The Knockoff (35 page)

A lithe young man with jet-black hair, Mannering’s assistant perhaps, in a fine black suit and glasses that covered too much of his face, glided into the room with a silver tray of fresh doughnuts.

“They’re still warm,” he told the assembled crowd, as if they were the kind of people who regularly consumed these kinds of snacks in meetings. Their warm doughy scent kissed Imogen’s nostrils, reminding her of Café Du Monde. New Orleans could still be an option. It hadn’t gone anywhere.

Aerin smiled expertly and took control of the meeting. “Thank you for having me here. I know that this might not seem like a traditional media acquisition to you. I’ve had my eye on this for a while now. I’d been thinking about it even before Eve Morton changed the format of
Glossy
.” She left her seat and strolled around the room, forcing the board to swivel their heads to face her as she walked along the wall of windows, the wide expanse of Manhattan at her feet.

“I’m a fan of magazines.” Aerin threw up her hands. “Love ’em.
Most of you know that. I love print magazines. I love digital magazines too.”

She walked toward a shelf in the corner that displayed copies of all the Mannering publications and pulled the very last copy of
Glossy
they’d printed. Aerin ran her hand over the shiny cover.

“They can live together. My vision is to integrate
Glossy
’s incredible voice across all of Shoppit’s platforms. I want our editorial to come to life online the way it does in a magazine.” She paused and took another step, now directly across the table from Imogen.

“Additionally, I want to bring
Glossy
back to print. We probably won’t do twelve times a year right off the bat, but we will produce a beautifully edited print magazine four months out of the year as a companion to the editorial on Shoppit’s site. For women, the print experience is very unique. We shouldn’t do the same thing in digital we do in print. Keeping it separate but equal will keep things fresh.”

It hadn’t been what Imogen was expecting to hear by a long shot. Glossy
back in print?
She knew that Aerin had chosen to stand in that exact spot so that she could see Imogen’s expression when she revealed her plan. Imogen tilted her head to the side and made a small curtsy with her hand to tell Aerin it was all right to continue. Eve cleared her throat, her mouth twitching, and she made a noise as if she wanted to interrupt, but Aerin plowed forward.

“And now I want to introduce the team that I’ve painstakingly chosen to lead this huge endeavor for my company. We’re taking a very large and very expensive gamble on this and I need to have the very best people working with me.”

Eve grew taller in her chair next to Imogen, looking sideways at her, smirking. Shoppit was a tech company. Of course Eve would have a major role, perhaps even one above Imogen. That was the reason Imogen knew she couldn’t possibly stay on. It would be hard to tell Aerin that they wouldn’t be working together.

Aerin gestured to the middle of the table, where there was a plain manila envelope. “Imogen, we have an offer for you in there. I would love if you would look it over before I keep talking?”
What was this?
As Imogen reached across the tabletop to pick up the envelope, Eve’s eyes darted around, looking for a second envelope.

Imogen slid a nail beneath the metal prongs and pulled out a stack of contracts with an offer letter on the top. She could see Aerin Chang’s signature, bold and curvy on the bottom of the page.

This couldn’t be right.

“Imogen Tate, we would be thrilled to offer you the position of artistic director of Shoppit. When the board asked for my opinion on this I told them that there is no other person in the industry with your eye and the respect of your peers. If you accept, you’ll be leading the charge on a new generation of
Glossy
and overseeing the launch of all our other editorial properties and our portfolio of platforms.”

Eve’s and Imogen’s jaws dropped in unison. If they were in a cartoon, steam would have blown out of Eve’s ears.

Nothing but professional, Aerin didn’t let the temperature of the room faze her.

“Eve Morton will be working directly underneath Imogen Tate. She will be given the title of deputy editor.” Aerin looked over at Eve. Did she expect her to be pleased by the news? Deputy editor was still a big job. It was a huge job for someone who’d been an assistant less than three years earlier. But no one knew better than Imogen that it wasn’t big enough for Eve. A vein throbbed at Eve’s temple as Aerin clicked a button in her hand so that a slide appeared on a screen behind her.

It was one of the pages Imogen sent through the night before.

“The new
Glossy
is about fashion and the real woman. Designers no longer live in their ivory towers, and fashion magazines can’t either,” Aerin asserted. “The new
Glossy
will be completely interactive. The reader can enjoy it anywhere. In print, on their phone, on their tablet or on their computer. Imogen Tate is the woman who will help us make the magazine of the future.”

Making a noise between a grunt and a snort, Eve pushed her seat back from the table. She paused for just a moment and stared down at Imogen, then, without a word, stalked out of the room.

Aerin continued on to name a team of new business development folks from Shoppit who would be working to bring native advertising to the digital version of
Glossy
. She then turned to Imogen.

“Imogen, I trust you can build a staff of top-notch editorial folks to
get us back up and running. I’m sure you have some people already in mind.” She smiled warmly at her. Imogen tried to smile back. She hadn’t expected any of this.

She nodded. “I do.”

“Great.” Aerin looked over at another woman dressed all in black.

“Sara will prepare a press release to go out this afternoon.”

Aerin sat, signaling that the meeting was through, but rose again as Imogen got out of her seat. The two women drifted into the corner of the room and out of earshot, as the other executives filed out, patting themselves on the back to celebrate what the sale would do for the company’s plummeting stock price.

Imogen wanted to hug Aerin but extended her hand instead.

“I underestimated you. When I heard that Shoppit was going to buy this magazine, I thought that I was done for. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I wish I could have been up front with you about this sale from the very beginning.”

Imogen shook her head. “I understand. I really do. What
was
our meeting all about?”

Aerin smiled. “I wanted to know if you were really the Imogen Tate I imagined. I wanted to know if you were up for a challenge and for this kind of job.”

Imogen nodded. “I have a lot to learn, but I am.”

“It’s fine. We’ll teach you. And you will teach us how to run a magazine. I should let you know about one of the perks of working for a technology company.”

“The macarons?” Imogen said, raising an eyebrow.

“Nope. The technology. We make it easy for you to work from almost anywhere. We have people who do their jobs pretty much all over the world.”

She wanted the job. But she needed to be very up front with Aerin. “I won’t work with Eve.”

For a minute, Imogen thought she saw Aerin turn a slight shade of red.

“I agree with you. Mannering thought we had to offer her something but I knew she would never take the deputy job. If it comes down to having to choose between you or her, I choose you.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Do you want me to talk to her?”

“I’d prefer to handle it.”

Imogen could hear her phone buzzing on the table. “I hate to be rude, but could we pick up this discussion this afternoon? I need to take care of something downstairs.”

Even as she played out terrible things she wanted to do to Eve, a sense of calm crept over her. It was the calmest she had felt in a long time, the calmest she had felt since she learned about the cancer and definitely the calmest she had felt since coming back to work.

She had a text from Rashid.

>>>>Mission accomplished. I’m in Eve’s Twitter. Give me more instructions.<<<<

Things changed, but she could alter her original plan. She thought for a second and typed a few lines back to him, telling him exactly what she needed him to do.

When Imogen arrived downstairs, Eve was standing at her desk, her headset nested in her curls, furiously shouting to someone on the other end.

Standing in the door to her office, Imogen called out to her.

“Eve. Get in my office. Now.”

Her tone finally alerted the girl that it was time to listen to authority. Eve murmured into the mouthpiece of her headset before removing it from her head altogether. She walked slowly to Imogen’s office.

Imogen sat in her desk chair, the one Eve had twirled so capriciously in just months earlier.

Eve strode in, reeking of insolence. Imogen took a deep look at the girl. Her shoulders were thrown back, turning her body into a parenthesis. Her eyes narrowed into mean slits. One of her eyebrows arched slightly more than the other, giving her a perpetually sinister look.

“That’s bullshit what happened up there,” Eve spat, digging the heels of her hands into the edge of Imogen’s desk and leaning over it like a cobra ready to strike.

Eve unleashed her tirade. “What the hell do you know about running a website? Nothing. I should be the one in charge over at Shoppit. You didn’t even go to college. I went to fucking Harvard!”

Imogen stood tall and raised her hand to cut her off.

“Shut your mouth for once, Eve.” God, she would love to place her own hand over Eve’s mouth and shush her. “Sit down,” Imogen commanded, before she continued. Again, Eve did as she was told. Still glaring at Imogen, she perched on the edge of the couch.

“I am going to say this exactly once and after I say it, I never want to see you again. You’re nothing but a nasty, jealous bully. I know that you’re Candy Cool, Eve. I know that you have been harassing my daughter. You’re a sick and evil bitch, and I don’t know if you will ever recover from that. I think you sold your soul a long time ago. I think that’s the reason you walked down the aisle to marry a man you don’t love. I know you came back to
Glossy
to take my job, not to work with me. But you’re nothing but a cheap knockoff.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” Eve bared her teeth at Imogen, crossing her arms in front of her chest. Fury raged in her eyes and again Imogen was reminded of Nutkin. This time, she wouldn’t allow Eve the opportunity to slaughter any more lambs.

“You don’t. But you will,” Imogen said.

Eve believed she was invincible, that she would never be caught. Imogen imagined she had felt the exact same way up until the moment that she was found out for tampering with those prom queen ballots so long ago.

“You are an evil genius, Eve. You’re smarter than me in so many ways. You understand tech in a way that I never will. But you forced me to learn. For that, I suppose I have to be grateful. No. I am grateful. I’ll have a second act now. And you will too…but not at
Glossy
and not in New York City. You will never work in the fashion industry again, Eve. I don’t want you as my deputy and I don’t want you in this business. Go to Silicon Valley. Go to Silicon Beach. Create a Silicon something of your own back in Wisconsin. I don’t care. Plenty of people would die to hire you on the other side of the country. I never want to see your face on this coast again. Stay away from me, stay away from my family and stay the hell away from my magazine.”

Eve’s jaw nearly touched the floor.

In an instant, her expression changed into that of a little girl being chastised by her mother. She slumped back into the couch and rounded her shoulders. Her voice was quieter. “I only did it to upset you. I didn’t mean to hurt Annabel. It was just a way to hurt you.” Imogen held up her hand again. She didn’t want to hear it. Any of it. Of course Eve would think of some excuse for torturing a ten-year-old girl.

Imogen remained silent.

Eve was defensive, almost frightened. “So what are you going to do now? Are you going to go out there and expose me? Tell everyone what I did?”

Eve’s phone pinged with an alert. “What the fuck?”

Imogen smiled. “What, Eve?”

“I didn’t tweet that!”

Imogen glanced at the Twitter feed on her own computer.

@GlossyEve: A fond farewell to @Glossy and #NYC. I’m about to embark on a new adventure. C’est la vie!

Rashid worked fast. Now that it was tweeted to the world, there was no going back.

Eve’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t tweet that,” she said again through gritted teeth.

Imogen feigned surprise. “Well, then. I wonder who did.”

She rose and walked over to her office door to pull it open, gesturing for Eve to stand and walk out.

Eve repeated herself as she inched out of the office. “Are you going to tell everyone what I did?”

“No, Eve. No, I’m not going to tell everyone what you did. It isn’t all about you, Eve.”

Who Said Magazines Were Dead?

Shoppit Shakes Up Fashion Industry with Unveiling of New Glossy Magazine (YES, A MAGAZINE!)

By Addison Cao

August 1, 2016

And they said it couldn’t be done! The e-commerce newbie Shoppit unveiled their first issue of
Glossy
magazine this week after acquiring the editorial brand for a hefty price tag in January.

The first cover featured the stunning supermodel Chanel Iman, wearing Google Glass and a Balenciaga gown. The new magazine is expected to publish four times a year while the website updates daily with editorial, photo and video content. Artistic Director Imogen Tate said she expects the margins on the new product to exceed expectations in the first quarter.

“We still have the traditional advertisers that have always been loyal to print, but we are able to do incredible things online with native advertising and by driving traffic to our retail
partners at Shoppit,” Ms. Tate told us at the wedding of the baby-faced tech mogul Rashid Davis to super celebrity stylist Bridgett Hart, who is seven months pregnant. The extravagant affair took place on Richard Branson’s private Necker Island.

The magazine had a bumpy road over the past twelve months. While under the ownership of Robert Mannering Corp.,
Glossy
was shuttered and turned into a website and an app, run mostly by Editorial Director Eve Morton, who was notoriously wicked to her staff. Ms. Morton left the company after its acquisition by Shoppit and is currently working underneath (ha!) Buzz CEO Reed Baxter as his director of external sales. Ms. Morton recently split from incarcerated Congressman Andrew “I’ve Been Naughty” Maxwell. A little birdie told us Eve may be the reason Baxter and Meadow Flowers called off their
Game of Thrones
–themed nuptials last month.

Ms. Tate’s former assistant and
Glossy
community manager Ashley Arnsdale (you know, the one whose outfits always end up on the street-style blogs looking GORGEOUS) is reportedly working on a top-secret project for Shoppit involving vintage clothing.

Following her toast at the reception for Ms. Hart and Mr. Davis, Imogen Tate told us she welcomes this new age of digital-print partnership.

“The world isn’t ready to abandon print,” she said, raising her champagne glass into the air. Adding, with a laugh, “Plus, the Internet allows me to work remotely half the time, which is a bonus.” Ms. Tate and her family are currently splitting their time between an apartment in TriBeCa and a home they are renovating in the Garden District of New Orleans.

Ms. Tate will be giving a TED Talk next month titled “Don’t Call Me a Dinosaur: Embracing a New Era.”

Sitting on her wraparound porch, a balmy summer breeze smelling of magnolias, Imogen Tate read the story with a satisfied smile and clicked her laptop shut.