“Um, you know Tanya,” I said. “She wanted to give Sammie a try.”
Elaina’s eyes widened. “That’s risky.”
“She thinks I’m bad news with Alessandro getting arrested and all.”
“Alessandro got arrested?” Elaina said, her eyes wide in horror. “What happ—”
Suddenly, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” blasted from the speakers.
If you’re blue and you don’t know where to go…
Music blared and camera shutters clicked at deafening volume. A lightning storm of fluorescent flashes was followed by the sound of editors’ notebooks snapping to attention. Out strutted a gazellelike brunette wearing a flirty red silk crepe number. This was so obviously Chanel’s little black dress realized in red. The topstitching technique was unmistakable, visible even from where I stood. And of course, the fabric-covered buttons were signature. “Chanel, 1927,” I said into phone/mike.
Onstage, Sammie had hit the bell before the Met team.
“Yes, Fashion Museum,” Valentina said.
Tanya tilted her head so she could hear better and fixed her eyes on me as I said, “Chanel, 1927,” over and over into the phone.
“Fashion Museum, we need your answer,” Valentina said.
I put the phone aside and mouthed “Chanel” in an exaggerated but (hopefully) subtle way.
“Holly, what are you doing?” Elaina said, looking at me with the expression of a woman in the direct path of a speeding subway train.
“Edith Head, 1940,” Sammie cried out.
Edith Head? I thought. That girl is a blooming idiot (Sammie, that is; not Edith).
Nichole Cannon hit her bell. “Chanel, 1927.”
“That is correct,” Valentina said.
The crowd applauded furiously.
Tanya made her shrew face, but then smiled and pulled her public self together.
The soundtrack switched to the Andrews Sisters singing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”
He was a famous trumpet man from old Chicago way…
The music didn’t seem as loud this time. An impossibly slim blonde emerged in a dramatic tailored black suit with three bold sequined mint-green leaves emblazoned across the jacket front, and an inverted velveteen shoe worn as a hat in her hair. She vamped across the stage and down the runway while the crowd clapped enthusiastically.
I was sure Tanya would know this one since we’d had a Schiaparelli exhibit less than a year ago. While we hadn’t shown this particular piece, her style was unmistakable. She was known for overlaying sequined insects and other decontextualized designs on sharp-tailored suits. “Elsa Schiaparelli, 1934,” I said into the phone. But from the puzzled expression on Tanya’s face, she wasn’t reading. Think, dammit, think, I psychically begged my boss. You know this one.
Candice Broom slammed the bell. “Schiaparelli, 1930,” she declared.
“That is incorrect,” Valentina said. “Fashion Museum?”
Tanya and Sammie scrutinized me. With my left hand, I scratched my head with three fingers, and with my right hand, I wiggled four fingers by my ear.
“Holly,” Elaina stage-whispered, “stop. You’re cheating. Wait. Only the self-accused condemn. That’s from A Course in Miracles.” She shook her head. “I’m confused.”
“I’m following orders,” I told her.
“That’s what the Nazis said.”
“Schiaparelli, 1925,” Sammie said.
Oh, come on, I thought. Schiaparelli didn’t do her first collection until twenty-nine, the year of the Great Depression. Everyone in fashion knows that. Except, perhaps, heiresses who secure their curator positions through nepotism.
I gestured for Martin to come over.
“They can’t hear me above the music,” I whispered. “Can you increase the volume?”
“I’d need the earrings to do that,” Martin said. “Just talk louder.”
“No, I’ll get caught,” I said. By then Bobby Darin was singing “Mack the Knife” and a bag of bones with translucent skin and red hair glided down the catwalk swathed in a luminous navy cocktail dress. Its soft-shouldered, round-bosomed top was cinched at the waist in corsetlike fashion, topping a skirt of blue taffeta that poufed into a round hemline, giving the artful gown the shape of an upside-down wineglass. Any student of fashion would know this iconic piece. The designer’s excessive use of rich, sumptuous fabric was the giveaway that it came from Christian Dior (about whom Coco Chanel famously said, “Dior? He doesn’t dress women; he upholsters them”).
Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear…
“Christian Dior, 1947,” I said in as loud a voice as I could muster without calling attention to myself. “Christian Dior.”
Sammie’s blank stare told me she either hadn’t paid attention in class or was a complete flibbertigibbet.
Tanya’s nostrils flared like a bull about to charge. I could feel her glare from behind those sunglasses. She should have been glaring at Martin Goldenblatt, who’d invented the cockamamie device without considering the fact that every fashion show on the planet plays loud music.
Just end it now, I thought, because the most vicious shark in the room is going to have me for lunch when this is over.
Nichole Cannon slapped her bell. “Christian Dior, 1949.”
“That is not correct,” Valentina said. “Fashion Museum, it’s your turn.”
“Dior, ’47, Dior, ’47, Dior, ’47,” I repeated over and over again into the phone.
The blue vein in Tanya’s neck was pulsating so hard it looked like it might pop. But sadly for me, it didn’t. Sammie slammed down the bell. “Yves Saint Laurent, 1950?”
“That is incorrect,” Valentina said. “The correct answer is Christian Dior, 1947.”
Gwen Stefani’s “Rich Girl” blasted from the sound system. Out floated a willowy blond angel wearing a sensational sleeveless yellow silk evening dress with a hem of black-and-white beaded flowers.
Sammie hit the bell.
Aha, I thought. This was the trick piece. Ever since the Met canceled their first planned Chanel show over Karl Lagerfeld’s objection that the exhibit wasn’t going to include contemporary pieces, the Fashion Council always slipped a new design into their contest.
“Oscar de la Renta, 2006,” I mouthed, having given up completely on Martin’s nifty but useless invention.
Sammie cocked her head and I could see that she was attempting to catch my drift.
“Oscar de la Renta, 2006. Oscar de la Renta, 2006,” I mouthed.
Sammie’s eyes bulged like a goldfish’s; that’s how hard she was trying to read me.
“Oscar de la Renta, 2006,” exploded from my lips. “Yoinks!” I said, slapping my hand to my mouth. “Sorry. Accident.”
Seemingly at once,
