The Knockoff (20 page)

T
hrowback Thursday was one of Imogen’s favorite things about Instagram. After Tilly introduced her to the concept of posting a vintage shot once a week she began searching the boxes she kept under her bed for old tear sheets and Polaroids taken backstage at Fashion Weeks and photo shoots over the past twenty years. On Monday she found the perfect picture—a vintage shot, probably twenty years old, of Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista sipping champagne in a bathtub.

The photograph was worn at its glossy edges, one corner ripped cleanly across. In it, the women are giggling. Naomi is covering her face, an eight-carat diamond on her slender finger, crossing over the top of her lips. Christy is half hidden underneath the other women, only a sliver of her beautifully imperfect face peeking through. Half of the photo is a tangle of long legs, unclear where one body ended and the other began. Imogen had taken the picture in a suite at the Ritz after the couture shows in Paris. It was the perfect moment captured with a Polaroid camera and would have been so much more famous if it had been taken today, but before the Internet only a select few people had ever seen this private moment. Imogen snapped a photo of the old picture with her phone and posted it as she sipped her macchiato at Jack’s before heading into the office. “One word: SUPERS.
#ThrowbackThursday.” Imogen smiled. She had cracked this whole Insta-shizell game.

“Such a fun Throwback Thursday, Imogen,” Natalie, a lovely wisp of a WASP blogger, wearing a cream cable-knit sweater with patches of leather at the elbows on top of teensy black leather leggings and pointy mules, said as she wound her way through the rows of desks.

“Big thanks, darling. I can’t tell you how much I adored those girls. That was such a fun day. Pop into my office later and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Buzzfeed just reposted it!”

Imogen opened her eyes wide with surprise. “Oh my! Is that a good thing?”

“It’s a great thing. I am sure it will be picked up everywhere. So if it’s okay with you, I’m going to post it on our website.”

“Of course it’s okay. Let’s make sure we get that traffic.” Imogen was almost completely positive that she had used the word “traffic” in the right context there. She held up her hand for a high five. Natalie looked at it in confusion for just a second before earnestly going in for the hand slap. Other members of the team looked up from their previously stony silence and smiled at the interaction. Imogen felt a little lighter than she usually did walking through the office. Today would be a good day.

She could see Eve standing at her desk wearing her Google Glass, her eyes furiously darting between her computer screen and her iPhone. Thankfully she didn’t glance up as Imogen walked past, too intent on whatever she was working on. Settled in at her own desk, Imogen checked her Instagram. Her #ThrowbackThursday had 9,872 likes, which was 9,800 more likes than anything else she had ever posted. That Buzzfeed knew what it was doing.

Imogen’s phone pinged. Before she even opened it, Imogen could tell it was part of a group text.

It was a collage of four pictures. In one there were two hands clinking champagne glasses. In another a vase of three dozen or so white roses. Then a close-up of an enormous princess-cut diamond ring and in the fourth there were Andrew and Eve kissing, her left
hand touching his cheek in a way that made her diamond perfectly catch the light.

Andrew had proposed to Eve. Eve was marrying Andrew. Eve was marrying Imogen’s ex-boyfriend
. Those three thoughts raced through her head before she had time to process that Eve had just sent a photo collage of her engagement to her entire address book. She heard squeals from a contingent of girls over near Eve’s office. Imogen knew she should go over there. The staff would surely judge her if she didn’t, but her legs felt like lead. Since the day she met Alex she hadn’t given a thought to who Andrew would date after her, except that she pitied the poor girl who came next. Andrew was a man she was sure would never completely change, no matter how successful he became, how high an office he achieved. And yet, it was Andrew she now felt protective of. It wasn’t jealousy; it was the nagging feeling that Eve had done this specifically to annoy her. She couldn’t let that idea bubble too close to the surface and she most definitely couldn’t say it out loud to anyone, since it made her seem incredibly self-important. Perhaps this had nothing to do with her. Eve had a thing for powerful older men and Andrew was exactly that. Andrew liked young, clever women. New York City was filled with both of those kinds of people. Either the universe had played a grand trick on her when it brought this couple together or it had somehow been engineered by Eve to make her feel exactly like this. She shook her head and breathed in through her nose. She had waited too long to go in there and shouldn’t wait any longer. Reaching into the mini fridge in her office, Imogen pulled out a bottle of vintage pink Dom Pérignon sent over by Marc Jacobs when she returned to work. About fifteen girls were crowded into Eve’s office admiring her ring.

“I told him I wanted a giant diamond,” Eve was telling the girls. “It’s my insurance policy. He can’t back out after getting me a ring like this.” Eve laughed the loudest at her own joke.

Imogen stood outside the glass wall and popped the cork, making sure she pointed it away from Eve, despite the dark thoughts lurking in the back of her mind.

“Cheers, darling. It looks like we have something to celebrate.”

Eve’s look of surprise pleased Imogen. She had not expected her to come over, had expected her to pout. Imogen was so glad she hadn’t given her the satisfaction.

“I don’t know if we have proper champagne glasses, but I am sure we can find something to toast Eve and Andrew with. And what a lovely collage you made, Eve. I certainly hope you shared that across our social networks.” The smile was starting to pain her face, but she managed a joke anyway. “And are our readers able to BUY IT NOW?”

“I did share, Imogen,” Eve replied shortly, twisting the ring on her finger. “I somehow doubt that most of our readers could afford a ring like this, but that isn’t a bad idea. Maybe I’ll put up a few knockoffs.” She remained taken aback, as if she expected Imogen to club her with the champagne bottle next. She seemed disappointed, like she wanted Imogen to attack.

“I am going to check the kitchen for some cups.” Imogen gave a wink to the crowd. “No one tweet that we are drinking at the office before ten a.m.!”

Four people tweeted that they were drinking champagne at the office before ten a.m., but Imogen didn’t pay it any mind. She kept going through the motions of being pleased for Eve.

At noon Eve called everyone into the conference room. She placed both palms down on the conference table and Imogen could tell by the way she kept moving her hand around that she was trying to find the perfect angle to achieve the maximum amount of light glinting off her diamond.

“I want to thank everyone for all of the congratulations this morning,” Eve started. “I can’t say this was really a surprise. I had been expecting this to happen for a few weeks now. I mean…I practically picked this thing out myself. And so I decided to find a way that this wedding can benefit all of us. Andrew and I plan to get married in a month. Literally…one month. I mean…can you even? ‘How is she going to plan a wedding in one month?’ is what I know you’re thinking. ‘Is she crazy?’ ” Eve twirled her index finger clockwise around her right ear in the universal sign for insanity.

“I assure you I am not nuts. I have a plan. We are going to live-stream
my wedding on the
Glossy
site. How cool is that? Everything that the readers see during the wedding will be available for sale on the site, from the bridesmaids’ dresses to the guests’ dresses and even my dress! They can buy everything right then and there. Can you imagine how cool it will be for a girl sitting at home in Wisconsin looking at her computer screen to feel like she’s a part of a fancy black-tie New York City wedding and then be able to buy a version of anything that she sees? I don’t want to pat myself on the back, but this is just absolutely genius.”

Imogen was trying to think of something to say. It was genius, completely self-aggrandizing, but Imogen had to admit that it was smart—the kind of stunt that would get the app a ton of publicity. Sure, Eve might be criticized by some folks in the media, but this wedding would get her a ton of attention. It was the opposite of what Imogen had wanted on her wedding day.

She and Alex eloped to Morocco and said their actual vows in front of Bridgett and Alex’s brother Geno in the most romantic hotel in the world, La Mamounia in Marrakech. She’d never seen a more handsome man than her future husband, wearing a pale blue linen suit she’d borrowed from Ralph, looking like he belonged in a summer fashion campaign. She walked toward him down the aisle in a beautiful foam-white silk bias-cut dress with skinny spaghetti straps, a design by her friend Vera Wang. On her feet she wore super-high silver sandals and her only accessory was a small diamond ring in an antique art deco setting belonging to Grandmother Marretti. The day was heaven on Earth.

But then, to please her mum, Imogen agreed to a second very small, very intimate London church wedding with about forty of her mother’s friends and neighbors present in a tiny old Chelsea church with ivy-laced walls and a fantastically jolly vicar.

You could see her mother’s house if you craned your neck around the corner.

Imogen was secretly delighted to be able to wear her wedding dress twice. Massimo and Bridgett brought bags and bags of confetti. Her favorite shot of the day was in black and white, confetti everywhere,
she and Alex with smiles as wide as the church doors. She didn’t need that picture on an Instagram account. It remained clear and in focus in her mind.

Just tea and sandwiches followed. Alex’s parents joined them, but the rest of his family had absolutely no interest in making the six-hour flight from Queens to London. The real celebrity of the day was the cake, a meringue with whipped cream, covered in whole strawberries. It was Imogen’s dream cake and they spent more on it than they did on the rest of the wedding events combined. For twenty minutes it was the most beautiful cake Imogen had ever seen, five tiers of meringue clouds topped with the ripest strawberries that England had to offer. Everyone oohhhed and ahhhhed over the cake and then turned to take photos of the bride. When they looked back the cake had collapsed inward on itself as if it had been siphoned through a black hole. There was a reason that strawberries don’t top meringue cakes. The acid from the fruit makes the entire thing unstable. Though the cake melted into itself before the newlyweds could cut their first slice, it didn’t stop them from eating it like soup from bowls.

Smiling at the memory, she saw Eve frown in her direction.

I
mogen drank her coffee at her kitchen table and wondered:
Is it normal to stalk someone you don’t know on Instagram?
When she gave her a tutorial, Tilly had assured Imogen that she could follow anyone at all, even strangers, preferably strangers.

Aerin2006’s Instagram feed was delightful and Imogen couldn’t get enough of it. It was also quite clever. When you tapped on one of her pictures, the names of the designers she was wearing appeared as if by magic.
Could just anyone do that?

Who was this woman behind the well-curated pictures? The account was definitely owned by a woman because half of her posts were her #OOTD, or Outfit of the Day. The photographer always artfully kept her face out of the picture. Most of these were cleverly taken in the back of a taxi on what looked like a ride to work. Imogen also loved the pictures of Aerin2006’s beauty products, always laid out on a porcelain bathroom sink. In another shot there were rows and rows of colorful and mouthwatering macarons lined up on a desk at her office, paired with a list of the most delicious flavors you have ever heard of, like Caramel Fleur de Sel, Honey Lavender and Lychee Rose. This was tagged with #ShoppitOffice and #Office Snacks. Google informed Imogen that Shoppit was a relatively new
commerce platform trying to compete with Amazon in the high fashion space.

What a refreshing change Aerin2006’s Instagram was from the predictable pictures of babies, cats, dogs and bacon that dominated the rest of Imogen’s feed. The account was exclusive too. It followed only 97 people in comparison to the 567,000 followers it commanded. Imogen grew intensely excited when she received a notification that Aerin2006 was following her!

She wanted another cup of coffee and considered the Nespresso machine perched on the corner of the granite countertop with a measure of disdain. A well-intentioned gift from Alex to satisfy her morning craving for a macchiato, the machine, apparently the Ferrari of coffeemakers, thwarted her at every attempt, making her feel clumsy and silly. She much preferred her old-fashioned French press, a gift from her mother when she’d gotten her first apartment in New York City and a fail-safe kitchen device for nearly twenty years. This new device came equipped with a cup warmer and a milk frother and six buttons that did something different each time she pushed them.

She pulled out the stained old French press and set the kettle on the stovetop.

While waiting for the water to boil, Imogen commented on one of Aerin2006’s photographs of a model hoisting a giant Valentino bag over her head that was juxtaposed with a hockey player hoisting the Stanley Cup high into the air.

“Victory is in the eye of the beholder,” Imogen wrote, quite pleased with herself.

She was just finishing up and moving to check her email when Annabel wandered downstairs. It was fifteen minutes earlier than she usually emerged in the morning and she was wearing one of Alex’s cable-knit fisherman sweaters over her khaki school pants.

“Does this make me look fat?” she asked. Imogen felt a stab in her stomach hearing her beautiful daughter even say those words out loud. Ever since Annabel was a baby, Imogen had been careful to try to cultivate a positive body image, knowing that her own job as the editor of a magazine about fashion could somehow lead her daughter to doubt her looks. Objectively it was true that Annabel was
a beautiful little girl, a replica of Alex. Johnny was the one with the blond curls and fair and delicate features like Imogen’s, but Annabel had her husband’s dark smoldering looks. She was a healthy size, not stick thin like many of the little girls in her school, but athletic, which was a natural by-product of years of soccer practice and eating well.

“Darling, you look adorable.” Annabel winced at the word “adorable.” Ten was most definitely too old to be referred to as adorable.

Imogen kept going. She didn’t know what else to do. “You look beautiful. Do you want me to braid your hair?” Annabel shook her head, her dark curls moving in waves around her shoulders.

“Are you sure? We can do one of those wonderful wraparound braids, the kind I saw Selena Gomez wearing to her movie premiere last week. I taught myself how to do it from a YouTube video just so I could do it on your hair. I know it will look so pretty on you.” Annabel had her arms crossed in front of her still blessedly flat chest and looked at her with skepticism. Imogen could tell the idea of a wraparound braid was incredibly appealing. Maybe now was the time to talk about Candy Cool.

“And is there anything at all you want to talk about?” The girl just shook her head, choosing instead to plop herself in front of Imogen. This was her way of telling her, without telling her, that she did want her hair braided.

Imogen had to stop herself from leaning in to take a whiff of her daughter’s head. Ever since they were babies Imogen loved nothing more than smelling Annabel’s and Johnny’s heads. She thought she would get over it once they no longer had that distinctive new baby smell, but it carried over into their time as toddlers and even now, with Annabel on the cusp of being a teenager. Instead she wound her fingers through Annabel’s soft hair, trying to remember what she’d watched on the video the night before. The result was surprisingly good and Imogen asked permission to snap a picture of it for her Instagram.

“I won’t put your face in it, I promise.”

Annabel’s face fell for a second.

“You don’t think I am pretty enough to put my face in it?”

“No, sweetie. No, not that at all. I just didn’t want to violate your
privacy. We can put your face in it.”
Who is planting these terrible thoughts in my daughter’s head? When had this once confident child become so insecure?

“No,” Annabel replied. “Let’s keep my face out of it. Just my pretty hair.” Imogen obliged and snapped the photo of the braid winding around the back of her head before helping her daughter get the rest of her things ready for school. As they prepared to head out the door, Imogen smiled when she noticed Aerin2006 liked her braid photo. She left a smiley face emoji in the comments section.

She planned to meet Rashid for coffee before going into the office. He had promised to give her a crash course in traffic. That was specifically what she asked for in the text message she sent him.

>>>>Could you teach me about traffic?<<<<

>>>>U R adorable<<<<

He was already sitting at one of the six tables in Jack’s when she arrived, thumbing through something on his iPad, which he quickly stashed away when she walked in, rising to kiss both of her cheeks and then lean in for a hug to top it off. She marveled at his use of color. Today he wore a bright yellow wool overcoat atop a navy sweater, perfectly fitting olive-green flat-front pants that hit right at his ankle and laced black brogues. Did he ever wear socks?

He sat back down. One of the things she liked about Rashid was that he put his electronic devices away during a meeting, giving you his undivided attention, unlike Eve, who behaved as though you were an unwanted distraction keeping her away from her gadgets.

Imogen offered to buy Rashid a macchiato, but he waved her hand away to indicate he had already ordered two for them and that they should be waiting on the counter. Once again she marveled at his efficiency. Sure enough, there they were, two perfectly foam-topped macchiatos just waiting for her to pick them up.

“Rashid, do you know anyone at Shoppit?”

“I do indeed. I went to Stanford with their chief technology officer.”

“When, like yesterday?” Imogen teased. Rashid bristled and Imogen remembered it was just as rude to joke about someone being too young as it was to joke about someone being too old.

“Six years ago, thank you very much. Anyway, he is some kind of freak kid genius.”

“Isn’t that what you are?” Imogen asked.

“No way! Not like this guy. Erik started Stanford when he was fourteen. He stayed there eight years, which is how I got to meet him, but in that time he got a BA and two master’s.” Imogen, who had never even gone to university, didn’t know what to say to that. “Why do you ask?” Rashid’s golden eyes looked at her with curiosity.

“I am trying to figure out who someone is who works there. I follow her on Instagram and I like all of her pictures and she likes mine and I am just curious whose pictures I am liking.”

Rashid nodded. “Probably Aerin Chang.”

“Yes, Aerin2006! That’s her. Who is she?”

“She’s the CEO over there. And you have good taste. Her Instagram is awesome, isn’t it?” Imogen nodded again.

“Is she also, like, ten years old?” She had to stop cracking these jokes.

“I think she graduated in 2006,” he replied. Imogen did the mental math. That made her thirty. A thirty-year-old CEO! “Also from Stanford…a couple of years before me. She’s amazing. The two of you should definitely meet.” The idea was creepy to Imogen, starting a friendship online and then moving it offline.

“Maybe you can introduce me one of these days?”

Rashid nodded. “Of course. You’ll get along splendidly. She loves fashion, loves designers. She has a real respect for them, not like a lot of these other e-commerce brats.” Imogen knew he was talking about Eve. “She has an eye for what works. Now, tell me why you brought me here. Was it really just to help you cyber-stalk Aerin Chang?”

Imogen laughed and shook her head, but that was the main problem with his question. Imogen didn’t know exactly what it was that she wanted to know or what she needed from him at all.

She heard the word “traffic” bandied about the office like it was some kind of celebrity. She knew that it meant more people were
coming to their website and that was a good thing. What she didn’t understand was any of the other things Eve was constantly mentioning in relation to the traffic.

“You do know that people teach entire classes on this, right? Sell books about it?” Rashid had a smart little twinkle in his eye.

Imogen was happy to take his word for it.

“I think what I want to know is, how can I sound like I know what I am talking about in a meeting about the site’s performance?”

“Oh, darling, that’s easy. Let’s talk about increasing your conversion rate.”

“My what?”

“Your conversion rate. Conversion is the act of changing visitors on the site and the app into customers. It’s the most important of all the traffic components. One thing that I tell my clients, who, by the way, I charge way more than the price of a decent macchiato”—he looked at her with mock anger—“is that the longer they have someone on their site, the more likely they are to sell them things. No one wants to feel like they have wasted their time. They want to buy something. You just need to keep their eyeballs on the screen and then make it really easy for them to check out once you have them hooked.”

Imogen was starting to understand. “So that’s why BUY IT NOW works so well.”

Rashid’s topknot wiggled as he nodded his head. “Exactly. It’s telling the visitor what to do. People like to be told what to do.”

“So what suggestions can I make to get us a better conversation rate?” Imogen asked.

Rashid sighed.

“ ‘Conversion rate,’ my dearest, not ‘conversation rate.’ Imogen, you’re actually killing me. But since you handed Bridgett off to me and she has an incredible app idea that just might make Blast! a hell of a lot of money, I am happy to help you pro bono. Here’s what I know. Your site actually makes fulfillment, buying, really easy. You store everyone’s information. You make everything go through a single process. It’s as close to one-click shopping as you are going to get. What you could do better is identifying the fringe consumer, the one
who is on the fence about making a purchase. If someone has been on the site for more than three minutes, they are thinking about buying something. How can you give them a nudge?”

Imogen sipped her macchiato, swirling the foam around with her spoon, before lifting it to her mouth, thinking about the kind of nudge that would get her to actually buy something right then and there.

“Ooooo, I have it,” she said a little too loudly, causing the couple at the table next to theirs to give her a disapproving stare. “We can have a coupon pop up after they have been on the website for three minutes giving them ten percent off.”

Rashid groaned. “Nooooo. I mean, yes. A coupon is a good idea, but just a plain old coupon is boring-sauce. It’s like giving someone a blender when they want a Vitamix.”

At least she was on the right track.

“Think, Imogen.” Rashid stood and stretched his arms skyward, his slender fingers cracking as they spread. “How can you engage your customer? How can you make them see that buying something from your site is something they have to do?”

Seeing. That was it. She remembered Eve in San Francisco opining on how the key to the selfie was all in the eyes.

“We want to see your sale face!” Imogen blurted out. “Your salefie. It’s a coupon, but you get it only if you share your best salefie—your excited-about-our-sale face. You share your
Glossy
salefie on Instagram with the hashtag salefie and we send you a coupon. Is that even possible?”

For a minute she thought Rashid might tackle her, he looked so excited.

“That. Is. Perfect.”

“Really? It’s a made-up word. Is it stupid to make up a word?” Imogen knew
she
thought it was stupid to make up a word.

“The Internet is all one big made-up word,” Rashid said. “What do you think Google and Twitter are? They’re baby talk. It’s all about how you own that baby talk.” Rashid snapped his fingers on the word “own.”

It made a lot of sense to Imogen. Still she marveled that Rashid could so easily give her something she could go into a meeting with
that might just possibly impress Eve and the rest of her team. She stood up to hug him.

“I owe you.”

“You don’t. You came up with hashtag salefie all on your own. I just gave you a bit of a nudge. You don’t owe me at all.” He smirked as he meticulously sipped on his macchiato. “In fact, I am going to see if I can buy salefie-dot-com. We may be on to something. I think you have a website or app idea percolating around in that gorgeous head of yours too, and when it’s ready, I’ll help you build it.”