Zara
Fashion designing for top European fashion brands and working between Milan, Rome, Paris, and New York has its perks, but it’s exhausting as hell.
I travel the world, work with our fashion labels, and I’m one of the brands’ creative directors.
I am not only designing key clothing for two of the fashion labels, but I get to choose where the brands go in the future and how edgy we will push things.
How mainstream the brands will feel, finding that complex balance between edgy and wearable.
That window is key to sales, along with remaining on the covers. The covers of global fashion magazines.
I love my job, and I feel like I’m on fire. I have flow. I’m content. But I’m exhausted, and often. In saying that, I’m at the top of my game, and I’m still only twenty-four.
I’m a long way from where I started in South Carolina, but I adore Milan and my stunning office.
It is classy, light, and warm. It even has a balcony overlooking a piazza with a fountain and a park. Gorgeous restaurants are all around, and so are gorgeous men. Art galleries are peppered about, with marble statues and Roman columns. Fresh pastries and coffees are even made downstairs in a café.
My loaded schedule, and distance from my old NYC design friends means I’ve lost touch with many. I’m not phased, because I’m bit of a lone wolf, and my work is my life.
The other thing is, I’m not really into European guys.
Sure, they’re classy, sure, they’re suave. They are cultivated, and most dress amazingly, too.
A few hot Italian and French guys had also done numbers on my heart.
They were good at kissing, and their poetic words were tonics for my exhausted, hard-working soul.
They were, however, likely too smooth for me. Too polished, and some felt unreal.
A couple had even told me that I was perfect. I’d naturally kicked off my panties and fast, thinking it was real. That we were real. Only later, they became ghosts and vanished.
I became sick of smooth-talking Euro types, and I needed a man.
A real man!
I suspect another complication is that I am so successful, it sadly intimidates many guys.
Many of the men I’d dated were not as macho or rugged, either. They were not the strong alpha types, like in the States back in the day. And when I say that I mean once a year in NYC.
Don’t ask.
Before that, when I was around nineteen, a dickhead boyfriend aged twenty didn’t appear to know what to do with my body.
Me, sex, and guys were basically this: Awkward. I’ve never found someone who can match me. For energy, for sex, and for conversation. Anyway, I had my work, and that was all I needed. I have also found the most amazing vibrator in the world.
So, problem solved.
In saying that, I’ve not had sex for twelve months, and my heart pines for a guy. But not just any guy. A real man. A man who could –
Please me.
Take me.
Claim me.
Mark me.
And call me –
His.
“Come on, Yankee, we’re waiting,” my boss, Ella, yells with a smile. I slide my iPad and diary into my satchel. I then grab our coming Spring collection images in their chic white leather folder.
They are photos of the mock-up designs I am planning, and I’ve not shown anyone. Not a soul in the world.
I do a three-sixty of my classy white office as sun streams in. Coffee from the balcony wafts through. I adore the place. I run past white billowing curtains, and I know my team have my back. I know they will lock up at the end of the day.
As I run down the marble steps in my heels, they make a fast, loud, clattering sound.
Thank God I’m wearing a short leather skirt, and I’m not overly dressed in this terrible heat.
Because I run fashion design teams daily, I keep my own clothing simple, and neutral. I also favor black, and chic garments. I am not my art, and I do not like distracting myself.
“Hurry up, America!” someone calls as I drop down the last marble steps.
“Here we come, ze South of France,” my boss yells excitedly from her car.
I leap into the side of the white Mercedes as our doorman smiles and our wheels squeal. My PA waves, and I slump in the back next to our VP.
In the front, Ella pulls on her glasses, and her driver cuts through the Milan traffic. We are going to the world’s biggest movie festival and market. It will be a whirlwind of red-carpet events, of movie premieres, and of parties.
Parties on the water in Cannes, the South of France or what some call the French Riviera. Even if I don’t have time, I’m excited. It may also force me to relax.
“You will love et! Love et, my darling!” Ella says, beaming as always.
The woman beside me pops champagne, and she carefully pours it into classy plastic cups designed for travel and to prevent chipped teeth.
“And ze men! Ze men are ze best in the world.”
I shake my head as we cut through the crazy traffic. Taking a champagne cup, I hold it up, and I drink like the girls I’m with. Then I lie back and close my eyes.
The warm Italian wind blows my blonde hair, and the sun today is not too intense.
I need time to catch up on my schedule, like always, and men can go F themselves. They are nothing but trouble.
Wicked, wicked trouble.