Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 (11 page)

"Wow," Tilda and Stephanie both said.

Miss Fisher said, "It was only after she'd been in the store several minutes, did I notice, Sheesh, she looks like a porn star! Except she really, really needed a mani-pedi that day!"

It took several minutes for Stephanie and Miss Fisher to explain those last remarks. Afterward, blushing Tilda wished they hadn't bothered.

Miss Fisher finished with, "So before the world ever heard of Gretchen Richter, three days before Grantville ever saw Gretchen Richter, I was watching Hillary Clinton crossed with Anna Nicole Smith and wondering, Who is this woman?"

****

Stephanie and Tilda said their goodbyes to Miss Fisher, then they turned around to face the store.

Stephanie sighed. "The thing I miss the most from up-time is going clothes-shopping with my girlfriends. I swear, the only things better were chocolate and sex."

"Really?" Tilda said.

Stephanie waved her arm around. "Take a good look: This is the only place on the planet where I can do clothes-shopping now." She sighed again. "But it's used clothes here, not new—not even close to being as much fun."

Tilda was trying to think through Stephanie's statements. "Up-time, you bought new clothes just like you bought food at a market? Buying blue jeans was like buying a chicken, 'I'll take that one there'?"

"Uh-huh. Except I didn't take my girlfriends along when I went to buy chicken."

"So seamstresses made clothes for you without being paid in advance, hoping you'd buy their clothes and they'd be paid later? Some of them might starve, don't you care? That's so unfair to them!"

"I hadn't thought of that," Stephanie said. "The seamstresses themselves wouldn't starve, they'd always find work. But the clothing designers and factories who hired them, I guess some of them went bust up-time, sure."

Then Stephanie frowned. "But so what? Am I a queen, with buckets of money to spend? I'm a single mother paying hard-earned money to all these clothing designers—don't I get a say? Why should I spend extra money that I can't afford, just so my dressmakers can eat goose instead of chicken?"

"That's callous, Stephanie," Tilda said. At the moment, being a starving clothing-maker was more than theoretical for her.

The two women frowned at each other. Then Stephanie said, "Let me show you what's here at Valuemart."

The used clothing was in three sections.

The smallest section was for "down-time" clothing—seventeenth-century dyes, seventeenth-century styles, and all hand-sewn.

At the moment, nobody was shopping there.

Tilda went straight there—not to buy, but to compare. How often did she get to compare her Willi's work to that of seamstresses and other tailors? Whereas Stephanie acted as if she were about to clean out a stable.

Tilda examined a pair of mustard-yellow breeches. She decided that her Willi had done much better stitching. She told Stephanie as much.

"What was he like, Willi?" Stephanie asked. "As a man?"

"Kind. He was kind. When Caspar or one of the apprentices had a birthday, Willi gave them a half-day off, and bought them a strudel. He raised his voice only occasionally, and then only with our apprentice Josef, who was a trial. Lots of times Willi came in the kitchen while I was preparing dinner, and told me about his day. Before he bought the Higgins, we discussed it and discussed it. When Matthias Pfeiffer teased Willi about that, Willi just smiled and said, `I'm lucky to have a wise wife.'"

By now, Tilda was sniffling. Without saying a word, Stephanie hugged her.

The middle section was for "new-time" clothing—down-time styles, but the clothes were machine-sewn and colored with up-time dyes.

Tilda saw a young Frau in her twenties considering a skirt that was "true red"; Tilda wondered where the young wife was thinking of wearing it.

The "new-time" section also included up-time-copied clothing that was colored with up-time dyes and was machine-sewn; but was made from seventeenth-century wool, linen, or hemp. All of the hemp clothing was intended for workmen or young boys.

The featured attraction, however, was the racks from which up-time clothing hung on triangular wires. Tilda noticed Stephanie acting perkier as soon as they went to that section.

Besides Stephanie and Tilda, almost every customer in the store was in the "up-time" section.

Tilda saw a teenage German girl hold up a small-hipped denim skirt and gaze at it with a thoughtful air. Besides the skirt's scandalous shortness (a foot and a half separated waistline and hem), the other notable thing about the skirt was that it had a white kitten's face showing on the front. Even more oddly, the kitten had one ear half-hidden behind a pink hair bow.

Tilda tried to figure out what message got sent to the up-time world by a very short skirt with an
über
cute girl-kitten on it. She shook her head; she couldn't begin to guess.

As Tilda looked through the up-time clothing, one thing jumped out at her. "Stephanie, tell me, why does every top I see—whether made for man, woman, or child—have the sleeves sewn on? Why aren't they detachable?"

Stephanie shook her head, confused. "Why do you want detachable sleeves?"

Tilda pointed to her own left sleeve, which was attached to the left side of her doublet with eyelets and lacing. "So you can wear the same clothing all year. Sleeves attached when it's cold; sleeves off when it's hot."

"Wear the same outfit in both February and August?" Stephanie said. She shuddered. "Tilda,
liebchen
, why would I want to wear wool in the summer, or cotton in the winter? Wear winter colors in July? Ugh."

****

Stephanie then tried to teach Tilda about up-time fashion. Some things Tilda didn't understand, but these parts she understood very well—

Up-time women who were affluent or fashion-conscious bought clothes for every season. Most up-time women couldn't or wouldn't do that, but every adult up-time thought it
keinhirnische
(Amideutsch: obvious) that they own a cold-weather wardrobe and a hot-weather wardrobe.

Tilda realized that when clothing was as cheap as clothing was up-time, having a hot-weather and a cold-weather wardrobe made sense.

Up-time homes were well heated, so there was no need for winter petticoats. Summertime petticoats hadn't been fashionable for fifty years; only the oldest up-time women had ever worn a petticoat.

What shocked Tilda to her core was when she learned that there were only a few times in an up-time woman's life when she visited a dressmaker. Almost all her clothing was "ready to wear," mass-produced beforehand.

Tilda's second big shock: Up-time women had no interest in embroidery. Even up-time, embroidery was breath-choking expensive; if an up-time woman wanted clothing that showed an ornate pattern, she bought a garment made of cloth that had an ornate pattern printed-in. Stephanie showed Tilda the cloth design called "paisley," known down-time as India Teardrops, and Tilda's brain melted at the thought of embroidering that.

****

Stephanie, meanwhile, had grabbed a "t-shirt" that had six flags printed on it, and now was holding it against Tilda. Stephanie said, "Here, try this on, I think it'll look good with your skin color."

Tilda looked at the price-paper and gasped. "I can't afford this."

"Tilda,
liebchen
, shopping isn't about trying on only what you can afford. It's about two women doing something together they enjoy. Over there's the dressing room." When Tilda still hesitated, Stephanie said, "Please?"

Ten minutes later, Tilda stepped out of the dressing room. When she saw Stephanie, she laughed. "It's squeezing me! Not hard, but it's squeezing me. Especially at . . ."

Two young men also had realized where the t-shirt was squeezing Tilda. She quit talking and started blushing.

Stephanie guided Tilda over to a mirror. What a strange image she made, Tilda thought, with a down-time German skirt and an up-time t-shirt. Willi would smile if he saw me now, she thought.

Tilda said to Stephanie, "You chose well. This pink color flatters my skin."

Stephanie smiled.

When Tilda came out of the dressing room, Stephanie was waiting with a pair of flower-print pants. "I think these will fit you. Try them on."

Stephanie was wrong: The pants were too big in the seat and the legs were too long. But Tilda loved how one button and a zipper let her fasten the pants in only seconds.

After Stephanie had taken a look at the flower-pants, Tilda changed back into her own clothes. Then she told the up-timer, "Now it's your turn."

Tilda frog-marched Stephanie back to the "Down-time clothing" section.

They wound up dressing Stephanie in a calf-length down-time skirt. Except that on long-legged Stephanie, the skirt wasn't calf-length at all.

Meanwhile, with the down-time skirt, Stephanie had walked from the dressing room wearing a fat man's t-shirt in white. Besides the shirt being way too big to fit well, the white t-shirt clashed with the off-white of the down-time skirt.

"I think the skirt shrank in the wash," Stephanie said, deadpan.

Tilda couldn't help it: She started laughing at how ridiculous Stephanie looked. But rather than get angry or offended, Stephanie walked around the store, letting every down-timer see for him- or herself what Tilda found so funny.

A few minutes later, after Stephanie had changed back into her own clothes, she asked Tilda, "Isn't this enjoyable?"

"Oh, it is, it is," Tilda said. "I could do this with you all day." Tilda laughed; "Especially if I had the money to spend."

****

Tilda realized what she'd just said.

How fun would it be for Tilda, a woman not rich, if she could buy clothing of different weights, colors, and moods, as easily as walking through an orchard picking apples? Along with her girlfriends, everyone in the group doing the same thing?

Going to the dressmaker with your girlfriends didn't come close.

Once down-time women get a taste of shopping for clothes like this, they won't be able to walk away, Tilda realized.

Tilda gestured toward the up-time clothing and said to Stephanie, "Sometime soon, someone will bring back ready-to-wear, but made for German women. That 'someone' will get rich."

"Don't forget up-time women," Stephanie said.

Then Stephanie smiled at Tilda. "Are you proposing a partnership,
liebchen
? What a great idea!"

"Huh? What?"

Stephanie was grinning now. "You know what down-time women like to wear, and I know up-time women. You know more about running a sewing business, while I have a good sense of color and design."

"That's all true, but what—?"

"You and I will make a bundle, and make our sisters look good along the way."

Tilda was flabbergasted. "You and I make ready-to-wear? I didn't mean us doing . . ."

Then Tilda realized, Stephanie is right. I can make ready-to-wear clothing with her, and unless we're boneheads, she and I can't fail. But on the other hand . . .

Tilda said, "Do you know what's not in your telephone book? An up-time tailor shop. In your world, ready-to-wear wiped the tailors out."

Stephanie paused a second, then shrugged. "I never noticed before, but you're right. Oh well, too bad for the tailors. But you and I, making ready-to-wear—will this happen, or not?"

Tilda Gundlachin verheiraten Bruckner, a tailor's daughter and a tailor's widow, after a long silence said—

"Yes, let's do this."

****

Tilda and Stephanie formed a partnership to make a ready-to-wear women's-clothing company, Up & Down Clothing.

They raised money by raffling off Stephanie's denim. Five lucky winners would win a chance to have "authentic" blue jeans, each with zipper and copper rivets, that were tailor-made for him or her.

By the day of the drawing, Stephanie had sold a ridiculous number of raffle tickets. During the month that tickets were on sale, it became normal for someone from the Abrabanel Bank to buy twenty tickets on behalf of some
Adel
, then an hour later, someone from the Bank of Grantville to buy thirty tickets for someone else.

With one week still to go, Stephanie joked that she'd need a wine vat to hold all the tickets when she did the drawing.

No up-timer won the drawing. A greengrocer's wife—and CoC member—in Magdeburg, an ex-Bavarian coal miner in Grantville, a young Frenchman on his Grand Tour, a Niederadel daughter, and a Hochadel daughter each got new jeans.

Tilda and Stephanie sewed two and a half pairs of jeans apiece. All five winners were satisfied with the fit of their new clothing. Afterward, the denim scraps got donated to the Historical Museum.

As the partners walked out of the Museum, Stephanie remarked, "Other than my sons, the denim was my only remaining link to Larry. Now it's gone. Hurray!"

Tilda only nodded, having no idea what to say.

After the denim-adventure was all over, Tilda and Stephanie started to make skorts. Lots and lots of skorts.

When they were done, they had blue-gingham skorts and green-gingham skorts in girl's sizes, and in women's sizes from young junior to fuller-sized women's. Petite sizes were well represented, because down-timer women were short by the standards that Stephanie and Tilda were using; but Stephanie made sure that tall women weren't overlooked.

Tilda and Stephanie reserved a meeting room at the Higgins Hotel, and announced that the first new-time ready-to-wear clothing would be sold there on Saturday, August 2. That announcement got a lot of publicity—doubly so when Delia Higgins announced that she would put her electric Singer sewing machine on display during the skort sale.