Fashionably Late Read Free Page A

oblige. Though she spent her business life trying to cadge publicity and snag the best coverage from a host of egomaniacal fashion editors and journalists, she managed somehow to retain her dignity. The industry “poop” on her was that “Mercedes bends but never stoops.”
    The Nuborg turned once more to Karen. “Which is better: elegance without sex appeal or sex appeal without elegance?” Karen opened her mouth, but Mercedes’s long white hand took the reporter by her bony, black-clad shoulder and firmly turned her away. Karen sighed with relief. She knew that some day she would have to sit down and pretend an interest in those cliched questions, but at least she didn’t have to do it right now. Later, she would kill Definaţbut she’d be careful not to spoil the white dress.
    “Where do they get those questions from?” Defina asked innocently wrinkling her brow. She looked over at Karen. Then she got serious.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just fooling around. I didn’t know she would … ” “That’s okay. It’s nothing,” Karen told her.
    Defina widened her eyes. “Smile pretty at Nuclear Wintour,” Defina told her, and Karen flashed a grin at Anna Wintour, arguably the most powerful woman in fashion publishing. Anna was shrewd and tough and glamorous and difficult. She had a lot of nicknames, but Mercedes, the most literate among them, always called her “The Wintour of our Discontent.” Needless to say, Mercedes only said it behind Anna’s bony back.
    At the next table, Karen could see Doris and Donald Fisher. He had started The Gap stores, and he, along with Peter Haas Senior of the Levi Strauss family, probably pushed more denim than anyone else in the world. With them was Bill Wolper of NormCo, the fashion conglomerate that was more successful than anyone else in the market. Everyone knew that big-time fashion wealth had come from the mass market. The real money had never been on Seventh Avenue. As Jeffrey reminded her over and over, “Henry Ford got rich making Fords, not Lincolns.” It was only in the last dozen or so years that top-of-the-market Seventh Avenue American designersţwho made Lmcolnsţhad built enormous empires.
    And they had done it by moving out and down. Lincolns had been downgraded to Fordsţbridge linesţ for the malls. People like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and a half dozen others had created fashion empires larger than any that had come before. Now Karen stood on the brink of an opportunity potentially as vast. And sometimes it frightened her.
    But the faces around her table were all supportive ones. Aside from Jeffrey and Defina, she could smile at Mercedes, who had brought an obviously gay male friend. Mercedes came from the generation that always had male escorts for social events. Everyone knew Bernard was a lesbian (though no one ever mentioned it). Only Defina had the nerve to once refer to the woman as a “Mercedes diesel.”
    Casey Robinson, their vice-president of marketing, sat next to Mercedes and he was with his gay companion Ray. Karen sighed again and had a flash of gratitude that she had met and married Jeffrey early on in her career. So many women in her business bemoaned the lack of heterosexual men in the industry.
    Karen smiled at Casey, Mercedes, Defina, and the others. All of the people at the table tonight had helped her get here. When she learned she’d earned the Oakley Award, Karen had decided to have these people surround her and share in her success. She had not invited her family.
    They hadn’t contributed in the same way, and somehow their presence always complicated things. Just this once, Karen had decided to keep the night for herself, to share the event with her mother and sister only after the fact. She felt a little guilty about it, but as her friend Carl had explained, “The choice is between inviting them and spoiling your evening, or not inviting them and having a great night but feeling guilty. I say go with the guilt!