Low Expectations (27 page)

I try to spark some anger within myself in reaction to this assessment, but find that I can't. Maybe I am too tired, maybe I don't care, maybe she is right. It's always seemed to me that finding someone who loved me the most, who I also loved the most, would be an impossible task. So why bother?

‘Paloma, you've sent me another anorexic dwarf. Seriously, where are all the two-metre girls this season? I get that she's just turned fifteen but surely we haven't rinsed Eastern Europe for all the gangly freaks already? I need endless legs this season – you've seen the hem-lengths. It needs to evoke repressed, smouldering sexuality.'

Trigger is standing facing the left wall of the showroom, biting at a manicured thumbnail, perfectly threaded brows knitted in deep concern. It is covered in the models' profile cards, stuck on with Blu-Tack with a perfect inch of empty space bordering them. Trigger cannot bear it when they are uneven. Paloma Stone, stylist supreme, is sprawled on a rotating chair, her next-season spiked Balmain ankle boots
jutting into the air above the table they rest on like shiny, malevolent scarabs.

‘Darling, I know she's a midget but those cheekbones! They're so gloriously swollen it's as if she's eaten a dumbbell. Besides which she's booked for the next Prada campaign and already has major buzz online. You can't think she's too thin? Her proportions are beautiful, darling, so elegant.'

‘No, no, her body is perfect; it's her height I'm concerned about. Amazons are what I'm going for, except, you know, not strong-looking. I want super-willowy. I have a vision for the new nineties waif, but less street urchin and more frail and ethereal. Like Ophelia dragged out of a lake. Sexy but consumptive. Do you know what I mean?'

‘Ophelias-on-smack, of course I know what you mean, darling!' Paloma laughs throatily, throwing back her head. Her mountain of candyfloss bleach-blonde hair bobs up and down, pinned and braided around her head in an impossibly chic birdsnest.

‘Like that Karen Elson image by Roversi. Except no red hair, I feel like that has had its moment. But pale, very pale. I want real dishwater blondes and minky-browns. Very natural, a bit wild. The silhouettes are prim so I need lots of long shins and nipples and just-fucked hair, you know?' Trigger is pacing back and forth with the concentration of a major general strategizing his next attack.

‘Darling, I feel you; I can see it exactly. Vanessa Bell taken
roughly in a hedge and then throwing a dinner party not realizing her blouse is ripped and her red lippy is smeared.'

‘Yes! Exactly. Thank God you're here, Paloma.'

They both cackle wildly, their pre-show nerves asserting themselves. Trigger calms down first and abruptly slumps his head into his hands. He is a very attractive man in that particularly English, fine-boned aristocratic fashion. He looks like he emerged from the womb in a vintage tweed suit, shotgun in hand, fully prepared to deliver pheasants and foxes into the afterlife. Nonetheless, stress has taken a toll on him – his face is wan and tight, his hair greasy, his thin shoulders hunched.

‘Did you see the calves on Bin Shu? She's looking almost sturdy. She'll definitely have to wear trousers. When will all this BMI bullshit go away?' he despairs.

‘It will, it will. These things always have their moment and then pass. Fashion isn't for fat people. Look at Ruby. She was the poster girl for plus size and she got her hipbones back in no time.'

Though I know, intellectually, that it is completely fucked up to view someone whose waist is over twenty-four inches as tipping the scales, in photos one's eye quickly adapts to what seems absurdly thin in real life. At the moment, I am organizing the assembled preliminary looks together on a rail, each girl's shoes and accessories placed in Ziploc bags with their names on, as quietly and efficiently as possible.
They both seem to have forgotten that I am here, or they don't care to censor themselves.

This sort of conversation may be very non-P.C. but is typical amongst many people in the industry. I am complicit in it as well. I laugh along to the jokes, while inwardly reflecting that if these girls are heavy, one more cupcake will tip me into morbid obesity. I secretly admire women with visible ribcages and if I read an article in
Heat
captioned along the lines of ‘Wasting Away! Heartache And Mental Illness Take Their Toll On Troubled Starlet' I wonder where I can get myself some of that.

Most of the time, I view my body fat as smothering my potential for a better, more glamorous life rather than completely normal and healthy. It's hard to adhere to feminist principles of self-acceptance and love when constantly surrounded by reminders of an ideal that is impossible for most to achieve. Even if I'd studied Biochemistry and went on to work in a lab searching for answers to worthy scientific questions, far removed from deep and meaningful contemplation of the legs of a lucky one percent, the female urge to self-annihilate by comparison is so strong that I don't think I would feel any different.

As each girl enters the room for the casting, they are fussed over like princesses; the moment they've left they inspire either enraptured appreciation or a cruel dissection of miniscule flaws. The common complaint is that they are
expanding. At first, when issues over the life-threateningly low weights of models began to get media attention, the British Fashion Council tried to encourage healthy standards. The girls retained their tiny measurements, clearly afraid of losing campaigns. Then, gradually, some of them started to fill out. Not in such a way that they would be deemed overweight in real life. Enough that a few centimetres' difference here and there could be discerned by distressed designers.

Of course, some of the girls are naturally tiny. You can always tell the ones that aren't by the protruding spines, jutting pelvises and downy hair covering their bodies. That isn't to say that the naturally thin ones are eating in a way that one might deem ‘typical', though who knows – it is impossible to monitor someone's eating habits and if they say cheeseburgers and pizza are a daily staple, who am I to cry bullshit? Bizarre diets and sporadic starvation seem to be the norm whether or not our jobs depend on them; for many women it is a weird badge of honour to self-efface. Models are just paid for it. I would certainly be thinner if I had thousands of pounds hanging in the balance. Although I should say that most of them barely eke out a living, living in cramped shared apartments, their initial fees going straight back to their agencies to cover the cost.

‘Who's next?'

‘Gaia,' I say after a pause, not immediately realizing that this was directed at me. Trigger's habit of only looking his
equals or right-hand man in the eye can make it difficult to know when he is actually addressing you. As is his inability to remember names. We are all interchangeable, shadowy ‘You there's, bearing dresses, fabric, scissors, coffee.

‘At least Gaia's always been fat,' Trigger sighs. ‘No surprises there. We'll probably have to put her in a toile again.'

Last season, all the garments had been so tightly fitted that they had to pull out a dropped stretch-crepe evening gown for her to wear. Even then, the fabric rippled, too tight along her slightly rounded stomach and shapely hips. As it was in the show, it then needed to be put into production. It didn't sell particularly well in spite of Trigger's hope that it would attract what he dubbed the ‘Big Girl At A Wedding' customer.

‘You've got to have some occasional bosoms, my darling, and the press love her. Besides, she's so nice. And since she got out of rehab her face has lost that puffy look, she's really never looked better.' Paloma admires her long tapered manicure in the air, a bubble-gum Barbie pink so tacky that it comes all the way back to the realm of cool.

‘I'm not saying I don't love her, I do, she's fantastic. I just wish she'd get a bout of dysentery twice yearly. Is that so much to ask?'

They are still laughing as Gaia comes in, all dirty-blonde hair, long legs, swollen breasts and bee-stung lips. She is a walking Bardot-esque wet dream and at a standard, consistent size eight, the token ‘voluptuous' girl. I've always admired
her. It takes balls to always be the largest in a room full of girls paid for their ability to be small and not to change. Now she is a big enough name not to have to warp her body to fit the dresses, but that wasn't always the case. Though I would kill for her figure, after dressing girls with limbs like gazelles all morning, their size has been normalized to me. In comparison, Gaia does carry notable heft.

‘Gaia! You look fantastic. Love agrees with you! How is darling Steve?' Paloma gushes, her long legs swinging off the table in one graceful movement as she stands up to air-kiss.

‘He's wonderful, wonderful. So sweet to me. I'm going on tour with him next month,' Gaia whispers in breathy, little-girlish German-accented English.

From what I've gathered, she is referring to Stephen Biche, a slightly cheesy but very sexy singer whose messy separation from his wife (also a model, but a late-thirties brunette so, clearly, he has broader taste than some of his ilk) has only just begun to die down in the papers.

‘How fabulous! I know his ex-wife a little socially, total bitch. Dresses like a WAG as well, I bet you she'll end up with a washed-up footballer, if she manages to land another ring. You two are a much better match,' Paloma assures her.

Gaia has the grace to look uncomfortable at this, but smiles politely.

‘So, let's get started, I'm thinking one of these transparent
loose-knit jumpers, we want to showcase those fantastic bosoms, darling.'

Gaia strips down to a tiny, flesh-coloured thong, shoving her size forty-one feet into a pair of dangerously high and cripplingly tight size thirty-nine stilettos. I pull out the garments they had previously cordoned off as having enough stretch to fit her. I manhandle her smooth legs into a pair of trousers that barely zip up at the back, thinking about how many men would kill to be a fly on the wall right now. The sight of such physical feminine perfection is wasted on Trigger and Paloma. Myself, I am trying to be professional and not stare, but cannot help marvelling at the gravity-defying, cream-coloured, peachy-nippled breasts hovering directly in front of me. I slip a deconstructed loose-knit mohair jumper covered in holes over Gaia's obediently raised arms. I am in awe of her jackpot beauty, not even slightly jealous. You might as well curse a sunset for its brilliance.

‘Right. Love the jumper but literally the whole of your left tit is hanging out. We want sex but this looks like assault, and after Lee, no one can do rape-y without looking derivative. You know what I mean? But those trousers are so conservative … let's take it all off,' Paloma states bluntly.

‘You think the trousers are too conservative? I wanted to overprint them, but the shape is quite accessible,' Trigger says defensively. Accessible is code for ‘able to be worn by someone over eight stone'. He continues, ‘And I don't know
if the woman who would wear an accessible trouser would wear a printed trouser.'

Trigger drops to his knees in front of Gaia and makes a twirling motion with his finger, sighing with concern. The reality of being a designer who owns his own company is not, as you might think, greater creative freedom. Being bought by an LVMH or Gucci Group will allow you to scale heights of creative freedom that will be guzzled up by a select quota of celebrities, oligarchs' wives and Saudi princesses. This is funded through the expansion into the real money-makers of the industry: the extravagantly marked-up perfume, cosmetic and accessory sales that are affordable enough to enable the average woman to buy into the dream.

‘I don't know darling, does the Schrödinger girl wear accessible trousers? Is she an accessible woman? Or is she an aspirational woman? Aspiration is press, accessible is filler.'

Paloma is far from an accessible woman. Though not especially thin herself, every wildly tailored designer item on her over-accessorized body screams ‘aspirational'. Even her eyeliner is intimidating.

‘You think it's accessible?' The word pushes Trigger close to tears. Paloma rapidly backtracks.

‘Darling, I'm talking about one pair of trousers! Not the whole collection! They are beautifully sharp and we need a few minimal things but we need to put them with something
else to ratchet up the weird factor. Here, you, get her out of this and into something like – this.'

Paloma pulls out a dove-grey jersey dress with a plunging neckline and complicated loops of beading accenting a spidery black-and-acid-yellow print. It is just stretchy enough to fit Gaia, encasing her like a supremely indecent glove. She then pulls out what Trigger has dubbed the ‘Clochard Cape', a beautiful distressed lambskin inspired by a Parisian tramp. She skews it to the side so it swings open rakishly.

‘That is fantastic. So beautiful. Can you walk?'

Gaia marches up and down the showroom, scowling in impossibly hip mock-fury doubtless aided by her too-small six-inch heels. It is quite remarkable.

‘Fur. Do you have any fur hats? I love these stoles but I think one or two Anna Karenina hats would just perfect this. Don't you think?' Paloma purrs.