From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel (20 page)

Yes, Philip and Vivienne were integral to my mounting success. In fact, Vivienne and I had an unsuccessful love affair in 2004 that grew out of her efforts on my behalf.
⁴
Vivienne was a spark plug, a woman of influence, with a boutique on Mercer Street down the block from Marc Jacobs and, before I went away, two more stores planned for Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Without Vivienne and Philip, my label would have become (B)oy
bridal
for sure.

But it was Ben Laden who took me to the proverbial next level. Only when Ben got
Vogue
,
Elle,
and even
Glamour
to sprinkle my clothes in their “what’s new” spreads did celebrity stylists come knocking. Rudy Cohn, who I continued to see on and off, had introduced me to Chloë, but the actress-singer-songwriter wouldn’t touch me until my line got play in the media. It was no coincidence that she showed up at the Grammys in my inside-out dress after it had popped up in the Trends sidebar of
Harper’s Bazaar
. And that’s when the custom orders started rolling in. Most notably from one junior senator’s wife. (Think of a state bordering Wisconsin and Lake Michigan, rhymes with Hanoi.
⁵
) But I never delivered on that dress. I was captured in the Overwhelming Event before the sketches could be approved.

At the start of 2006, (B)oy finally had enough buzz to make it into the fashion week tents for the New Designers’ Showcase.
It was my Bryant Park debut. My Strange Fruit collection, that
bildungsroman, was sandwiched between Jeffrey Milk and Proenza Schouler, the meat between two slices of white bread. I got to hire all of my favorite models in New York: Olya, Dasha, Kasha, Vajda, etc. The clothes were more ambitious than ever, and yet they were tremendously simplistic. The style I had been aggressively molding all my life had finally taken a leap into the next realm.

And yet for all of our hard-earned good fortune, the label still wasn’t turning a profit.

(B)oy was in its fourth season, and I was under immense pressure from everyone to produce a hit, something to take the label out of the red and into the black. Most labels fold if they can’t get the funding. The loan Ahmed had taken from Hajji, the so‑called Indian gangster, had supplemented my consignment sales for more than two years, and for my debut in Bryant Park I received a grant from 7th on Sixth.
⁶
However, that one night in the tent ended up costing us seventy thousand. Ten thousand we spent on models’ shoes alone.

Once again Ben came to my rescue. The coverage he got for my show ensured several buyers in attendance, and who should I hit it off with but Lena Frank, Barneys’ artistic director. She fell madly in love with my clothes and expressed a deep interest in collaborating in the future. She offered me a large advance for several modified looks from my Strange Fruit collection, a sum that would cover production costs, show Ahmed a small return on
his investment, and take care of my living expenses for another year. Then, armed with such a red-hot new deal, Ben was able to get me a profile in
W
magazine.

For all of the press and buzz, however, (B)oy was coming apart at the seams. Dick, our accountant, was impossible to please. The Barneys advance went over modestly at best, despite the fact that it would cover every expense I needed to claim. Any time I made a decision on my own that would cost us more money I was met with resistance, no matter how much I was bringing in.

Dick Levine: “There isn’t any room in the budget for an assistant, are you crazy? How much are you planning to pay this person?”

“Twelve an hour,” I said.

“That’s too much. I’ll send you a girl for six.”

“The girl you’re gonna send me won’t have the right look. I need someone fashionable. Great with clients. Maybe she has a bob.”

“Well, well, look at you. Thinks I’m going to send him Chanah from Crown Heights. I’ll overlook your anti-Semitism just this once to remind you that until your Barneys advance is in the bank, we still haven’t made a profit.”

“Be nice,” I said. “It’s a miracle I’ve come this far without an assistant. She’ll be part-time. Just someone to manage my calendar.”

“Fine. When does my opinion matter anyway. When she sues us for benefits, I’ll tell Ahmed it was your fault.”

“Where is Ahmed?”

“Moscow? Madrid? Tupelo, Mississippi? I can’t keep it straight anymore. I don’t think he can either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Just stay out of the cookie jar for a while.”

“I never know what you mean.”

“I let you have your assistant, now leave me be. Listen, I gotta go.”

“When you hear from Ahmed tell him to call me.”

Maybe I had suspected that Ahmed was using me in some way. But they were suspicions of what merit? That he believed in the label and in me as a designer? That he wasn’t around enough? I dismissed any suspicions I had as erroneous. The accounts were in the name of my business, and after my debut in Bryant Park, the whole world knew all about (B)oy—well, the only world that I cared about. The little fame I was acquiring would be my safety net. If I fell, the industry would catch me, I was sure of it.

Clothes were real. Suspicions were an invention of the mind.

I found a textile major at Parsons willing to work for free in exchange for clothes and four credits toward an internship. Ecstatic about saving the business some money, I called Dick right away to gloat.

“I beat your six dollars an hour. Try nothing. Ha!”

“Tell me,” he said.

“I got an intern. She has a bob and everything.”

“Congratulations. Now go make me a dress and don’t call me back until it’s absolutely perfect.”

Marcela came in a few days a week to take appointments and assist with clients. She reminded me of Michelle in a way. They both grew up in Westchester and wore a lot of vintage DVF. This resemblance had an unfortunate effect on me. I became confused and regretful, suddenly missing the Sundays Michelle and I’d had together. Those lazy sun-filled hours spent in her handicap dorm room with alcohol emanating from our bodies, mixing with the
odor of morning sex. Most of these longings about our past together resurfaced only when Marcela started showing up.

It pains me dearly to know that Michelle has taken it upon herself to dramatize our relationship for the stage. All of these true feelings and recollections I’d had after I dumped her are suddenly tainted. But who is the real dupe, I ask? The one who has been wrongly imprisoned in this cell? Or the one who has fallen into the giant publicity trap set out by the current administration—that I am the fashion terrorist?

One Friday night in May 2006, after a long, busy week, I met Rudy for dinner at DuMont in Brooklyn. Who do I see there but Michelle, now a college graduate, five pounds lighter and wearing a new pixie haircut. Her fantastic black eye shadow brought out a dangerous quality I had never known her to possess. Femme fatale meets Twiggy. Little did I know how prominent this dark side of her would become. She was dining across from this Chinese guy who looked like he had just gotten off work from Procter & Gamble, the human resources department. There was no avoiding them. The two were seated up front in the window, and it was obvious Michelle had spotted me the moment I popped in the door. So I worked up some courage and went over to their table.

“Hello,” I said. I was being chirpy, which meant I was taking it badly.

Michelle matched my chirpiness: “Boy? Hi. What are you doing here?” Then she released an apologetic glance at her date, which pissed me off royally.

“Same as you. Dinner.” I turned to the Asian American and introduced myself: “Boy Hernandez.” Then I pivoted back to Michelle.

“Well, I just thought I should say hello,” I said to her.

“You thought you should say hello? So you felt obligated.”

“Let’s not do this. How are you?”

“I’m great. I caught your profile in
W
last month. You came off like I thought you would.”

“How’s that?”

“Like someone else entirely.”

The waitress creeping up behind me with their dinner proved a good opportunity for an exit, just shy of making Michelle lose her appetite completely. “Well, you two enjoy your entrées. I’ll call you sometime,” I said.

“Please don’t.”

“Nice meeting you, guy.”

I was incapable of enjoying a meal here while my ex devoured a half chicken on a date with a guy who had hints of Hoboken, New Jersey, wrinkled into his dress shirt. I found Rudy seated outside in the backyard garden, kissed her on both cheeks, and told her we were leaving, just as the breadbasket hit the table.

“But why?” she said. “It’s so lovely out here.”

“I don’t know,” I said, and quickly made something up. “I’m refluxing. Let’s get Japanese.”

“I had Japanese for lunch.”

“Then let’s get Thai. Who gives a shit?”

“Okay, we’ll go.”

“Only do me a favor,” I said. “Walk with me through the front room and hold my hand.”

“I see now, yeah?” I could always count on Rudy, even when I wasn’t being fair to her. She gave me a big kiss on the mouth, and we left, holding hands, skirting Michelle’s table. Rudy’s
four-inch heels delivered superbly on their effect as we patiently walked out of the restaurant.

That night, drunk out of my head on a bottle of cheap rosé, I sent Michelle several regrettable text messages. After reviewing the transcript of our fight that had been stored in my phone, I called her the next day to apologize. To my surprise, she accepted. I learned she was living in Brooklyn now. Her nana’s town house still hadn’t sold, so Michelle would be staying there until it was off the market. We met for coffee and had dinner. Both of us, it seemed, felt the same: incredibly alone. As our postrelationship by nature ruled out the prospect of love, we gave in to love without love. Lust. We started to see each other again but with unspoken ground rules. It was understood, I presumed, that we were having a casual affair. The sex was not loud or angry, like I had expected, but carried a certain music to it, something soft I couldn’t name. It wasn’t perfect, but it was right.

Knowing what I know now about the play she has written about me, do I regret carrying on with her? I can’t answer that. How can we predict what others are capable of doing? How can we even suspect where we will be tomorrow, or the day after?

Even in prison, I don’t know what will happen, because nothing is certain. Nothing has been decided yet. And nothing that has been promised to me over the past four and a half months can be relied upon. Though I trust my special agent and appreciate our talks together, he’s beginning to seem more and more powerless as time goes by. Because nothing changes about my situation. The more we discuss, the more it seems that we go nowhere. And the only certainty, I’m beginning to believe, is that tomorrow I will still be here.

by Gil Johannessen

From
W
, March 2006, Vol. 3, Issue #23

IT’S THE END of New York Fashion Week, boys and girls, and what have we learned? That the young, budding designer has finally secured a place among the established. At least in New York, where out of the 200-plus designers who showed collections for the fall 2006 season, nearly half of them have come along within the past five years. In an industry whose survival depends on new talent (“industry,” hell, way of life), it’s been damn near impossible for the young and restless to penetrate Bryant Park canvas. It used to be that if your name wasn’t Miuccia and inscribed on Italian leather handbags, you couldn’t get a cab on Seventh Avenue, let alone a spot in the tent.

But look up, budding designer. You now have a foothold in New York, and you don’t need a fragrance deal with LVMH. It’s called the New Designers’ Showcase. Among those unknown were the American labels Plaque, Urbane, Jeffrey Milk, and, most notably, the Brooklyn-based (B)oy, brainchild of the designer Boy Hernandez.

I caught up with Hernandez recently at his studio in Williamsburg along the waterfront. Some buyers have already braved the L train for an appointment at the (B)oy showcase. Just so you know, Couture devotee, leaving the island of Manhattan for a showcase was entirely unheard‑of a year ago.

A native of Manila, Hernandez came of age in fashion school with Philip Tang. Legend has it, the two designers were separated at
birth. Tang transferred to Central Saint Martins in London before jumping the Atlantic for New York City, landing a job as a pattern maker for Marc Jacobs. Hernandez stayed behind with lesser ambitions, fine-tuning his craft in Makati City by dabbling in bridal wear before working up enough nerve (and pesos) to come to New York, his home since 2002.

“I literally had one suitcase, a dress form, and a Singer when I started out in Bushwick,” he recalls. “I made a work desk out of a steel door that looked like it had been kicked in by the cops.”

The (B)oy operation is based out of Hernandez’s large live‑in studio located in a former toothpick factory. When I arrive, Hernandez greets me in tight whitewashed jeans and a jersey A.P.C. hoodie that he’s appropriated by cutting off the sleeves, wearing it like an open waistcoat over an old, paint-spattered T‑shirt. The spatter recalls Jackson Pollock’s
Autumn Rhythm.

Though his hyperexuberance suggests a certain towering grandeur, he is strikingly petite. He stomps around the beat‑up factory floors in a pair of all-white Nike high-tops that look certifiably orthopedic.

(B)oy wasn’t the toast of fashion week. Diane von Furstenberg slayed all with her animal furs in fox, goat, and Mongolian lamb. Vivienne Cho, whom Hernandez has worked for in the past, took apart structured conventions and rebuilt them with her power suits for the millennium. In the New Designers’ Showcase, however, the standout was (B)oy.