in the whole show so far that is going to attract attention, chat, tweets, buzz! We need some fashion buzz.’
‘There is still time,’ Annie assured her – sounding more confident than she perhaps should – ‘c’mon, sit down for a moment, let me have a rummage through my bags and see what I can find to revive us.’
‘It’s a bit late in the day for coffee,’ Paula told her.
‘I was thinking we might need something a bit stronger than coffee, babes. And… here we are…’ Annie had had an inkling that this evening in the clothes warehouse with her old friend might get stressy, so from the depths of her tote bag, she pulled out the two cans of fizzy wine she’d packed earlier. ‘Still chilled,’ she told her friend.
‘Do you usually go around with cans of wine in your bag?’ Paula asked, looking a little concerned.
‘No! Not usually, so no need to worry about me. But I thought we might appreciate a little reward.’
Cans in hand, they both pulled up a chair in the midst of the explosion of clothes and bags and sat down for a drink and a break.
Paula, several inches over six foot tall, long black braided hair, legs that looked as if they could pole vault, dewy walnut skin, made quite the contrast to her friend, Annie – who was creamy pale, unless wearing fake tan, plumper than she wanted to be, bright blonde, and twelve years older, but nevertheless they had been friends for years and years, ever since Paula had joined Annie at The Store’s personal shopping suite as a trainee.
Neither of them worked there now, Annie had her TV career and Paula was an event organiser.
As soon as Annie had realised how serious Svetlana was about this fashion show, she’d hurried to get Paula involved.
The girl knew everything there was to know about fashion and she now ran seriously cool events all over London.
This turned out to have been a good decision.
Over the years, Paula had morphed from the fun-loving, fashion-obsessed youngster she was at The Store into a slick, highly organised, totally sussed operator.
She had already come up with all kinds of clever ideas and solutions that Annie and Svetlana could never have, plus, she had contacts.
‘So what else is going on in your life?’ Paula asked Annie as she cracked open the can and took a sip from the top. ‘Mmmm, not too bad, even if I am a champagne girl myself.’
‘Of course you are!’ Annie laughed as she opened her own can. ‘So… there’s the TV stuff, just finished shooting the new series.’
‘Nice,’ was Paula’s comment, ‘looking forward to watching that.’
‘There’s a lot of Paris featured,’ Annie said. ‘You’ll love it. Then there’s this fashion show, obviously. This is going to use up all my attention for the next…’
Annie didn’t even want to think about how few days were left between here and showtime.
‘The clock is ticking,’ Paula said. ‘We need more fab-u-lous clothes for this fashion party.’
Annie took a breath and another mouthful of wine. ‘We can do this, babes. We’ve pulled off all kinds of minor miracles under much tighter deadlines.’
‘Yeah, keep telling yourself that… and how are all the children?’ was Paula’s next question.
‘You don’t want to hear about the children,’ Annie protested. ‘You’re still a carefree young woman about town, you don’t want me banging on about how Max doesn’t like nursery and Owen is about to head off to uni in Scotland.’
‘Uni!! Owen?!’ Paula sounded horrified. ‘But he was just this little guy when you were at The Store. It can’t be that long—’
‘Yes, it is. Owen is eighteen and off to Glasgow, God help us… can I trust him to turn off a hob, Paula? Or have a regular shower, not lose his phone, keep up with his athlete’s foot treatment?’
Paula pulled a face at the last one.
‘He’ll work it out,’ Annie decided. ‘He’ll have to. But it’s a worry. To add to all my other worries.’
What would life be like when all the children had left home, she wondered. And what was she going to do when the fashion show was over? What was the next big move going to be for her?
Paula interrupted her thoughts with the question, ‘Why don’t we look through those boxes over there? Those ones haven’t been touched yet.’
She pointed to four big cardboard cartons. ‘You never know,’ she added hopefully. ‘Could be a long-lost cache of Pucci dresses… or a bundle of Missoni knitwear… what about you, what would you love to find in here?’
Annie’s hand hovered over the tape. ‘Handbags,’ she began. ‘Really beautiful, class handbags, Mulberry, a touch of Chanel, or Loewe even… imagine finding a few vintage Loewe bags in here.’
‘Oh yes, that would be very nice… and what clothes would you like to find?’
‘Prada,’ Annie decided. ‘You just can’t go wrong with some gorgeous vintage Prada, or Dolce, Paula!’ she experienced a wave of déjà vu. ‘We always got so excited when the new Dolce deliveries arrived at The Store.’
‘Oh, we did!’ Paula agreed. ‘Come on, let’s cross our fingers, open up and see what we can find.’
‘I’ve downgraded from Dolce,’ Annie complained, gesturing to the pretty, but very much high street dress she was wearing this evening. ‘Mrs blooming M&S, that’s who I am. You’re the only person that I will admit my M&S habit to. The fact is, they have some nice things when you know how to look.’
Paula rolled her eyes and hissed something that sounded a little like ‘never!’, then she set her amazing orange nails to work ripping along the tape and with two final pops, she pulled back the cardboard flaps.
‘Oooh,’ was her first reaction, ‘this could be interesting.’ Putting her hands into the box, she carefully lifted out a bundle of silky chiffon in the lighter shade of pale that made it obviously a wedding dress.
‘It looks like a whole box of them…’ she said, burrowing down.
‘Wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, maybe even wedding guest dresses.’
‘We could end with a bride… like at all the big fashion shows.’
‘Annie, with this collection of dresses, we could have the whole blooming ceremony.’
‘But are any of them any good, Paula? Is there anything worth showing here? Or is it all sale rail or donate.’
‘Let’s keep looking… see what we find,’ Paul said, bringing out dresses two at a time for Annie to smooth out over the table and examine.
‘I take it you know who the “mystery” compère is by now,’ Paula asked, as she brought out the next armful of tulle.
‘No. I think I’ve missed the update on that one. Do you know?’ Annie asked.
Paula nodded.
‘And why do I get the feeling that you’re not very happy?’ was Annie’s next question. At this, Paula raised her eyebrows and gave Annie a look. ‘Uh-oh… who is it?’
‘The cheesy star of daytime ITV… the one and only super-tanned and oddly Botoxed Vince Hastie,’ Paula said, and now it was Annie’s turn to raise her eyebrows and give a look of horror.
‘Oh no, not him!’ Annie declared. ‘But he’s not right for a fashion show. He’s not stylish, not at all classy.’
‘Good friend of Svetlana’s apparently,’ Paula added. ‘Well, passing acquaintance who offered to do it for free, more like.’
‘And doesn’t he sometimes make bad taste jokes, really bad ones? And have rumours that he’s a bit too “hands on” not been swirling about him?’
‘Hmmm mmmm.’ Paula nodded vigorously.
‘Oh. My. Lord. So, now what?’ Annie said struggling to get her words out.
Paula shrugged. ‘Try talking to Svetlana?’ she suggested.
Not enough models… not enough ‘showstopper’ clothes… and now Vince Hastie… Fashion VIPs were coming to this event. Her name was emblazoned on the invitation. She could feel herself cringing inwardly. She had to get this event back on track or she would never get any work in fashion ever again.