CHAPTER TWELVE
STACY
MY HEART IS POUNDING.
I sit on my stool, shoulders rounded inward and hands between my knees. My back is bent. My head keeps wanting to come down. My heels are together on the stool.
Hampton is standing. He keeps shifting his gaze from the sketches to me.
Judging my designs.
Judging me.
“I don’t understand,” he finally says.
“What don’t you understand?”
“What you’ve done here.”
I stand halfway, pointing at my sketches. “You didn’t give me a lot of direction as to what you wanted, so—”
“I shouldn’t have to specify. You’re supposed to be a professional.”
“Yes, but I mean what kind of line and usage, like are you preparing for summer or in advance for winter, and if there were any holes in your current lines that you’re looking to fill. I couldn’t reach you, so—”
“I wasn’t sitting around and waiting for your call. I have a business to run, whether that business is to your liking or not.”
From the minute Hampton walked in, his body language was exactly like the shadow boss I’ve imagined for two weeks. I haven’t projected a false Hampton, birthed from my paranoid imagination. He is the shadow come to life.
What’s this chip on his shoulder?
Why did he walk through my door like an enemy rooting for his protégée to fail?
He shakes his head as he leafs through the designs again. Each sheet of thin paper whispers against its cousins.
“Explain to me what you were trying to do here.”
I take a moment to find my senses. They’re right there, just beyond my reach.
“At first I imagined a simple line. I started with two ideas: that the clothes needed to be high enough quality to meet …” I pause, because I almost said, … to meet my standards. “… to be a step up, because you mentioned that you always welcome improvement.”
“Of course I always welcome improvement,” Hampton snaps.
“W-well, that was one thing. A step up. The other was your limitations.”
“Limitations?”
He gives me an eye. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Hampton Brooks recently, and I’ve researched him enough to know there’s no shortage of women who dream of his eyes lingering. But this stare he’s giving me now is nothing to envy.
“No, no. I misspoke. I just meant your …” Careful. “… your company’s established, strategic constraints. I know you need to keep production prices low to be profitable without raising prices.”
I wait to see how that lands. He nods. “Okay.”
“The problem with any simple line was that the constraints don’t allow for the attention to detail needed when the craft itself is so on display. I realized after a while that’s why Expendable Chic clothes are never very simple. More complex patterns, more accents, brighter colors and patterns and prints, that all hides the imperfections.”
I wonder if Hampton will flare at the word “imperfections.” He seems to be perching like a vulture, waiting for an insult. But he doesn’t.
“So, I figured I couldn’t do a simple line,” I continue. “There’s nowhere to hide. For a while, I tried designing clothes like what you already have.”
Hampton looks down at the sketches. “These are nothing like what I already have.”
“Exactly. Because that didn’t work either. I can’t design like your team.” I stand. “And honestly, I don’t see any point in you hiring me to design for you if I’m only repeating what your current people have already done. You only pushed this offer on me after I did something you didn’t want me to do.”
We match stares. He flinches first, then holds up my sketches.
“So that’s what this is? You do things that I don’t want?”
“How’s your blazer, Mr. Brooks?”
He blinks. “What?”
“I watched you get out of your car before you came in. Saw you take a jacket off, because it’s a little warm today. Which jacket was it?”
“The same one. What of it?”
“Have you worn it between today and the first day we met?”
He hesitates as if sensing a trap. “Yes. What’s your point?”
“Just that maybe you don’t always know what you want,” I say.
He shakes the sketches, eyes never leaving me.
“What I see here is a compromise. A compromise is a situation where nobody wins. I can tell just by looking at these roughs that we could never make them to your specifications. I don’t even know what half of these seams are.”
Of course you don’t. Because you only sell garbage.
“Look up the fabrics when you can. You’ll find they won’t fit your specifications, either.”
“You didn’t even try. You designed clothes the way you want them, rather than what your client asked for.”
“I designed what the client needed.”
“What the client can’t make. This checks none of the boxes. It’s not affordable for the Expendable Chic business model, and maybe can’t even be manufactured on our existing equipment.”
“I looked it up. It can, with modifications.”
“Which machines are we supposed to modify? Am I supposed to convert a solvent factory to produce unprofitable clothes?”
I hold up my hands. “You don’t see the whole picture.”
“But you do, I assume? Enlighten me, if you know best.”
“I don’t exactly have a business degree, but even I know that profit is the difference between income and expenses.”
“You got that without a business degree?”
“My point is that you’re only focused on expenses — how much the clothes cost to make. The solution is simple. Just charge a little more to balance it out.”
Hampton laughs.
“What?”
“You don’t understand our model at all. You don’t know our marketing or our customer avatars or our target demographic.”
“Not the details. But how much more would you have to charge? It couldn’t be more than—”
“I don’t have time to tell you all the ways you’re wrong. There’s the supply end. We don’t have the relationships to get this sort of fabric in the volume we’d need, at prices that are scalable.”
“I’m sure you could find new connections if—”
“We don’t have the factories to spare, as I mentioned.” He hesitates at this, almost as if he remembers something, but then focuses and goes on. “We may not have all the equipment. The people who make our products aren’t trained in these techniques. If you honestly expect a bump in quality, that means we need a higher round of QA screening. You’re underestimating how much more we’d need to charge. It’s just not possible.”
I think he’s lying. He doesn’t believe that it’s impossible; he’s just unwilling to check.
“You don’t want to be here, do you?” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“You said you’d come back, but not just to meet with me. I could have mailed these in. You said you were in town for something else. Between when you made me the job offer and now, you’ve soured on this idea, haven’t you? You only came in to close the loop, because you said you would. But you’re not looking to say yes. You came here to say no because you wish you weren’t in here talking to me at all.”
“You’re right.” He turns on his heel. “This was a mistake.”
Halfway to the door, I call, “Mr. Brooks.”
He looks back. He is a handsome man. Too bad he’s such a prick.
“I think you at least owe me an honest appraisal.”
“You got your money.”
I walk to the register. Open it. Take out his check. Then tear it into fourths. Beneath my stewing anger, that hurts a little. Okay, a lot. I could have done great things with that money.
“Now I’ve worked for free. Tell me the truth.”
“What truth?”
“What you think.”
“About your designs?”
“If you want. If that makes you more comfortable.”
He’s fully turned. I march toward him, heart pounding and hands wanting to clench. I could breathe fire. Step by step, my fury grows.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You hired me because you respected my work.”
“Of course I did.”
“But you don’t like me. Something about me grates on you. So tell me why you’re turning this idea down for no good reason.”
“I gave you a half-dozen good reasons!”
But I’m not stupid, and I won’t play coy anymore. For a while, my mother wanted a career in graphic design. I helped her study. I’m not a brand expert, but I know enough for this.
“You’re being deliberately stubborn,” I say. “You haven’t even looked at my notes on brand fit.”
“I saw them.”
“And?”
“Your designs don’t fit the Expendable Chic brand. They’re not even close.”
“I didn’t mean for them to match everything about the company at the top level. Expendable Chic doesn’t strike me as truly being about expendability. That word may be in your name, but it’s not one of your company’s core values.”
“How the hell would you know what our core values are?”
“Because I watched you take your company’s clothes to children with cancer. I saw how much it pleased you when the clothes made them happy. I talked to people on your team. You’re not trying to make things that don’t last, that don’t matter in the end. That’s just your hook. You want to make a difference. You make your mark on the world by saying your clothes are expendable because that’s what you think pleases your customers the most. You think they need the stuff to be happy — more clothes, more variety, more distractions from the drudgery of modern life. Low prices, high volume, high wow factor.” I take another step, bringing us almost toe to toe. “But your company isn’t about cheap, or disposable. It’s about pleasing people. Deep down, I’m guessing you built Expendable Chic so you could make lives better however you can.”
Hampton looks like he wants to say I’m being presumptuous, but he doesn’t speak. It might be because I’m right. It might be because Expendable Chic isn’t quite what he thinks it is on the surface, and he only realizes it now.
“I’m proposing is a sub-brand,” I say, tapping the sketch. “Something that’s within and beneath Expendable Chic. Something that matches the rest of your lines enough to fit, yet would have its own identity. Like Victoria’s Secret has Pink. This new line would share your company’s core values. It would just do it differently.”
“And how exactly would it do that?”
“By making customers happy in ways that don’t revolve one hundred percent around their wallets. By focusing more on affordable quality, and less on cheap.”
Hampton’s eyes are still on me. I’ve got him. He sees the truth, and the brilliance of my idea — the way I’ve managed to create affordable clothes that don’t belong in the basement.
But I’m wrong.
Instead of recognizing the truth of what I’ve said and the brilliance of my proposal, Hampton turns and leaves without a word.