Material Girls (35 page)

I walked to my workstation and laid my briefcase on the table, startling a cockroach on the corner. It scuttled down one of the legs and disappeared. I sighed. The space wasn't perfect. But it was ours.

The underground design studio had been my idea. The day after they'd removed the subdermal floss from my cheeks, I'd met Felix and Kevin, also newly floss-free, at a coffee shop. Kevin had recovered from his concussion, though the poor guy still got headaches occasionally. The three of us agreed that there was no way to know whether we were still being watched.

“But we can't live afraid,” I said. So I drank a latte and tried to appear casual and carefree as I laid out my proposal in a voice hoarse from lack of use. No company would hire us now. So why didn't we start our own label? We could run it fairly and also keep the spirit of eco-chic alive. Repurposed garments, each one lovingly made. It would take some startup cash, as I'd learned from my reading, but I had my Superior Court savings. My parents would freak, but too bad. And each person could maybe put in a little. We could work cheaply, too, in a small space, with minimal materials to start. Buy used clothing and rip it apart for the fabric, rent old sewing machines. That sort of thing.

Felix got so excited he knocked his drink off the table. He grabbed my shoulders. “I
knew
you were a fighter,” he said. “This is brilliant. Brilliant!”

“I'm in only if you two control yourselves,” said Kevin.

We had recruited the others and found the studio space. We'd scrubbed the walls and cement floor as best we could and brought in the tables and lamps. Every day that I made the journey to Blackburn on the train, I expected CSS agents to be there, blocking the door to the building. Technically, starting our own business wasn't illegal, but I wondered if creating a non–design house clothing line could be considered “subversive.” It definitely
felt
subversive. But so far, it seemed our little company had been overlooked.

We had needed a name. I'd wanted Eco-Chic, but the others had convinced me to start fresh. For our own safety as much as anything.

Felix had come up with Underground. “We're literally stuck underground, our clothing line isn't mainstream, we're a subversive organization—it's perfect,” he said one day.

I went home and mulled it over that night in bed. When I thought of Underground, I thought of worms, dirt, and death. It needed something more.

“I think we should call ourselves Underground Garden,” I announced the following day. “It's not just about being secret. It's about our creativity blossoming and growing, despite the darkness.”

“I love it,” raved Gwen.

Felix nodded. “It's better.” The others agreed.

But the spirit of eco-chic was still alive outside our lair. A week after we'd started working, I opened the studio door in the evening to find a giant box of good-quality, usable fabric scraps sitting at the bottom of the stairs. The box had a T-L logo printed on the side. Two more boxes arrived the following week. One evening, when Felix and I decided to head out a little early, we opened the door to find Randall coming up the alley with a box in his arms. His expression didn't change as he approached us and handed Felix the box. “From Vaughn, too,” he whispered, before turning and heading back the way he came.

Of the others, I'd heard Sabrina had gone back to Torro, though I had no idea if she still worked in the mailroom. Henry was at home, living off his savings and trying to build an audience for his new fashion hotspot, Judgmental Diva. I asked him to feature garments from our startup company once our first line was ready. He agreed to—if he liked them. So far, the Judgmental Diva had liked
nothing
Torro-LeBlanc had designed.

Today, as I unpacked my briefcase, I watched Kevin work feverishly on his Tabula. He was making last-minute changes to our new company site. He had consulted with some Adequates and designed it himself. Now that the money and time had been invested, now that we had judged our first items as a team, it was time to see who might be brave enough to wear our line. The finished garments hung from silver racks along the back wall, zipped in impenetrable garment bags to protect against the roaches and the damp.

What I had seen so far of the site looked beautiful—black, with iridescent anemone-like flowers that changed from green to purple. Kevin, who had never been a standout drafter at Torro, was a natural at bringing Underground Garden to life on the screen.

I looked at my watch. Nine thirty. The site was going live in two and a half hours. I exhaled and ran my hand over the mirror fragments on my table. I had found the shattered mirror at the dump, and a glass worker upstairs in the building had softened the edges of the pieces for me. I was using them as neckline embellishments for a line of twenty dresses, all similar but each an original. I held a piece up to the navy-blue material on the form, turning it this way and that to determine the best angle.

Gwen ended her Unum conversation and dragged her stool over to my table. She crossed her legs, her wide bell-bottoms brushing the floor. “I was going over our specs with the manufacturers. They thought we wanted two thousand T-shirts, not two hundred.”

“Seriously? Good thing you caught it in time.”

“Yeah.” Gwen rubbed her forehead. “I looked at the order form again—Felix's handwriting is a little messy. There's this squiggle next to the zero. I'm not surprised they read it wrong. But they were super nice about it.”

I nodded.

From the beginning, everyone had committed to creating garments that included used and repurposed materials, as I had done with Ivy's outfit. It was a way to unify ourselves as a studio while preserving our individual styles. Felix could keep his rougher aesthetic by patching together old denim, while my clothes could have a softer, more refined feel.

But soon Gwen decided that some of our clothes, mostly casual sportswear pieces, would need to be manufactured. I resisted until I saw Gwen's prototype for a T-shirt: organic cotton with a large silkscreened chrysanthemum on the front.

“We can silkscreen the flowers ourselves, but we'll save time if the shirts are ready-made,” she explained.

I would wear that forever, I immediately thought to myself. The flower brought to mind my forfeited lapel pin. The chrysanthemum was a literal bloom from the new Underground Garden. I gave in.

With Georgia's help, Gwen found a manufacturing plant that was approved by the International Garment Labor Federation. I learned about the IGLF from Gwen and Felix, who had heard about it from Vivienne. The organization made sure garment workers were treated and paid fairly. Even Felix, the most profit-focused of any of us, wanted only an IGLF-approved company to manufacture our clothing.

The craziest step, at least for me, was our decision not to put trendchecking labels in our clothes. I actually proposed the idea, with my favorite expired shawl in mind. But it still felt strange to create a garment that would, in theory,
never
go out of style. I could wear Gwen's T-shirt forever. Felix had wanted the labels to encourage sales in each new season, but he was overruled. Instead, we attached a little brown card to each garment, explaining what Underground Garden stood for.

After chatting briefly with me about the rest of the specs, Gwen returned to her station. We sank into our work for the day. With some feedback from me, Neely decided to cut fresh jacket sleeves that were an inch wider, allowing for better bend at the elbow. Georgia, whose technical knowledge of budgeting and strategy had been a huge help in the first days, was transitioning to design work more and more. Neely and I watched over her as she traced and cut a dress pattern in some old bed linens she had dyed beet red.

“I'm so nervous I've traced the pattern wrong,” she mumbled, biting her lip as she cut.

“Ridiculous,” said Neely. “You can remake anything. We had a saying in Garment Construction. ‘Cut with confidence!'”

A short while later Felix burst through the door, out of breath. “Two boutiques in La Reina will carry our line!” he announced. “
Two
of them!”

He explained as we put down our work and gathered around him. “One's called Greenery; the other's Duke's Rag Bag. They're independent stores that specialize in environmentally conscious clothing. I got the sense from the owners that they struggle, but they've managed to hold on to a tiny local clientele.” He grinned. “Jaded ex–design house employees mostly.”

“Felix, that's incredible!” exclaimed Neely. “So what happens now?”

“We deliver Underground Garden's first garments next week.”

Georgia gave him a high-five. She had explained how Torro-LeBlanc sales reps pitched their lines to department stores, and he'd wanted to try it. Last week he had returned each day demoralized. He'd shrugged off my attempts to comfort him, berating himself for not being a better salesperson.

Even now, as the others congratulated him and returned to work, he softened his expectations in front of me. “I mean, we can't get too excited. We'll probably still lose all our money.”

I shook my head and smiled. “I don't care. It's worth it.” It was. We had lost our fight. Torro-LeBlanc had held on to its place in the Big Five, which still controlled the fashion industry. The Silents still treated Adequates and Taps and clothing manufacturers badly. But despite circumstances we couldn't change, our little band had found a way to do what made us happy.

“Two stores in one day,” I said. “That's so prime, Felix.”

“I thought they were joking when they said yes. You know, both times it was your rag skirts that convinced them. They lit up when I brought them out.” He grabbed my hand and played a tune on my palm with his fingers.

“Thanks. Sometimes I wonder if you love me just for my designs.”

He looked mischievous. “Your designs
are
pretty hot.” He touched his cheek to mine, and his whisper tickled my ear. “But you're wrong about that.”

“PDA warning,” muttered Kevin from his table. “Take it outside.”

I brushed a quick kiss on Felix's cheek before he pulled away.

“It's crazy to think about,” he said. “Next week at this time, people could be wearing our line.”

I imagined a scene in the boutique: a girl picking one of my skirts off a rack, rubbing the uneven texture between her fingers, slipping it on and smiling at her reflection in the dressing room mirror. Maybe even twirling around. And then buying the skirt and taking it home.

“Okay, back to work.” Felix rubbed his palms together. “I've got to get cracking on that old tire. I
know
I can get it into a garment somehow!”

At ten minutes to noon, Kevin called everyone to gather around his table.

“I think we're good,” he said. “We should come up if people are doing a search for ‘eco' or ‘environmental clothing' or anything like that. I'm planning to link to every independent hotspot that will let us. And I fixed the glitches, too. Here, take a look.”

He scrolled through the site slowly. The pages that showed our garments were clean and uncluttered—mostly, I thought with amusement, because we didn't have that many pieces to offer. We had worked hard on a few strong looks. I saw my rag skirts, Felix's distressed jeans, Gwen's T-shirts, Neely's outerwear. Dresses incorporating repurposed prints and materials. All chic, all eco.

“We need a toast,” said Gwen. Quickly, we grabbed our travel mugs.

“To Underground Garden!” Neely proclaimed, raising hers.

“To Vivienne,” said Kevin. There was a moment of silence.

“Yes,” I said. “And to freedom.” We clinked and sipped.

Kevin entered commands on his Tabula. He glanced at his watch. “That should do it.” He opened a browser window and typed the address. Shivering with anticipation, I peered closer and watched the Underground Garden home page fill his screen, dark and alive.

We were open for business.

You're lucky to wear something so beautiful.
The little voice in Ivy's head repeated what her agent, Keane, had told her earlier.
No one has ever worn live butterflies before.

The legs of the insects had been removed, and their bodies were affixed to the surface of her strapless dress with special glue. The iridescent blue and black wings fluttered, straining against their bonds, sending ticklish shivers over Ivy's body. She wasn't supposed to touch them, but she couldn't resist brushing a finger against her side now and again. A powdery residue came off on her fingertip. The wings felt like velvet. She
was
lucky.

A stole of wolf fur coiled around her neck. She walked high in iguana stilettos. As for her headpiece, it rivaled the dress. Stuffed snakes sprouted from her scalp like winding dreadlocks. She brushed a stray asp over her shoulder, and the rat-tooth bracelet on her wrist rattled.

“You look
so
hot,” Madison whispered in her ear from behind. “People are going to freak.”

Ivy nodded her thanks.

Her entourage stood behind a black curtain set up outside the renovated Torro-LeBlanc flagship store. The curtain concealed them in front of one corner, and a short red carpet led to the entrance. Ivy peeked out to see the new exterior design. Before, the storefront had been all rough and warehouse-edgy; now it looked sleek. Black overhangs on a clean white background.

She peered inside the windows. The stuffed racks were all the same, of course. Heaps and hills of expensive clothes.

“P pills,” she called out. Hilarie reached into her purse and quickly shook three placidophilus pills out of her tin. She handed them to Ivy, but they fell through her unsteady fingers and rolled away. Ivy pursed her lips at her nymph.

Hilarie extracted three more pills. This time she pushed them directly into Ivy's mouth. Ivy began chewing, and the burst of strawberry scent clicked her back to the place where she had been a few moments before.
High-end design houses make clothes. Superstars like me wear them. How else would it be?
Aiko rubbed her shoulders lightly to calm her.