notions, ribbon, lace and fabric. Shelving runs along one long wall, containing drawer after drawer, each one bearing a neat typed label in Italian. There’s a spacious area on the far side of the room with a raised square podium, or pedestal, in the middle of it. Grouped around the pedestal, two to the left and one to the right, are three life-sized mannequins with blank and featureless faces, hair moulded into a stylised beehive. Each form is clothed in a spectacular gown, and each gown is strikingly different from the next.
The first is devastatingly simple in silhouette: long and lean, with a plunging V-neckline, narrow through the bodice, waist, hips and thighs, but flaring gently from just above the knee so that by the time the gown reaches the ankles it pools in gentle folds upon the floor. The sleeves are long and cuffed tightly at the wrists, and mirror the line of the dress. They begin narrow and fitted at the upper arms, then bell out gently, before the fabric pools a little around each cuff. What makes the gown extraordinary is that it’s covered entirely in square, gold-coloured, metal paillettes, every single one painstakingly hand-stitched on, I’m guessing. From a distance, it’s almost as if the dress is made of molten gold. But up close, the surface of the gown resembles chain mail, or armour.
Gia walks up to it, awe-struck, followed by Tommy. Valentina hangs back, smiling a little with pride.
Numbly, I position myself next to Tommy as he muses aloud, ‘Hair down for this one, maybe with a messy wave through the ends? And a wreath in the hair, or a crown of thorns. Bare feet. A bit Joan of Arc meets Jesus meets lunatic asylum, I’m thinking?’
Gia gives him a sharp, quelling look and Tommy clears his throat and mutters, ‘Let’s move right along to look number two.’
‘Look number two’ is a strapless dress with a tight-fitting black bodice featuring a plunging, heart-shaped neckline that’s highlighted by a central, heart-shaped panel across the front entirely covered in tiny black crystals that catch the light. The skirt is an explosion of swagged black silk. There’s some sort of crinoline underneath it that gives the dress a life of its own. Valentina steps forward and lifts one edge of the voluminous skirt proudly and we see that it’s faced with hot-pink silk. It’s a show stopper, although I don’t see how the heavily beaded, shockingly indiscreet bodice would stay up if I actually went anywhere in it.
‘We’ll go with a black tricorn hat with a face veil,’ Tommy murmurs. ‘A bit American Revolution meets Bette Davis. Maybe some shoe-boots that are part dressage, part bondage. I’ll get Juliana’s team to put something together.’
We come to a stop before the last gown. The fantasy bridal gown Gia spoke of earlier. It has the same killer-chic aesthetic that informs the other two dresses, but it’s a romantic confection this time: tight-fitting lace and intricately beaded chiffon, tight, long sleeves, a high and modest neckline. The upper half of the dress seems both concealing and revealing at the same time; but the skirt is something else altogether. It’s tulip-shaped; layers and layers of hand-draped and swagged chiffon and silk gazar that end at a point just below the knee. It’s a completely unexpected combination of shapes, but it somehow works. I don’t understand fashion in the slightest, but I can see that the wedding dress before us is something quite unique.
‘A simple topknot,’ Tommy breathes. ‘With a miniature tiara sitting just above the hairline.’
As the four of us stand silently in front of the remarkable dress, Gia’s phone rings. She draws it out of her jacket pocket and glances at the screen.
‘I have to take this,’ she says apologetically.
She turns to leave the room and I say, sounding strangely tentative even to my ears, ‘You’ll come back? You’ll stay with me today? However long it takes?’
I don’t think I could bear to be alone right now, in the company of strangers. However kindly they might be.
Gia’s eyes seem to soften as she replies, ‘Your humanity is showing again, Irina. Of course I’ll come back. It’s just management as usual, checking up on you — checking up on me. Be right back.’
As Gia closes the door behind her, Tommy turns to me and places a hand beneath my chin, studying my face for a moment. ‘Who’s this impostor we’ve got here?’ he says gently. ‘Where’s my bulletproof ultra-bitch gone?’
There’s laughter in his light voice; it’s impossible to be offended.
‘Tommy,’ clucks Valentina disapprovingly as she begins carefully removing the first of the couture gowns off the mannequin, the one that resembles golden armour.
When I find myself smiling back mistily at the slight young man before me, he whispers, ‘Now, that’s more like it. Time to play dress-ups, my darling.’
The golden dress has to weigh at least seventy pounds on its own. It’s lucky that I’m strong, and that I no longer really care what I’m doing here. I just listlessly do as I’m told. If the real Irina were here, I’m sure she would’ve thrown at least one bitch-slapping tantrum already and orchestrated a walkout. Despite the so-called stratospheric glamour-quotient of Irina’s life, hers has to be the most unbelievably tedious job I can ever remember experiencing. Even worse than cleaning the toilets or taking out the rubbish at the Green Lantern cafe, because at least then I’d had autonomy. All I seem to be here is a collection of flawed body parts, and it’s just a never-ending round of requests to stand still.
I’ve been poised on the raised podium for almost two hours as Valentina and two assistants have poked and prodded me from every angle, worrying at the hem of the dress, tugging at the cuffs, reworking the gown’s back fastenings because I’ve inexplicably put on a half-inch around the waist since yesterday morning and a seam somewhere is puckering.
I address Gia over the heads of the reproachful seamstresses. ‘That would be because I actually ate a decent breakfast!’
‘Just ignore them,’ she says, looking up at me from the stool she’s found from somewhere. All morning I’ve watched her playing with her little black phone, heading out into the corridor occasionally to take a call. ‘You’re doing surprisingly … great,’ she says encouragingly. ‘This has to be your best effort ever. You haven’t thrown a single thing. No one can quite believe it — I know, because I’ve been eavesdropping.’
The left-hand door opens and Tommy comes sailing in with a plump, smiling woman at his side, in her late twenties or early thirties. Unlike all the other glamazons in the building who are wearing top-to-toe Giovanni Re suits, she’s fearlessly dressed in a heavy, aubergine-coloured wool dress of a striking design with a forties- meets-seventies vibe, heavy wool ribbed tights in burnt orange, and vintage-looking dark and lime green Mary- Janes. Her straggly, shoulder-length hair has dark roots and bright yellow ends. I like how comfortable she seems in her own skin, and I like her face. It’s plain, but strong. There’s a fierce intelligence in her bright blue gaze that seems to take in everything around her.
‘This is Juliana,’ Tommy says. ‘Resident “special effects” guru. She’s Giovanni’s secret weapon — every show she’s put together for him since she left design school has been a sensation. We’ve been talking, and my Jesus-meets-Druid headwear idea for this gown was so, so off the mark. I’d completely forgotten that Giovanni’s had Juliana and her crew whip up something a little extra special for the show.’
He crosses back to the doorway and undoes the floor and ceiling bolts holding the right-hand door closed. ‘Ta dah!’ he sings, and opens the door with a flourish.
On my raised pedestal, above all their heads, I freeze in horror as I see what’s being wheeled up the hallway towards us, suspended by hooks on a steel clothing rack: three pairs of wings hanging like meat for sale at a butcher’s shop. One gold, one black, one white, their end feathers trailing upon the concrete floor.
They’re so lifelike, it’s as if they’ve been cut from some mythical creature. I almost expect to see blood dripping from them onto the concrete floor.
For a moment, that hateful sensation returns — of being balanced on razor wire over the shrieking abyss.
I feel so dizzy, so sick with dread, that the world seems to telescope, or the world is in me, and I lose any sense of up, of down, and fall off the pedestal onto the hard concrete floor, as if I have fainted. I stare, shaken, at the fluorescent lights above that give out such a cold, cold light, as if channelled from a distant galaxy.
‘Irina!’ Gia yells, dropping her phone and scrambling off her stool towards me as the black-clad seamstresses, as Tommy and Juliana flock around, lifting me into a sitting position.
‘I’m all right,’ I say gruffly, holding my pounding head. ‘It’s just vertigo.’
‘Vertigo?’ Gia says incredulously. ‘The podium’s about a foot off the ground! What are you talking about?’
But it is vertigo, which is as crazy as it sounds. It overcame me when I saw those things being wheeled
