She was hugely relieved. It was a small price to pay for such a stupid business mistake, but she had learned an important lesson: The people you did business with were just as important as the business itself. It was a lesson every designer had to learn the hard way, because they certainly didn’t teach it in fashion school . . .
The telephone started ringing and interrupted her reverie. Victory was immediately filled with dread. It was probably bad news. All she’d had for the past three weeks was one piece of bad news after another, adding up to disaster.
She considered not answering the phone, but decided that would be cowardly. It was one of her assistants, Trish, from the design studio.
“Mr. Ikito’s called three times. He says it’s urgent. I thought you’d probably want to know.”
“Thanks. I’ll call him now.” She put down the phone and folded her arms across her chest as if she were cold. What was she going to tell Mr. Ikito? She’d managed to put him off for over a week now, using the excuse that she was traveling, but when it came to business, the Japanese were insistent about getting on with it. “I like you—you make decision quickly,” Mr. Ikito had said to her five years ago when they’d first started working together. However, Mr. Ikito wanted to make money, and he’d drop her in a minute if he felt she couldn’t sell. But what he was offering as a solution was unbearable.
Victory Ford fashions wasn’t a huge company along the lines of a Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein, but in the five years since she’d begun doing business with the Japanese, it had grown into a mini conglomerate, expanding far beyond the tiny one-person business she’d run out of her apartment. She had eighty-three stores in Japan, and this year, she and Mr. Ikito were going to expand into China, the next great frontier of potential consumers. Mr. Ikito licensed her designs—which included not just clothing, but handbags, shoes, sunglasses, and other accessories—and manufactured them himself in Japan, paying the production costs and giving her a percentage of the profits. With the addition of Mr. Ikito’s business, her company now brought in revenues of nearly five million a year.
Mr. Ikito hadn’t liked the spring line—in fact, he had hated it—and so, two days after her show, she’d flown all the way to Tokyo for a meeting, which had turned out to be an exercise in humiliation. Mr. Ikito wore Western clothes, but preserved the Japanese way of doing business—seated in front of a low wooden table on which they were treated to a typical tea ceremony—while he flipped through her look-book for the spring season. He was a small man with short, graying hair and a mouth like a guppy. “Miss Victory. What happen to you?” he asked, turning the pages with disgust. “Where you get these ideas? This is not you. And who wear these clothes? No woman wear long skirt in springtime. Not fun, flappy fashions. Women want to show off legs.”
“Mr. Ikito,” she said, bowing her head to show deference (she hated having to do this, but it was important to respect foreign business customs), “I was trying something new. I’m trying to grow. Expand. As a designer . . .”
“Why you want to do that?” Mr. Ikito asked in horror. “You big success. You know what you say in America—if not broke, don’t be fixing.”
“But I’m trying to get better. To be the best designer I can be.”
“Pah!” Mr. Ikito said, waving his hands in front of his face as if swatting at an insect. “You always thinking about the self in New York. Here, in Japan, we thinking about business.”
“I am thinking about business,” Victory objected, firmly but pleasantly. “If I’m going to survive as a designer long term, I need to expand my designs. To show that I can do couture . . .”
“What you want to do that for?” Mr. Ikito asked. “No money in couture. Everybody know that. Five year ago, you say you want to make millions of dollar . . .”
“And I still do . . .”
“But now you trying to be Oscar de la Renta. Or maybe Mr. St. Laurent,” Mr. Ikito continued, cutting her off. “World don’t need St. Laurent. World need Victory Ford.”
Does it? Victory thought, looking down at her tea.
“We got no Oscar stores here. Okay, we got one in Tokyo. But Victory Ford, she got eighty-three stores in Japan alone. You get what I saying?” Mr. Ikito asked.
“Yes, but Mr. Ikito . . .”
“I got answer,” Mr. Ikito said. He clapped his hands, and his secretary (Victory doubted that anyone would consider her an assistant) slid open the door in the rice-paper wall, and, clasping her hands together and bowing her head, asked in Japanese, “Yes, Mr. Ikito?”
Mr. Ikito said something back to her in Japanese. She nodded and softly slid the door closed. Mr. Ikito turned back to Victory. “You going to thank me. You going to say, ‘Mr. Ikito, he is genius!’ ”
Victory smiled uncomfortably. She felt a sickening guilt, like she was a small child who’d done something terribly wrong. Well, she had. She had disappointed Mr. Ikito. She never wanted to disappoint anyone. She wanted everyone to love her and praise her and pat her on the head like she was a good little girl. Why was it, she wondered, that no matter how successful she became, she couldn’t outgrow that instinct to kowtow to male authority? She was a grown woman with her own business that she’d started from nothing but her own creativity and industry; she even had a black American Express card. But here she was, sitting on pins and needles with Mr. Ikito, waiting for his solution, when she should have been telling him what she wanted to do. But she didn’t dare insult him. Why couldn’t she be more like Nico? she wondered. Nico would have said, “Mr. Ikito, this is the way it is. Take it or leave it . . .”
And then Mr. Ikito did something that made her stomach sink to her knees. He picked up the teapot, and holding his hand over the top, poured her more tea.
Victory swallowed nervously. At that moment, she knew that she wasn’t going to like Mr. Ikito’s “solution.” In Japan, pouring tea for someone had many shaded meanings, but in this case, it was an act of conciliation, a preparation for unpleasant news.
Mr. Ikito picked up his cup and sipped his tea, giving her a look that indicated he expected her to do the same.
The tea was hot and she burned her mouth slightly, but Mr. Ikito looked pleased at her acquiescence. Then the door slid open again and a young Japanese woman in a navy blue suit entered.
“Ah! Miss Matsuda!” Mr. Ikito exclaimed.
“Good morning, Mr. Ikito,” the young woman said, acknowledging him with a dip of her head. Her voice had a slight English accent, and Victory guessed that she’d gone to university in England, probably to Oxford.
“Miss Victory Ford,” Mr. Ikito said. “Meet your new designer. Miss Matsuda.”
Victory looked from Miss Matsuda to Mr. Ikito, who was beaming broadly. She was suddenly queasy, but she held out her hand politely.
There was no way she could go along with this.
“I love your clothes,” Miss Matsuda said, slipping into the space between the floor and the table next to her. “It will be an honor to work with you.”
We haven’t established that we will be working together, Victory wanted to say, but the back of her throat had gone dry and she couldn’t speak. She took a sip of her tea, trying to regain her composure.
“Miss Matsuda very good designer,” Mr. Ikito said, looking from one woman to the other. “She draw new designs just like old Victory Ford designs. You approve them, of course. We continue business and everybody happy.”
Victory coughed into her hand. “I’m sure Miss Matsuda is a very good designer,” she said cautiously, not wanting to reject this proposal out of hand. “But I’d have to see her drawings first. Before we decide anything,” she added.
“You see all drawings you want,” Mr. Ikito said, expansively throwing up his hands. “She good, you see. She copy everybody. She do Ralph Lauren better than Ralph Lauren himself.”
Victory’s only thought was that she had to get out of there. She was angry and insulted, but this was probably only ego, and when it came to business, sometimes you found you c
ould live with ideas that sounded despicable at first—if you could give yourself enough time to think about them and get over the initial insult. The important thing to do right now was not to react and cause a breach that couldn’t be mended.
She stood up.
“Thank you, Mr. Ikito, for your kind solution,” she said. “I have another meeting. I’ll call you after lunch.”
This in itself was risky, as Mr. Ikito expected her to stay for as long as he deemed necessary. He frowned. “You not like solution?”
“Oh no, it’s a very good solution,” she said, edging toward the door while bowing repeatedly like a marionette. If she kept bowing, maybe Mr. Ikito wouldn’t notice her hasty departure. Or at least not take it as a complete insult.
“You got to decide,” he said. “It very good offer.”
“Yes, Mr. Ikito. Very good,” she said. She reached the door and slid it back, and still bowing, stepped backward through the opening.
“Bye-bye,” Miss Matsuda said, giving her a small wave.
Bye-bye indeed, Victory thought, smiling.
Unfortunately, this seemed to sum up the whole situation.
She couldn’t allow her name on designs that weren’t hers—or could she, she thought, stepping out onto the crowded sidewalk. She began walking back to her hotel, thinking that the exercise might rid her of this feeling of claustrophobia. But the noise and the people and the traffic and the slivers of buildings rising precariously into an invisible sky only made her feel worse, and finally she hailed a cab. The door popped open and she collapsed onto the backseat. “Hyatt Tokyo Hotel,” she said weakly.
In her room, it was worse. Hotel rooms in Tokyo were notoriously small, and normally she booked a small suite at the Four Seasons, not minding the extra expense. But this time, as a penance, she’d checked into a tiny room at the Hyatt with a hard double bed (the Japanese had very different ideas about comfort) that barely fit into the slot of a room. She went into the bathroom (another tiny space about the size of a New York City closet), and wet a washcloth with cold water and placed it over her face. The washcloth was coarse and not really meant to absorb water. She took it off and looked at it and started crying.
This was how it always was, she reminded herself. From the beginning of her career, it seemed, she was always crying and then going back to work. Work, cry, work, cry, work, cry, she thought.
Still sobbing, she went into the other room and sat down on the hard bed. She imagined that most people would have been shocked at the amount of time she spent in tears, because her public persona was that she was cool and fun and fiercely optimistic, always believing that everything was going to turn out fine and that a new, exciting opportunity was just around the corner. She never cried in front of anyone (although assistants had caught her puffy-faced, she always pretended nothing was wrong), yet she didn’t censor herself either. It was important to release emotions—otherwise, you ended up becoming some kind of addict . . .
Then she lay on her back on the bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling, which was barely seven feet high. She would have liked to have called someone—Nico or Wendy, or some boyfriend or lover, which she didn’t have at the moment—anyone to listen to her woes and tell her she was wonderful and make her feel better—but there wasn’t anyone to call. And so she thought about how she would have to deal with this by herself, and how she had always dealt with everything by herself and gotten through it.
She didn’t call Mr. Ikito that afternoon. She waited until the next morning, and then she got on a flight to Los Angeles. She told him that she needed to think about his solution for a few days, and then she kept putting the decision off, concentrating on what was happening in the stores that carried her line in Los Angeles and Dallas and Miami and Chicago. And everywhere she got the same reaction: The spring line was “interesting.” But she had designed some other pieces, regular styles for the stores, hadn’t she? No, she hadn’t. How was the reaction in New York, then? Was Bergdorf’s taking the line?
They were, she assured everyone, and so was Barney’s, but what she didn’t mention was that they were only taking a few pieces. The most conservative ones. They were, in the words of the buyers, being “hopefully optimistic.” But it didn’t help anyone if they took pieces they would eventually have to sell at an eighty percent markdown.
Goddammit, she thought now, glaring at the phone where she’d placed it on the mantelpiece. What was wrong with everyone? Why were they so afraid? She didn’t care what anyone said. She knew the spring line was the best she’d ever designed. It was a complete departure, but it was exactly what she’d envisioned it should be, ever since she’d started thinking about it a year ago. And the truth was, she had expected glowing reviews. She had expected to be feted and talked about. She never would have admitted it to anyone, but there were moments when she had fantasized that this collection was going to launch her to a new level and possibly secure her place in fashion history. When she died, she wanted people to say of her: “She was one of the greatest American fashion designers.”
Okay, she was willing to live without it, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t try. But that was the problem with success: Once you got a taste of it, you wanted more and more. And there was nothing like success in New York City. You were admired and loved and slightly feared. There was safety and security in success. Whereas with failure . . .
She shook her head. She wouldn’t think about it. No one came to New York City to fail. They came to succeed. She had been here before, many times, on the brink of failure, and each time that fear had driven her to try harder. But in the past, it hadn’t mattered as much; she hadn’t had as much to lose. It was critical now to keep ahold of herself. She couldn’t freak out. She had to remain calm and continue on as if nothing were wrong and she wasn’t hurt and everything was going to be fine . . .
She had to call Mr. Ikito. But what was she going to say?
She wasn’t going to have her work taken away from her and redone by someone else like she was some Hollywood screenwriter. She wouldn’t be messed with like that, and if word ever got out that she hadn’t designed the Japanese line herself, it would destroy the credibility she’d worked so hard to achieve. This was the line, and she wouldn’t cross it. It was a point of honor, and in a world where there was very little honor left in any profession, you had to defend the few things that were still real and true.
The loss of her overseas revenues would seriously challenge the company, but she was just going to have to eat it. Something else would come along. Mr. Ikito was going to have to take her designs or forget it, and that was what she should have told him from the beginning.
She picked up the phone to call him, and as she did so, her eye fell on the CFDA Perry Ellis Award, proudly displayed in the middle of her mantelpiece. The award suddenly made her think twice. It was the curse, she thought wildly. The curse had finally found her after all. The Perry Ellis Award was the most coveted award in the fashion industry, given every two years to the most promising young designer in honor of Perry Ellis, who had died of AIDS in the late 1980s. Winning the award made a young designer’s career, catapulting him or her into the spotlight, but there was rumored to be a dark side: Several of the designers who had won the award had gone out of business. As one of the few women to have ever won the award, she’d been joking that being a woman had allowed her to survive the curse. But maybe it wasn’t true after all—and suddenly she saw her life unraveling before her. She was on a downward slide, and the next two seasons would bring the same reaction as the spring season, and the store orders would fall off and people would stop buying her clothes, and in a year and a half she’d be broke and on the street, and she’d have to move back to her hometown, single and a failure at forty-three . . .
The phone in her hand suddenly rang and she jumped, hastily pressing the button to connect the call. The woman’s voice on the other end was unfamiliar. “Victory Ford?” she asked.
“This is she,” Victory sa
id cautiously, thinking it was probably a telemarketer.
“Hi, this is Ellen from Lyne Bennett’s office.” She paused, as if to let the information that the great billionaire Lyne Bennett was calling sink in, and Victory nearly laughed. Why on earth would Lyne Bennett be calling her? she wondered. “I know this is out of the blue, but Mr. Bennett was wondering if you’d meet him for a drink next Thursday night at six p.m.?”
This time, Victory did laugh. What kind of man had his secretary make dates for him? But she mustn’t jump to conclusions. It probably wasn’t a date—she’d met Lyne Bennett several times over the years and he’d never paid attention to her. “Do you mind if I ask why?” she said.
Ellen sounded embarrassed and Victory immediately felt sympathy for her. What a job. “I think he . . . wants to get to know you, really. All I know is that he asked me to call you and see if you’d meet him.”
Victory thought for a moment. Rich men like Lyne Bennett had never been of much interest to her, but on the other hand, she wasn’t the type who attracted them either. She was too wild and outspoken to play the game of catering to a wealthy man, and she’d never bought the idea that a rich man’s money was the answer to a woman’s problems. But the fact that Lyne Bennett was bothering to seek her out meant that he might be different. And given her present situation, it probably wouldn’t hurt to at least be friendly.
“I’d be happy to meet him, but I’ve got the preopening of the Whitney Biennial next Thursday,” she said. “I don’t know if Lyne Bennett likes art . . .”
“He loves it,” Ellen said, sounding relieved. “He has one of the most important collections in the world . . .”
Victory smiled, wondering what she’d been thinking. Of course Lyne Bennett “loved” art. He was a billionaire, wasn’t he? And the first thing men did when they got money (after dating a supermodel, of course), was to polish their rough edges with art and culture.