R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

“What run-through?” My heart beat hard, like a captured butterfly — thrashing, confused. Where were all the glamorous people? The colors, the jewels — the outrageous outfits? All I saw was white walls.

“We’ll have to do about thirty check-ins,” he said, “then organize everything, then—”

“Check-ins?” I asked hollowly.

A door.

“Welcome to the fashion closet,” George said, flinging the door open before him.

“Oh.” My hand flew to my mouth.

The so-called closet was larger than my house in Texas, with shelves on one side and garment racks on the other — and almost everything inside as white as snow. Along the long wall to the right, floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with every kind of white shoe imaginable — white stiletto heels, white chunky heels, white kitten heels, white closed-toe flats, white open-toed flats, white ankle boots, white calf-length boots — all white like the shelves they were resting on, so that if you looked very quickly you might think the shelves were only filled with shadows. In front of the shelves were several white folding tables covered with accessories, grouped in an orderly manner by type: hats and handbags and scarves and belts, with gloves and jewelry laid out in velvet-lined trays.

On the opposite side were rows and rows of garment racks. Hanging from the outermost rack were a hundred white, long-sleeved dresses in every texture — chiffon, lace, silk, leather, wool, even snakeskin — arranged from the shortest to the longest and spaced at even intervals, silver hangers protruding from the vast whiteness like the mechanical parts of a giant machine I was now inside.

Through my astonishment I managed to ask, “Is this just where they keep all the white clothes?”

“No, you idiot,” George rolled his eyes. “Edmund is styling an all-white-themed fashion story. Obviously. Haven’t you ever been in a closet before?”

Gaping all around, I followed George to the left through a gap between the garment racks, which like a hole in a fence revealed a new space, much smaller than the one before. He stepped over a mountain of garment bags and shopping bags on the floor and said, “We sit back here.”

Shaped like an L along the interior of the corner was a long workstation: a slick white desk, two Mac computers with matching Régine desktop wallpaper, and two black leather office chairs on silver casters. A stiff black leather tote on the first office chair marked George’s work area; an adjacent unclaimed seat marked mine.

Beneath overhead cabinets, the wall that defined our workstation was covered by a canvas bulletin board. A dozen sheets of paper were pinned up with clear tacks, listing the addresses of every fashion showroom in New York City, alongside reminders such as:

Hats and headpieces must be returned in their original boxes.

Manolos must be returned by RUSH messenger.

Embellished shoes must be packed with tissue paper.

Givenchy must be returned in original packaging, including Givenchy-brand hangers and garment bags — NO generic.

“Hey,” said George. “We have a lot to do. Put your bag down and come on .”

I barely heard him. What I did hear was the muted whisper of office life: fingers trickling over keyboards, telephone calls clicked to voicemail.

I became suddenly aware that this was, after all, an office , and that offices were where adults went every day, and that now, since I was an adult, this was where I would go every day too. My head, always floating in some cloud or another, whooshed down to earth. I felt my feet connecting solidly with the floor, and I realized that twelve stories of steel and glass separated me from the pockmarked concrete face of Manhattan, and somewhere below that rumbled the earth’s core, churning fiery magnetic sludge like the rotating belly of a concrete pump and drawing everything toward it, including me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The clouds were far away now, and drifting farther, taking everyone with them: Edith Wharton, and Ms. Duncan, and my Yale friends, all waving down forlornly from an increasing distance, painted figures on a chapel ceiling that was being ripped up and away from me by a crane in the sky.

“ Hey! ” George urged once more, snapping his fingers in my face.

“Wake up,” George snapped. “Edmund will be here in two hours for the run-through.”

The mention of Edmund Benneton made me come to my senses. I was going to meet my idol! I looked around and took a deep breath through the heavy air, taking stock: I had my own desk, my own computer, my own chair. I worked at Régine now. This was my dream, right?

For the first time I noticed Sabrina’s workstation adjacent to our own, partially obscured by a cubicle wall. Sabrina wore another all-black outfit and was poised primly before her keyboard, her back erect against her chair.

“Hi, Sabrina,” I waved, having pledged my determination to erase the negative impressions of our first meeting.

She ignored me, her telephone handset squeezed between her ear and a black silk-covered shoulder as she typed an e-mail while speaking with pointed irritation into the mouthpiece. “Yes, I’ve been on hold for five minutes already, isn’t there anybody who can help me before I decompose? This is Régine . We’re calling to schedule a shipment to Paris, pick-up will be tomorrow evening, for overnight delivery by eight o’clock the next morning. No, Pacific time,” she scoffed. “Of course eight o’clock European time. Fifty trunks total, including hatboxes. How much is one-way? Two hundred dollars a trunk? Yes, I just told you, we have fifty trunks.” She rapped the butt of her pen against her desk like she was sending an urgent message in Morse code.

George interrupted my eavesdropping with a sharp, “Ethan!” He motioned to a monstrous heap of black garment bags and shopping bags by his feet, kicking the garment bag on top with the pointed toe of his oxford. “All of these bags need to be checked in. You unpack and I’ll photograph,” he said, holding up a small digital camera.

My wordless blink-blink served as enough of a tip-off.

“For God’s sake,” George rolled his eyes again. “We borrow pieces from the latest designer collections for every photoshoot,” he explained. “We need a record of every piece that enters this room, so we photograph each thing when it comes in, and when it goes out. Open that bag,” he commanded.

“Goes out? You’re sending this all back?” I pointed at the racks all around us, flanked by the wall of shoes.

“No,” he corrected. “Now that you’re here, we’ll send it all back.” He gestured impatiently for me to open the garment bag which was on top of the heap on the floor.

I unzipped and had barely exposed a sliver of the dress inside before George identified the contents: “Valentino.” He reached into the bottom of the garment bag and pulled out a clear plastic drawstring bag — the kind sold full of water and fish at pet stores — except, instead of somebody’s pet, there was a pair of glittering white stilettos swimming at the bottom.

I hadn’t seen anything so beautiful worn in real life by anyone, ever .

George arranged the white stilettos on the floor to photograph — one shoe standing upright, the other on its side, to capture the shape of the heel — while I lifted up the dress for a closer look: head-to-toe white floral lace, with a charmeuse lining and a crystal-embellished bodice.

“Is Edmund styling a celebrity?” I asked George, running my hand over the scalloped neckline.

“Oh, I don’t know, I must have missed that when Edmund and I had drinks at happy hour the other day,” he said. “Top fashion editors always sit down with their unpaid interns to discuss the confidential details of a cover story.” He snatched the Valentino dress out of my hands. “Grow up, and get moving.”