CHAPTER ELEVEN
STACY
I FRET FAR MORE THAN I should.
It’s almost two full weeks between my vetting by King Todd and the day Hampton told me he’d return to Williamsville to check my progress. Two weeks is too much time, and simultaneously not enough.
I only realize it doesn’t make sense after Hampton drops me off, and although I had the entire plane ride back from the hospital to ask for details, I didn’t have the guts. He picked up a book when we boarded, looking up only to ask the flight attendant for a glass of water.
When I stood to disembark, Hampton didn’t stand with me. “Two weeks,” he said. And his tone was strange. It didn’t sound like anticipation. It sounded like resignation, or dislike.
I’m not sure why he hates me so much. That’s the constant refrain I keep returning to, day after day as I work on my sketches. Everything centers on it. I’m not sure I want this job at all, but I’m not sure whether it’s because I don’t like Expendable Chic and all it stands for or because I’ve decided Hampton is now rooting for my failure.
But after a day of kidding myself, I pick up my pencils, trying to imagine clothes Hampton and his team would like. Clothes that can be made with care, but quickly. Clothes with solid, strong stitching that can be processed in bulk; items that must be cheap, and that therefore sacrifice complexity so that the small cost I’m allowed can go into the making process.
I ask myself: What are fabrics that are inexpensive and widely available, yet don’t feel cheap?
I ask myself: What are the simplest designs I can imagine that are still beautiful?
I find answers, but doubt is a disapproving parent. I have seconds to smile at a problem I’ve solved before imagining Hampton’s likely reaction. He doesn’t need to be physically present to insult my work. Or by my side to hate me.
I go to my father, but he’s no help. He tells me to do my best — his one-stop answer to everything. It’s almost as if he believes that everything stems from principals. Hold your center, and the rest of life tends to fall into place.
Mom doesn’t understand our business at all, let alone why I have such strong feelings about it. So people like cheap dresses and pants, why is that such a big deal?
Ricky and Emily are useless. They both shop at Expendable Chic, then come home and hide their purchases like contraband. They think that if I know where they shop, I’ll turn into an ogre. I’ll denounce and berate them the way Shadow Hampton berates me every time I put pencil to paper. They wear the clothes in front of me after the tags are all in the trash. As if I can’t recognize fast fashion without a receipt or shopping bag.
When I mention it privately to Mom, she says, Who cares? It’s their life and their money.
She’s right, of course. The opposing truths hurt my brain. I hate Expendable Chic and the other stores like it, but I can’t argue with Mom’s logic. It’s my sister and brother’s business where they shop. They’re poor college kids, and their budgets have to stretch. I don’t hate them, just the stores.
But why?
And watching them try to hide it from me, I have to wonder if I am the bad guy here?
I draw.
I throw my designs in the trash.
I reimagine, then pick up my pencils again.
Twin forces hold guns to my head, demanding my performance. On the one hand, there’s Hampton’s replacement check, still uncashed in my register. I need to create what Expendable Chic might manufacture while creating something good. Something I can have pride in despite its rapid manufacture.
I want to find the middle ground, but I’m not sure there is one. I don’t want to be a hypocrite, annoyed that my siblings shop with my arch nemesis while working for that enemy myself. The clothes have to be good, but cheap. Timeless yet trendy. Today, yet potentially forever.
But it won’t work. No matter what I try, everything’s terrible. I’m trying to create simple garments because I figure that fewer stitches will allow for better ones, but fewer seams means that each one stands out. They have to be perfect because there’s nothing else on the garment to distract the eye.
My simple designs are heading in the wrong direction. Expendable Chic clothes leave raw edges. They have to be single-stitched, never doubled-back and concealed. Making them simple will only make them worse.
I suck it up. I drive a half-hour to the mall for an Expendable Chic shopping trip. I fill two big bags with example garments, hating myself for being there. I’m only 25, but I feel ancient among the teenagers. They’re rail thin, emaciated, wearing too much makeup. They eye me with suspicion as if I’m an old lady who’s escaped my caregiver and wandered into the wrong store by mistake.
Two massive bags of dresses, shirts, pants, everything. The total bill is less than forty dollars.
Back at the shop, I examine the “craftsmanship.” I tug, pull, stretch, and examine the raw ends. I take photos. Then the fun part: I take a seam ripper and tear them to shreds.
The fabric is worthless, the raw edges unravel just by moving them around. The edges look like a shaggy head, desperate for a haircut.
The clothes are overly complicated. Too many folds and flashy notions. There are few simple patterns, but all the solids give me a headache. The colors are just too bright. But by now it’s clear to me why: simplicity in design shows off how badly the clothes are made, same for the fabric.
In the Expendable Chic design room, they must keep shouting: Crazier prints! Stupider patterns! That color doesn’t make my eyes bleed, Todd, so turn it up another notch! And what’s that straight hem … can’t we add frills? Something totally unnecessary.
Anything for distraction, like the flourish in a magician’s trick.
Anything to hide the fact that the fabric and the make is almost worse than nothing.
And that’s when I realize I can’t do it.
Because I can’t make good things out of bad fabric.
I can’t craft good designs when the demands of distraction are so high.
And yet I persist. Day after day. Luckily, the tailor work is light, and I haven’t had many FairTraded orders. It lets me spend most of my time in the back room, trying to spin gold from pilled cotton.
And the entire time, Hampton Brooks is in my head.
I wonder why, if he dislikes me so much, he hired me for this job.
And I wonder why, if I dislike him so much, I’m killing myself to do it.