The Fashion Committee Read online

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017

  Text copyright © 2017 by Susan Juby

  Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Soleil Ignacio

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  Ebook ISBN 9780698151055

  Book design by Kate Renner

  Version_1

  For Jim, whose sense of style contains multitudes

  contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: The Fashion Competition Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two: Day at the Atelier Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part THREE: The Small Matter of Models Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Four: Lifesavers and Other Garments Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Part Five: It’s Fitting Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Part Six: Putting on a Show Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  The performance

  that is fashion

  is one road

  from the inner to

  the outer world.

  —Elizabeth Wilson,

  Adorned in Dreams

  PART ONE

  The Fashion Competition

  Green Pastures

  Emerging Talent Scholarship

  This year the Green Pastures Emerging Talent scholarship will be awarded to a student who shows promise in the field of fashion design.

  To apply, candidates must submit an application by February 15, detailing their interest in fashion, discussing their inspirations, and describing their approach to designing and constructing garments. The top applicants will be invited to show their work at a fashion show at Green Pastures Academy of Art and Applied Design on Saturday, May 4. Those selected to take part in the fashion show will also be invited to attend an introductory workshop on Saturday, March 2.

  The contestants must document their design process by keeping a fashion diary (which the judges may ask to see), and they will be asked to submit drawings, photos, and other research materials, such as mood boards. We will be looking for students who demonstrate ingenuity, creativity, and an ability to be responsive to the needs of their chosen models.

  The fashion show will be judged by an elite committee of fashion professionals and artists.

  The winner of the fashion show will receive a one-year scholarship to Green Pastures Fashion Program. The competition is open to students entering grades 10 through 12. For full details and the application form, please see: www.fashionscholarship.greenpasturesacademy.com.

  KEY DATES

  Deadline to apply:

  February 15

  Workshop for applicants accepted into competition:

  March 2

  Fashion Show:

  May 4

  one

  HERE’S AN IDEA © CHARLIE DEAN DESIGNS:

  Dress for your destiny. Do it now, even if your destiny hasn’t happened. If you want to be an astronaut, wear white. Be puffy. Add patches. Want to be a hedge fund manager? Wear a beautifully tailored suit, even if you have to wear a fast-food uniform over it. Dressing for your dreams makes them 75 to 85 percent more likely to come true!

  DATE: FEBRUARY 8

  I know I probably don’t have to hand this diary in, but if anyone asks for it, I would like it to be wonderfully comprehensive. Who knows! It may end up being part of the Charlie DeanTM archives stored at the FIT fashion museum. I want anyone who reads this to know that life has a way of working out. When things appear bleak and there is no hope on the horizon, you are likely to be surprised by a wonderful turn of events just around the corner.

  I will be forever grateful to Mr. Oliver, our guidance counselor, for alerting me to such a life-changing and almost miraculous opportunity. Of course, he didn’t personally and specifically contact me about the scholarship, but I’m sure he would have eventually. He knows how much I want to go to Green Pastures. I’ve asked him about how I might get into the school seven times since I arrived at R. S. Jackson Senior High in November of last year. I think he’s becoming a little bit afraid of me. That could be why he’s so rarely in his office. On the other hand, he could be at one of the other four high schools he covers.

  I take my breaks in his empty waiting room. It’s a good place to retreat from the noise and many unchic sights at R. S. Jackson, even though the waiting room is also quite unchic. Still, today suggests that it’s a place where miracles happen.

  I was sketching away in the waiting room at lunchtime when the school secretary came in. He’s young and has gorgeous brown skin and marvelous almond eyes. He’s also enormous, well over six feet tall and bulky, bulky, bulky in a way that is immensely comforting. Best secretary ever! You just know that if a box needs lifting or a sad feeling needs a sympathetic shoulder to lean on, he’d be absolutely ideal.

  We even have similar names. His is Charles. Mine is Charlie, short for Charlene. Isn’t that so much fun?

  “Charlie, you in here again?”

  I smiled. One can do nothing else when confronted with such positivity and warmth. He’s like a woodstove! Wrapped in a marvelous snuggly blanket!

  “I told you to check out the old art room. That’s where all the creative types in this place hang out at lunch.”

  “I’m fine in here,” I said.

  “Okay. Well, if you see Mr. Oliver, tell him his mailbox was full. He should really come to work sometime. Santa gets less mail than that guy.”

  Charles held up a tall stack of mail.

  Before I could respond there was a cry and a thud
out in the hallway.

  “I told you to suck it, loser!” shouted someone. Then there was a crash that sounded like a body being slammed against a locker.

  Charles groaned and dumped the mail on the table in front of me.

  “Back in a sec,” he said. Then he went into the hallway to break up the fight.

  Outside the noise level rose, and I was glad to be safely tucked away in the empty waiting room. Then I noticed the envelope peeking out of the pile. It bore the Green Pastures logo.

  C’est très interessant!

  I slipped the envelope out of the pile and held it in front of me. Then I glanced at the doorway. A face appeared, mouthed the word “freak” at me, then disappeared.

  I took a deep breath and slid the envelope into my purse. Then I gathered my things and hurried out of the office, away from the post-fight crowd, and headed into the girls’ bathroom.

  Inside the bathroom stall I opened the envelope with trembling mains, which means “hands” in French, if you don’t know. As I’d hoped and prayed, the letter contained the notice about this year’s Emerging Talent scholarship competition.

  Angels sang and choirs choired when I read that the talent this year was fashion. My specialty! Fate was unfolding in front of me like a red carpet, handwoven just for me by a team of exquisitely talented, old-world artisans in perfect white smocks.

  When we moved to Nanaimo last year I was partway through tenth grade. The timing of the move wasn’t ideal from a schooling-disruption perspective, but my dad’s entire parenting style is based on disruption. Then I realized that Nanaimo is the home of Green Pastures Academy of Art and Applied Design, which has the best fashion program of any high school in the country. Maybe on the continent. Seriously. It’s as good as many of the top fashion colleges, or even better.

  I found out that Green Pastures only offers a few general entrance scholarships every year, and only to students entering tenth grade. Tragically for the fulfillment of my dreams, I’m in eleventh grade. Last spring, I applied anyway and noted on my application that I’d be willing to go back a year, but my application was rejected. It’s basically ageism, which I supposed I’d better get used to if I’m going to be in fashion. The people in charge of giving out general merit scholarships may have been influenced by my grades, which aren’t what some would consider scholarship-worthy. My focus is fashion. I can’t afford the distractions of things like science and math, except as they pertain to fashion.

  I don’t mean to brag, but I’m talented enough to be in the fashion program, even though it’s so far beyond competitive it’s like etitive or maybe just ive. The problem is the cost of Green Pastures and our current economic status, which is best described as extremely depressed. The place is très cher! (Please note that I am currently teaching myself French from Google Translate. I know I make a lot of mistakes, but I also feel it’s very French of me to keep trying. French classes were cut back at R. S. Jackson last year, and it’s almost impossible to get into the one class that’s offered, but I persister in learning and growing intellectually. It’s crucially important to speak French if you’re going to be in fashion. French is basically the lingua franca of fashion!)

  Because life is good and there is a god and she loves me a lot, there’s also a discipline-specific Emerging Talent scholarship each year. Each year it’s different. Last year it was pottery. The year before it was fabric arts. In theory, I might have had to wait NINE years for fashion to come around! I’d be twenty-five and look very out of place, even though I take skin care very seriously and am one of the top part-time skin care and makeup associates at Shoppers Drug Mart. But this is the year they’re offering a fashion scholarship. What are the chances? Well, I suppose they’re one in ten. But still!

  I stood in the bathroom stall and stared down at the pamphlet. It was purest fate that I came upon it just in time to apply. I found the doorway leading directly to my dreams of salvation!

  two

  FEBRUARY 8

  It seems pretty stupid that applicants have to keep a diary that no one is going to read. I hope this one won’t get held against me in a court of law aimed at prosecuting scholarship fraud cases. What the hell. I’ll tell the truth, get things off my chest, and then I’ll burn this.

  When I saw that the scholarship to get into Green Pastures was for the fashion program, I wanted to kick someone. I’d hoped it was going to be metal arts this year. Drawing. Carving. ANYTHING ELSE, FFS.

  But the scholarship was for fashion, which meant no art school for me.

  I got the good news from the girl who sits next to me in the class our teacher calls “Career Trajectories,” which is known by those of us learning to lower our expectations as “Career Tragedies.” The girl left the scholarship brochure on her desk while she went to the can, probably to tend to her weird makeup or to fix that lumpy-ass hairstyle she wears. I looked at it because I was tired of listening to Ms. Donner drone on about how a job in the oil fields or natural gas or the logging industry or mining was the only responsible choice for a “certain kind of student.” Meaning poor and working-class students. Meaning academically average or ungifted students. Meaning me.

  Ms. Donner obviously never watched Dead Poets Society or To Sir, with Love or any of those other movies about inspiring students to do and be more. She didn’t say so directly, but Ms. Donner thought the smart thing for us was to check all hopes and dreams at the door. Put that shit away so it wouldn’t interfere with being a cog in the economic machine.

  Her message of practicality had not gotten through to the girl who sat next to me. Only a mime or a pro unicycle rider could have been less practical than that girl. She dressed up every day like she was going to a costume party where the goal was to look forty years older than you actually are. She was probably ecstatic that the scholarship for Green Pastures this year was for fashion, since she seemed like exactly the kind of person who would want to be in fashion design. Exactly the kind of person who would want to work in the most corrupt, bullshit so-called creative industry there is, an industry entirely aimed at making people crave more than they need and feel bad about how they look.

  I read the details. They made me want to set the piece of paper on fire. Or shred it up and put it on the bottom of a rabbit cage.

  Granted, it doesn’t take much to set me off. My grand-parents have this embittered little schnauzer–Jack Russell dog called Bites who is truly the most miserable of animals. After he bit the meter reader, animal control made my Gran take him to something called Reactivity class. I joined them out of interest. The dogs in that class lost their mind at the slightest thing: other dogs, noises, movement, air currents. Dogs barked, snarled, and hurled themselves against the gates of their kennels and their leashes. Bites was the calmest one. He even seemed a little afraid, which isn’t like him. I think the class might have scared him temporarily obedient. The thing is that I understood those dogs and had a lot of sympathy for their position. I’d be better off in Reactivity class than high school. John Thomas-Smith, Reactive. If I ever get business cards, I’m getting that printed on them.

  But back to the scholarship, Green Pastures, and fashion.

  Green Pastures has been my main reactivity trigger ever since I was in ninth grade and our art teacher took us there on a field trip. A field trip! Like we were going overseas!

  I clearly remember getting off our crappy yellow school bus and standing in the Green Pastures parking lot. We probably looked like inmates on a work detail.

  In keeping with its overwhelming and oppressive specialness, the campus was luxe. The architecture, the interior design, the landscaping, and the furnishings: every detail was designed to nurture creative young people. But only rich ones.

  We spent the whole day there. We got to sit in on an oil painting class. We watched a graphic arts lesson. Tried our hand at sculpting and saw the pottery studio. We walked the wide, bright hallways
, passed a living wall made of plants for “enhanced air quality” (!), looked into the “dedicated carving shed” (!!), and ate our bag lunches in a huge glass atrium surrounded by semiprivate pod work spaces for seniors (I can’t even count how many exclamation points that needs). We walked around a goddamned “atelier” used by the fashion design students. It had a brick feature wall, vintage furniture, fitting rooms, a big dressing room, dedicated classrooms, and a runway. A runway.

  The school had a room for students who wanted to learn “small-animal taxidermy.” Meanwhile, at our piece of crap school, a mere fifteen-minute drive away, we took half our classes in portable trailers, and there was talk of canceling gym because of the high price of balls.

  My girlfriend, Barbra, was on the tour, too. She could tell I was rancid with resentment from the first minute we set foot on the campus. She kept putting a hand on my arm. Not telling me what to do or how to feel but reminding me that I exist, if that makes any sense. There was something about Green Pastures that made me feel invisible and angry. Barbra understood that.

  She started making pointed little remarks at each new ultra-excellent detail. When we were shown the dark room she said, “We had one just like it when we were children. This really brings me back.” When we saw some kids editing their films in the film suite, she said, “They’ve really got them packed into that teeny little space. Poor things.”

  In addition to siphoning off some of my feelings in a way that wouldn’t get me thrown off the tour, she also stopped me from getting charged with assault.

  “John,” she warned, when we saw a kid sauntering down the hallway in a white suit, like he thought he was Tom Wolfe. (For anyone who doesn’t know, Wolfe is this writer who is known for dressing in white suits. We were assigned something by him in English. The story made no impression on me whatsoever, but our teacher, who told us on the first day that his undergraduate degree is actually in business, couldn’t stop talking about Wolfe’s white suits and how they were such a genius way for the guy to brand himself.) Anyway the kid, who had this little mustache, jaunted by us whistling, and it took every bit of dog anti-reactivity training I had and Barbra’s good influence to keep me from tripping him, hip-checking him, or otherwise interfering with his excessive well-being.