The Time-Traveling Fashionista (2 page)

Louise had almost thirty minutes until dinner. Bored, she restlessly pushed open her closet door and stepped into the musty
annex. Her closet was huge—about half the size of her bedroom. But because of the house’s steep gabled roof, the ceiling slanted
sharply and rendered half the space useless. One bare bulb illuminated the room with a dim, shadowy glow. Her vast walk-in
closet was by far her favorite hideout in the huge, drafty house. It was the only place left where she still felt the nervous
anticipation that extraordinary and magical things could happen if she let her imagination go wild. She wasn’t a kid anymore,
though, so she couldn’t help feeling a little self-conscious now at her excitement over a closet.

When Louise was younger, she liked building forts in here; it was cozy and dark and somehow made her feel safe. She spent
hours reading with a flashlight in the nest of blankets she would arrange for just this purpose. Over the past year, as
her interest in fashion grew exponentially from the J.Crew catalog to Rodarte (the only dress she owned by them was made for
Target, but still, an actual designer label), she realized how lucky she was to have such a great storage area entirely for
her clothing. It was one of the lucky breaks of being an only child.

Her enthusiasm was sparked by a visit about a year ago to a thrift store on the Lower East Side of New York City with her
best friend, Brooke. Louise bought an amazing, one-of-a-kind, colorful knit dress that, according to the salesgirl, looked
like a classic Missoni piece from the 1970s. She wore it to Caroline Epstein’s bat mitzvah. The dress got her a million compliments
and cost her only $13.50. She was hooked.

A suspended wooden bar spanning the length of the closet hung from the highest point of the sloped ceiling. Her father, in
a surprising burst of do-it-yourself fervor, had constructed it for her last year out of some rope and dowels to house what
she had hoped would be an increasingly expansive collection. At this moment, her vintage acquisitions weren’t much of a collection
at all. They were more like three random pieces. But she was hoping that soon things would change.

Now she loved vintage fashion. If she couldn’t live in an old movie, at least she could dress the part. That was where she
and her mom differed. Her mom thought films should be old, but clothes should be new and donated to, not purchased at, places
like the Salvation Army.

When Louise wasn’t scouring the two local thrift stores, she was online researching different designers and eras. A well-worn
copy of
Shopping for Vintage: The Definitive Guide to Fashion
, a surprisingly perfect birthday gift from Grandpa Leo, was conveniently placed on her bedside table, so that if she dreamed
of a particular outfit, which Louise often did, she could look it up before it disappeared from her mind’s eye. The book also
gave her lots of tips for collecting vintage, and a directory of all of the best vintage stores throughout the world. She
would read through the shop listings on nights when she couldn’t fall asleep. Names like Decades, The Diva’s Closet, and Polka
Dots and Moonbeams. They all sounded so alluring! It was much more effective than counting sheep.

Louise now considered herself somewhat of an expert on vintage clothing. She could easily tell a Balenciaga from a Givenchy.
She knew that the term “vintage” referred to clothing up until the early 1980s, and everything past that would just be considered
secondhand. She could tell a Coco Chanel suit from a Karl Lagerfeld suit for Chanel. (Current Chanel designer Karl’s skirt
would fall above the knee—House of Chanel founder Coco would have found that indecent.) She knew that zippers were rarely
used before the 1940s. And she also knew that just because something was old, it wasn’t necessarily valuable.

Louise pulled out a royal blue, knee-length flapper dress
with a drop waist, sequins, and ostrich-feather trim, from her 1920s section (presently rather limited to this one piece).
It wasn’t a genuine Madeleine Vionnet, the French fashion designer of the twenties and thirties who basically invented the
bias cut, but on her current allowance, it was about as close as she was going to get. Noting that a matching sapphire boa
and T-strap heels would perfectly complete the look, Louise remembered the invitation to the Traveling Fashionista Vintage
Sale.

That would be a great place to look,
she thought, excited about the prospect of adding to her collection. At this point, she had completely exhausted the local
Salvation Army and Goodwill stores.

Hugging the flapper dress to her body, Louise closed her eyes and stopped for a moment to lose herself in the fantasy of the
outfit. It almost felt
real
. She was dancing in a speakeasy. It was loud and sweaty, and she swayed to the imaginary jazz music playing in her head and
twirled an invisible string of pearls between her fingers.

“Louise! Supper is ready!” Her mother’s shrill voice permeated her consciousness.

What an exciting life the woman who owned this dress must have led! Going to parties wearing this fabulous sparkling garment—Louise
guessed it was most likely a life of dancing in secret backroom joints, gambling, and gangsters.
She had read about the Roaring Twenties in history last year. The farthest Louise had gone dressed in this outfit was in front
of her bedroom mirror. She was excited for the dance because now she actually had an opportunity to dress up for something
besides her own fashion shoots with her Polaroid.

“Louise! I mean it!”

Well, for one thing, she bet this woman’s life hadn’t involved a nagging mother who freaked out if she was five minutes late
for dinner.

The Lamberts always ate dinner in the formal dining room. They lived in a large, rambling Tudor home, with lots of rooms that
always needed dusting, a back staircase, dumbwaiter, and two guest bedrooms whose doors remained closed. For a family of three,
it was enormous, but Louise knew every inch of it by heart—every squeaky floorboard and reading nook, and all the best spots
for hide-and-seek. It was the kind of place that felt like there had to be a secret passageway somewhere, and Louise was still
determined to find it.

Often it was only she and her mother sitting around the long mahogany table. Dark and shadowy oil portraits of Louise’s ancestors
hung gloomily on the Venetian red walls. Her father rarely made it home for supper, often working late hours at his law firm.
Dinnertime was when she most wished she had brothers and sisters to talk to. Sometimes she would imagine that her two-dimensional
painted relatives climbed
out of their canvas backgrounds and sat around the long table with Louise and her mom, filling the room with laughter and
lively conversations about her family’s history.

Mrs. Lambert was already at the head of the table when Louise came down. “Dahling, what were you doing up there? The meat
is getting cold,” she said in her faintly accented English, unfolding the white linen napkin and placing it on her lap.

“Sorry, Mom, I guess I got a little distracted,” Louise said, plunking down into the uncomfortable high-back chair.

“Hmm.” Mrs. Lambert sighed. “Why am I not surprised?” she asked, daintily cutting up a gray piece of mystery meat.

Before moving to Connecticut, her mother had grown up in a wealthy family in London and, unfortunately for Louise, after a
lifetime of maid service, Mrs. Lambert never really learned to cook. Boiled sausages, boiled potatoes, boiled peas and carrots.
It was always some variation of this bland, overcooked food that her mother drenched in malt vinegar. Mrs. Lambert insisted
that dousing every bite in vinegar was a typically English way to eat, which may have been the case, but it still tasted pretty
awful. She wished they could eat a normal dinner like macaroni and cheese at the kitchen counter or pepperoni pizza in front
of the television like everyone else got to. Whenever a friend came over for supper, Louise couldn’t help but be a little
embarrassed by their formality.

“Did you see that letter for you on the hall table?” Mrs. Lambert asked.

Louise nodded, her mouth full of mush.

“What was it? Another bat mitzvah?”

“No, an invitation to a vintage sale this Saturday. It looks cool. I thought I could get a dress for the dance,” Louise said
eagerly.

“Used clothes? Personally, dahling, I don’t know why you can’t buy a new dress. We can go shopping together this weekend if
you’d like. The owners of those clothes are probably dead by now. Their belongings sold off in an estate sale,” Mrs. Lambert
said. She gave a dramatic shudder, clearly not pleased with Louise’s new shopping habits.

“Mom, they’re just vintage clothes! And they’re special, one-of-a-kind,” she explained. Louise didn’t understand why her mom
didn’t get it.

“Do as you like, dear. I’m just saying that I’ll be more than happy to give you money for a new dress. Isn’t that what the
other girls will be wearing?”

Louise and Mrs. Lambert returned to eating their boiled mush in silence. The only sound was the clinking of the silver cutlery
against the china.

“Mom, tell me again about Aunt Alice?” Louise asked, staring up at the portrait of her great-aunt hanging on the wall behind
her mother’s head.

Mrs. Lambert had flown to London last week for Alice’s daughter’s funeral. Louise had wanted to go. She looked for any excuse
to travel, even the funeral of a distant second cousin who she had met only once before. Her mother never liked her to miss
school, so Louise stayed home with her dad.

She loved hearing stories about her mother’s family. Her mom was naturally a bit dramatic and therefore was a gifted storyteller.

“Well, dahling, when my aunt Alice was younger, she was a great beauty, and a talented actress,” Mrs. Lambert started.

Louise looked up again at the old lady with a face like a French poodle suspended in the dusty, ornate frame.

“Really?” Louise asked, incredulous. She had heard bits of this story before, but it was still difficult to reconcile that
image in the painting with anyone under the age of ninety. She would have to take her mom’s word for that.

“Yes, it’s true. She was quite famous back in her day.”

“She sounds so cool. I wish I’d met her.”

“She was certainly a character,” Mrs. Lambert said with a sigh. “Her life definitely could have been made into a movie. Even
I didn’t know the whole truth until last week.”

“What do you mean?” Louise asked, curious that someone in her family had lived a film-worthy life. Her reverie was interrupted
by the sound of a distant, ringing phone line from her bedroom.

Mrs. Lambert stared off into space, lost in her own thoughts. She had that dreamer’s ability to completely lose herself in
her own head, much like Louise. “That, my dear, will have to wait until you are a bit older.”

“Well, may I be excused, then?” Louise asked, shrugging off that her mother didn’t think she was old enough to hear about
her own family. “That was probably Brooke calling. We have a ton of math homework tonight.”

Louise cleared the table and ran up to her room to call her best friend so they could finish their assignment together over
the phone. Mrs. Lambert washed the dishes.