6. Chapter Six #3
“Buckling down,” I muttered as I set to work making a pattern.
Another skill I’d learned from my grandmother.
Was it time consuming? Fuck yes. Glancing up I saw perhaps half of the designers were not cutting patterns.
Which was fine. Many sewers didn’t but for me, with a design this detailed, I wouldn’t even try to free cut.
When I looked at the large clock on the wall over the doorway two hours had disappeared.
Shit. My sight darted to dress forms that already had bodice’s pinned into place.
Fuck. Being behind was not great. Not great at all.
Going home on the first assignment would suck.
“Hey mate, no worries.” Mickey said as he strolled past my table to head to the bathroom. “It’s all good. Just different ways is all.”
“Yep,” I replied with forced good cheer.
Now that I had my pattern I could get busy pinning, cutting, and sewing.
One good thing was I was fast sewer. So the time lost on patterns would be made up – I prayed – while assembling the garment.
Cameramen moved around the workroom on silent feet as did the sound techs.
There was no privacy at all in here so we all seemed to be keeping our heads down and our thoughts to ourselves.
Besides we hardly knew each other so it was the awkward polite distance that settles on a roomful of strangers.
The longer we were here, locked down, stressed out, and churning out designs on the daily tempers and emotions would flare.
And the cameras would be there to record every juicy detail.
We worked hard that afternoon. Chitchat was at a minimum other than shop talk or asking for thoughts.
It seemed most were being honest at this stage.
Would anything change as the show went on?
For sure. As designers were sent home those remaining would start to get more nervous, more worried, and would stop being so buddy-buddy as the backstabbing broke out.
A full scholarship and a million Euros would bring out the worse in people.
Someone called out for attention. I laid down my shears, straightened up, and then winced at the popping in my vertebrae. I’d been cutting panels for hours bent over like a hag cooking little kids in her pot. Camilo’s voice rang out in the quiet classroom.
“We’ll be setting up for Claude’s first round of academic critiques,” the talent wrangler called out.
Everyone shifted into a higher gear. Cameramen, sound techs, lighting crews.
Everything cranked up. A shiver ran down my stiff back.
I had so much left to do. I’d not sat down behind a sewing machine yet.
The pressure was on already. I ran my fingers through my hair, rolled my neck, and prepared for Claude Barrons to come in and eviscerate me.
When he entered, he gave the room a long look before placing Monsieur Pamplemousse on the floor. The dog trotted around sniffing the bits of fabric lying on the floor. My sight flew to the clock. Six precisely.
“Hello designers,” he said in a cool but pleasant way. “I see some progress on your designs. That is good. Let’s see what we have shall we?”
He made his way to Dante’s table. We all pretended we were working, and we were, mostly sort-of but not truly since we all wanted to hear the comments Claude would give to our competition. Dante looked spooked already.
Claude stepped up to Dante’s dress form, canted his head left and then right, and then reached up to cradle his whiskery chin.
“Tell me what you’re envisioning here,” Claude said. I fiddled with my pinned pattern pieces as I hung onto every word.
“I thought the bronze color of the chiffon would replicate the rye buns we saw this morning,” Dante squeaked out. I threw a questioning look at Mickey who, like the rest of us, was basically fucking off with buttons while Dante was being grilled.
“Hmmm,” Claude hummed, stroking his chin. “And the tiny bits of dried…is it mushrooms that you have glued to the bodice. Are they to represent the seeds atop the bun?”
“Yes. Very much.” Dante’s accent was thicker now that he was getting nervous I noticed. “I am planning to make a head dress with small brown puffs of chiffon that the model will—”
“Stop.” Claude sighed. Dante bit down on his lower lip. “Please tell me you are not planning to send a model down the runway with Princess Leia buns on her head.”
“I…no. No…I…no…not exactly…” Dante stammered.
Oh man he so totally was going to do that. Poor Dante.
“No, just no.” Claude rubbed his left temple.
“I am not sure why you would entertain such an idea when we are asking for your inspirational ideas transformed from your mind to the fabrics. If we wished to have George Lucas’s ideas on here we would have invited him to partake in our show.
Designers.” He spun from a crestfallen Dante to address the room.
We all were already glued to what he was saying so getting our attention was pretty easy.
“The judges want to see you in your creations, not someone else. Looking at this,” he motioned to Dante’s design.
“I feel the urge to leap from the window. What we want are original styles with sophistication of cut and form not an homage to a space heroine. Do better.” His sight landed on me.
Fuck.
Over he came leaving Dante to start ripping at his bun headdress like a madman. “And what are you giving us, Kinder from America?”
Cameras closed in on us from four different angles. Yay. My humiliation would be seen by the whole world.
“What I’m doing is—”
“Very little.” He picked up a skirt panel pattern cutout with some gold duchess satin pinned to it. “You took time to make a pattern.”
“I did. It’s how I was taught to sew.”
Those mesmerizing hazel eyes lifted from the skirt panel to my face. “Who was your professor?”
“I’m self-taught,” I reminded him. He nodded, just once, then laid the panel back on my table. “My grandmother sewed and she taught me the basics.”
Pamplemousse arrived and began to sniff at my pant leg.
“I see. There is nothing wrong with cutting a pattern to follow. What I do find wrong is it taking you several hours to do so. Do you feel you will have time to complete your design. I see quite a bit of lamé. It is notoriously hard to sew.”
“I know. I’ll have time.”
He looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t read well. Maybe doubt. Maybe admiration. Maybe he thought I was a dumbass. Probably the latter but I hoped it was the second.
“We shall see. Do not send an unfinished creation down the runway. Not only will the judges grade you harshly I will lose respect for you as a designer if I see unrefined edges or missing structural elements.”
Ouch. Fuck. Damn. “You won’t lose respect for me, Claude.”
Those beautiful, wary eyes locked with mine.
“I hope not.” He bent to pluck his pooch up then tuck him into his bag before his sights narrowed in on Rafael and his half-completed gown.
I shot Mickey a look of agony then gathered my material and ran to the sewing rooms down the hall.
I’d catch up on the hot goss over dinner.