R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

Every day, between all the setbacks, the same woman lent her cheerful but unconvincing voice to the overhead subway speakers—“ Next stop, Fourteenth Street — Next stop, Astor Place — Next stop, Bleecker Street .” When she said it, it was as if she was teaching the stops to a child with learning difficulties— FOUR-teenth Street, AS-tor Place, BLEE-cker Street —and I wondered if she was proud of herself for stifling the quality of my life, a life that became increasingly more pathetic with every commute. How old was she and how long had her voice been filling the subway trains? Did she live in New York, and if so, did she come onto the subway and tell people, “That’s me, that’s my voice”?

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us.”

Maybe she was poor and destitute and wore rags, and when she tried to tell people it was her voice on the loudspeaker they all thought she was another crackpot.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you are getting sadder and more pitiful every second.”

Maybe she was just like me, and when she heard her own voice, she thought, “God, this is so all so exhausting. ”

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s never going to go away.”

Maybe she was already dead.

“Ladies and gentlemen, and you, Ethan St. James, you’re dead too.”

It was like this for one, two, three, four, five. days? Weeks? I honestly have no idea.

ONCE I ARRIVED AT RÉGINE, IT WAS ALWAYS THE SAME.

Somehow it was always me who ended up with the task of finding missing things in our overflowing closet. It was always something dreadfully obscure — either very insignificant (a missing pearl from a Chanel belt), very elusive (a pair of transparent plastic, fingerless Pucci gloves), or very generic (an unlabeled white crewneck Alexander Wang T-shirt, resembling every other unlabeled white crewneck T-shirt we had). Accessories were invariably the worst: Finding a simple top hat from the Giorgio Armani collection involved sifting through about a hundred top hats we had received for a Charlie Chaplin-inspired couture story, looking frantically for the one that most closely resembled our check-in photograph while Sabrina pestered me every minute, “Armani! Armani! Armani!”

Because most of the accessories were unlabeled samples, I had suggested to Sabrina that we begin labeling everything, just writing the name of the designer on a piece of removable masking tape and slapping it somewhere we could easily see later. “You can’t just put ordinary tape on haute couture,” she snapped. I considered proposing to her that we find a tape designed by Valentino.

My so-called “good eye,” on which I had so prided myself during my interview with Sabrina, became the bane of my existence, and although most of the missing things turned up after an hour or two of tedious searching, I felt like I was always looking for something I couldn’t find.

I knew every morning when I stepped through the closet door, a familiar weight descending over me like a funerary shroud, that during the course of the day Sabrina would bark, George would scoff, Edmund would barge in, and the whole time in the background the fashion editors would gracefully loathe each other while Jane floated around, oblivious to it all.

I could see the truth now about Edmund. Of course the pictures he made were beautiful. He had every imaginable resource at his disposal — the best models and hair and makeup and clothes. He shot only the hottest, of-the-moment girls (“ Call Ford, I need the black girl with the gapped teeth ,” he’d say, or “ Who’s this? I saw her at Karl’s party and now she’s shopping with Plum Sykes! Book her for tomorrow’s shoot and cancel Natalia .”). As far as I knew, he had no true inspirations. His “inspiration boards” were just a random sampling of his favorite looks from the current collections, with a few shoes and handbags among them for good measure — everything chosen less for its aesthetic value than for its association with a brand name he liked.

My whole existence now felt like one of his diary entries:

Today I photographed in samples from Comme des Garçons Valentino Dries van Noten Fendi Max Mara Gucci Versace Tom Ford Christian Dior Michael Kors Miu Miu Alaïa and Giorgio Armani. Meanwhile Sabrina asked George did you see what Dorian Belgraves wore to Karl Lagerfeld’s party while I continued looking for Armani and anyway it turned up on Will’s desk but it didn’t matter anyway because a call came in that Steven Meisel had to postpone the shoot we were prepping so everybody wanted their clothes back and I spent the rest of the day returning everything that had come in which I didn’t even have the time to forget was Comme des Garçons Valentino Dries van Noten. Sabrina said Dorian Belgraves should do a shoot with his mother Edie. Fendi Max Mara Gucci. George said that was a brilliant idea. Dorian Belgraves Versace Dorian Belgraves Tom Ford Dorian Belgraves Christian Dior Dorian Belgraves Michael Kors Dorian Belgraves Miu Miu Dorian Belgraves Dorian Belgraves Dorian Belgraves

ON ONE FRIDAY OF AN INDISTINGUISHABLE WEEK AT RÉGINE, the editors sent me to pick up a package at the FedEx office.

There were two men waiting at the counter to assist me. The first man’s name was Harvey, which I read on a tag on his shirt that said, HELLO, MY NAME IS HARVEY, and below it in smaller letters, PLEASE ASK ME ABOUT OUR MOVING KITS! The other man’s name was Bert, and his tag was pretty much the same, except it said, PLEASE ASK ME ABOUT OUR BUY-TWO, GET-ONE DEALS ON SHIPPING TAPE!

Harvey was black, Bert was white, and both had more wrinkles than a prune or a golden raisin. When I handed Harvey the sticky with my tracking number, he said to Bert, “Hey, Bert, you remember how to log off this? I don’t want to lose my place,” and I noticed that he had been playing solitaire on the computer.

“You just gotta. ” Bert said, as he slowly stretched his arm out toward Harvey’s mouse, in a movement reminiscent of tai chi. He couldn’t quite get to it with Harvey in the way, so he said, “Wanna move that way, Harvey?”

And Harvey said, “Sure, Bert,” and inched his stool to the side, while trying to remain perched on top of it.

“I’m sorry to rush you,” I broke out, “but can you please hurry?”

They blinked at me, like What’s the rush? and How fast do you think we can go anyway?

Hoping to inspire a sense of urgency, I added, “It’s for Régine .”

“What’s Régine ?” they asked together.

I started to take a breath. “It’s a fashion magazine,” I disclosed. “A very important fashion magazine.” Bert’s hand hovered over the computer mouse; they had progressed from moving slowly to not moving at all.

“Just— please! ” I begged with a motion toward Bert’s arthritic hand. The screen remained frozen on Harvey’s solitaire game.

“A fashion magazine, huh?” Bert prodded. “Do you get to see a lot of women? Like supermodels?”

Harvey looked over and asked me, “That why you got on that nice getup?” referring to my Dior suit from Clara that, being the only understated outfit I owned, now constituted my daily wardrobe. Like a scorekeeper at a ping-pong game, his gape alternated between his computer screen and my suit. My suit won his favor and he altogether gave up any attempt to track my package. “Where could I get a suit like that?” he asked.

Bert seemed interested in the answer as well. Together, they shifted toward me and propped their elbows on the counter, like they expected me to tell them a bedtime story.

“You could go to Bergdorf Goodman,” I offered unhelpfully.