R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

“I appreciate your romanticism. I mean, who doesn’t like ‘culture’?” he continued. “But what you’re suggesting is beyond the scope of government. You’re talking about a total upheaval of social norms — a whole cultural shift which would devalue quantifiable measures like national income over abstract ideals like—‘happiness.’” At this last word, his face expressed a similar displeasure to that of Madeline’s over the crass-sounding “microwave.”

Yet Madeline, excited to hear her own radical views translated through another person’s voice, failed to grasp that Grant wasn’t advocating for her worldview, but aggressively disputing it. “That’s exactly what I’m saying!” she said, with an eager nod.

A lock of his blond hair swept into his eyes. “ Well — that wouldn’t make any sense,” came his conclusive reply. “Think of Brook Farm, or Octagon City. All attempts at Utopia have failed — you can’t make happiness a law.”

Madeline could only offer a stupefied cock of her head as the actuality of Grant’s position settled in her eyes like mercury in a thermometer.

The faces turned to her.

“Who said anything about laws?” she practically whimpered, too distressed to continue in an even tone. “If people just, I don’t know, picked some flowers, or watched a sunset every once in a while”—here there was a collective raising of eyebrows—“you wouldn’t have all these miserable people, putting in endless hours at these discouraging jobs all because they think somehow the solution to their unhappiness is more money, when of course it’s not. It’s just — obvious to me.”

Attention turned back to Grant, while Professor Pemberton hovered behind him, loathe to interject.

“But people can’t be counted on to do anything themselves, even if it’s for their own good,” Grant said. “To force them, you need laws. And if not laws, then what? You would kindly encourage people to pick flowers every day? Suggest they ‘look up’ more at the sky?”

“Well, sure, and drink more wine and take more trips and have more great romances! Healthy, life-affirming things! It can’t be more difficult than funding all these futile government programs, or spending years trying to pass a bill that will only add an extra dollar to people’s paychecks. How can you not see my point, that the root of every problem is this system we’re all stuck in, this crass worldview, that all that matters is people’s credit score? People die everywhere without ever experiencing the breadth of human emotion, because nobody considers there’s another way.”

Grant now manifested his own handsome version of flabbergastedness. “But. what about our capitalist infrastructure?”

“Infra. structure?” Madeline was scarcely able to push out the syllables. “ How about human worth and meaning? That’s what government should be trying to raise. If not to be alive, then people are living for the sake of what exactly? Some imaginary bottom line?” She was on the verge of sputtering deflation, pricked by the disheartening realization that anyone could be so staunchly opposed to the ideas she held as truth. “It’s the infrastructure that needs to be knocked out! It’s like this concrete building that’s getting bigger and bigger — it’s blocking out the sun, so the government just keeps shuffling people around, from one room to the other, but of course that can’t solve anything. The problem is the whole building .”

She was so vulnerable — hands flailing, cheeks flush with the heat of philosophical passion — that, before I could help myself, it was my own hand flying in the air, and the words came spilling out. “She’s right, you know.”

The spectators snapped in the unexpected direction of my seat. I hadn’t spoken much in class before, still accustoming myself to the expressive intellectual atmosphere of college; it was all so unlike my listless hometown that I spent most of my time just listening to everyone else.

“It’s not like she’s making this up,” I said now. “There’s loads of precedent for these ideas — think of everybody from Plato to Kant, and nearly every Renaissance poet — they all held beauty up to the highest order of truth. Every great thinker has agreed — human life is nothing without the aesthetic experience. Arts, culture. they’re not frivolous at all if without them there’s no meaning. And if realizing the aesthetic potential of human life is a basic need, and a government has a responsibility to meet the basic needs of its people, then culture should be at the heart of governmental policy. Beauty—”

My voice cracked. Madeline was finally looking straight at me, her eyes shining out of the blur of other faces. Before I had even planned the words, I heard myself share my own conviction aloud: “Beauty moves the whole world.”

Professor Pemberton tapped his flat hands on the round table. “Very good, everyone. I think we all know now which two among us will be starting a revolution,” he smiled. “But alas, Ethan and Madeline, I’m afraid to inform you — the Romantics have already beaten you to the punch, and you’re almost two centuries late to join them.”

A light ripple of laughter diffused the tension, which rose upward through the air to the crown molding. The professor took the opportunity to herd us back inside the perimeter of our selected texts, and for the rest of the class, I finally had no doubt that Madeline was looking at me. A few times, I had the courage to look up; I tried to be quick, to catch her gaze, but she was always quicker, and the moment my eyes reached hers they were met with a rustling of golden hair and a sudden devotion to the chalkboard, as if her life depended on the memorization of what was there.

After class: the rattling of pens and notebooks into bags. Madeline took an especially long time packing up her things, neatly organizing her materials — pens, papers, sticky notes — first into a well-orchestrated square on the table. She kept her face glued to the pile, as though she hoped somebody might tap her shoulder so that she could look up in surprise, and utter a startled, “ Oh! ” through her plump lips and the gap between her white teeth.

I started toward her, building up the courage to restore communication between us, when like a thumb over the lens of a camera, Grant Goodwin invaded my view.

“I hope you’re not upset,” he said, his voice filled with chivalrous détente. “Here, can I help you?” he offered, and reached toward the pile she had so painstakingly tidied up before her.

Caught staring, I forced my head to swivel downward like I had dropped something on the floor.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Madeline said to him, with a disappointed drop in her voice. I crossed the threshold of the classroom, my strides as regimented as a soldier’s, and her words were drowned out by my harried footsteps against the marble floor.

I SPENT TWENTY MINUTES WAITING IN THE LINE AT FEDEX, stuck behind a balding head that resembled the swirling eye of a hurricane. I spent ten minutes waiting for them to retrieve the package, then another twenty in traffic, and by the time I had returned to the Régine office with the Alexander McQueen package, I was ten minutes late for the run-through.

Standing by a table of accessories was Edmund Benneton, Régine ’s fashion director and my personal idol. In a royal blue cape and a matching turban like some great maharaja, I recognized him even from behind.

Sabrina and Clara were crowding around him, along with a male and female editor I hadn’t met yet. Behind a fortress of clipboards, they all slanted over his shoulders in an attentive formation, pens poised like bayonets. Edmund was staring at a hat on the table, arms crossed over his chest, drumming jewel-encrusted fingers over his silk sleeves.