October 2014
Cressida sits across the long oval table and looks at Olivia, Chloe and Maya on the opposite flank. For some reason, the three of them feel like they’re in trouble.
‘Hmmm,’ Cressida ponders, her index finger tap tapping as she stares at the mood boards. ‘It’s not really working for me. Chloe, the design is too downmarket. You’ve taken good still-lifes and made the clothes look like… like… market-stall clobber, I think they call it. This treatment isn’t working.’
Eager eyes widen in shock.
‘And Olivia, these girls you’ve used, surely FASH didn’t shoot them. Did FASH shoot them?’ she asks in horror.
‘Yes Cress. They’re all from the autumn/winter lookbook.’ Olivia likes how Cressida winces when people call her Cress.
‘Well they look fat. Someone needs to have a word with the model booker.’
Olivia looks down, pulls at her oversized jumper and wonders whether Cressida really is that insensitive.
‘I think that’s a bit harsh, Cressida,’ pipes up Maya, outrage overriding intimidation, knowing that under Maya’s direction, Chloe and Olivia have been pulling some serious late nights to get these designs to Cressida on deadline. Chloe and Olivia silently cheer.
‘Excuse me?’ Cressida’s razor-cut cheekbones raise with her hackles. Maya doesn’t reply. ‘Maya, if this isn’t working then I’m not putting my name to it. We have to make FASHmas work harder. In fact I think it’s indicative that we need to totally switch FASHmas up this year.’
‘Switch FASHmas up?’ Maya’s freckled nose crinkles.
What does that even mean?
‘I think FASHmas is looking a little tired under your tenure, Maya, so I’m going to be the figurehead for it this year. Freshen it up. Make it sharp. Make it savvy. Make it cool again.’
‘“Make it cool again”?’ Maya’s distaste gives her voice a little wobble, and suddenly she sounds as intimidated as she is outraged.
‘You’ve done it for what, two years? I think it’s time to give it a fresh pair of eyes. I’ve spoken to Lucy, she’s already on board.’
‘So this is an ambush then, Cressida. If you’d already decided you weren’t going to go with Chloe and Olivia’s look and my tone of voice, why did you have us working so hard on a concept? That’s a lot of wasted hours.’
‘Deal with it!’ Cressida sings, collecting the mood boards from the centre of the table and dumping them against the little wire bin on her way out.
A door slams.
Chloe starts to cry.
Olivia is incandescent with anger.
‘Did she just fucking do what I think she did?’ Red hair turns to flames. ‘How dare she!’
Maya tries to rally spirits. ‘Girls I’ve seen this before at Walk In Wardrobe. She’s a bully. Nothing we would have done would have been good enough. You’re both brilliant at your jobs and what you produced wasn’t right for Cressida and her designer delusions or Game of Sloane’s politics – but it was right for FASH. You did good. But annoyingly it’s her call, she’s the editor. We’ll just have to grit our teeth and go along with it. Smile and wave. See what Lucy thinks come New Year.’
‘I hope she fucking shoots herself in the fucking Chelsea boot,’ says Olivia with a riled smirk.
Maya’s calm exterior belies livid anger bubbling beneath.
*
‘Lucy can I have a word please?’
The Ecuadorian cleaner starts to vacuum nearby and Lucy looks jangled from two directions.
‘Yeah I have to leave in five minutes, my nanny is going on a date. Bit selfish…’ she jokes.
Maya smiles, light relief from the issue she’s about to raise. Everything seems more unnerving in this corner of the building, by the plush offices of Lucy, Rich and Rich.
‘Erm, excuse me, can you come back in ten minutes?’ Lucy snaps at the cleaner, who meekly wheels her Henry hoover away and turns it off. ‘Can’t hear myself think,’ she says, looking back at her screen and tugging her butter-blonde bob.
Maya waits patiently, nervously, and notices Lucy looks more frazzled than usual.
The office is quiet, and the only other voice Maya can hear is Rich Robinson’s muted tones as he goes through his diary with his PA on the other side of another glass wall.
Maya stands gawkily at Lucy’s desk.
‘I wanted to talk to you about Cressida.’
Lucy looks away from her screen and up at Maya.
‘Sit down.’ She gestures for Maya to take a chair. ‘What did you want to say?’
‘She’s really causing upset among the team, Lucy. Saying really personal stuff to Olivia, totally diminishing the confidence of the team, coming up with crazy ideas that just aren’t on brand… Some of the team have been coming to me saying they’re really upset.’ Maya feels sweat trickle down the small of her back into the base of her silk blouse.
‘“Really upset?”’ scoffs Lucy, before round, wise eyes soften a little. ‘Maya this isn’t high school. This is work. I thought you were bigger than that.’
Maya is silenced. Her moment of boldness quashed. Speaking up for nothing. ‘I… I am… I just thought you might want to know…’
‘Are you sure you’re not just sore about Cressida getting the job?’
‘Me? Not at all! I didn’t really want the job.’
‘It kind of showed, Maya.’ Lucy looks back at her screen and doesn’t bother to pretend she isn’t reading an email.
Maya feels betrayed, by Lucy, by herself.
‘Well then you have to believe that I’m not talking from a jealous point of view. I’m just worried for the team. She’s ruffled lots of feathers, not just mine.’
Lucy continues to look at her screen while nodding, as if she’s listening.
I’ve blown it now, I may as well go the whole hog.
‘It’s not just Cressida. Something has changed here. I’m not sure whether it was before the bonuses scandal or after, but people used to be happy. They used to be proud. Even the models on the walls don’t look happy any more,’ Maya tries to joke.
Lucy stands and packs her phone and her tablet into her bag.
‘Oh please Maya. Don’t be so soft. It’s business. You didn’t get a bonus. You didn’t get a job. This is one of the biggest fashion empires in the world. If you’re not feeling proud to work here then you can always go back to Walk In Wardrobe. Or I heard Wicked Style were recruiting. I don’t have time for this, I need to get home for the nanny.’
Lucy wraps herself in a petrol-blue funnel coat and charges out of the office, down the corridor to the glass double doors by the empty canteen.
Maya is floored. What happened to the best boss she ever had? What happened to the best job she ever had?
Maybe it is me.
Maya stands on weak knees and smooths her skirt down as she gathers herself and starts walking back to her desk.
Rich Robinson exits his office with such swagger he overtakes her in his Cuban heels.
‘Working late tonight, Matilda?’
‘Oh you know… Always dedicated to FASH!’ Maya musters and looks at the back of his annoying-shaped head as he skips out.
*
On the train home Maya opens her dented laptop and starts writing. Words tumble, notes form. Notes about what it’s like to work at FASH. Notes on the excitement, the perks, the friendliness, the fun when she first arrived. Notes on how the models used to glide down the stairs in their terry-towel dressing gowns, from the canteen to the studio, proud to be modelling for the world’s largest fashion retailer. Notes on how Sam and the tech team seemed like they had the best jobs in the digital world. Notes on how a young designer full of excitement and ideas was made to cry in a meeting, all her effervescence and enthusiasm knocked out of her in one sharp swoop. The countryside outside blackens and words spill onto white rectangles as Maya thinks back and wonders at what point FASH turned from a happy place to somewhere where people can be made to feel so awful.
Maya ponders how a company that makes £68,000 per minute can stop giving staff small bonuses, or at least leave a token bottle of Prosecco on employees’ desks at Christmas, many of whom are starting out on a first-job minimum-wage salary. Maya writes down all the Cressida-isms – the cruel things she has said to the team. The negative reactions to people’s brave ideas. Her comments about people’s body shape. Her disgust and disdain for FASH’s own customers, the people who keep them all employed.
As the train jolts and the late workers head homeward-bound, steam emanates from Maya’s keyboard, and so consumed is she that she doesn’t even notice James watching her from the middle of the carriage.