Guilty Pleasures - Tasmina Perry

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How dare you!’ he hissed. ‘You’re playing with people’s lives!’

      Emma began to feel the situation spiral out of control before her. Suddenly she could hear Mark’s words in her head. You’re too nice. You’re an academic, not a corporate player.

      ‘I dare, because I have to!’ shouted Emma, stopping Roger in his tracks. She grabbed a thick file and threw it down on the desk between them. ‘You look at the figures, Roger: they’re all there in black and white. If we don’t do something pretty radical, Milford is dead before the end of the year. How’s that for the real world?’

      Roger’s face drained of colour and his mouth worked without sound.

      ‘I am still a large shareholder of this company, young lady,’ he finally managed. ‘I know what the figures say and with a marketing budget…’

      ‘Roger, you have a 20 per cent shareholding,’ said Emma, stabbing a finger onto the spreadsheets. ‘And 20 per cent of nothing is nothing.’

      She stood up and inhaled deeply. There was no going back now.

      ‘I give you my word, Roger, that by the time I have finished, your stake will be worth fifty times what it is now. Twenty years ago Gucci was almost bankrupt, now it’s a multi-billion dollar company. A great designer turned Bottega Veneta around in months, not years. Chanel was once in the doldrums, so was Burberry, the precedents are all there. But we need to be brave, we need to try. Give me a chance, Roger. I can do this, I know I can.’

      ‘And what makes you think we can trust you?’ said Roger slowly.

      Emma almost smiled.

      ‘Saul did,’ she said. ‘That’s a start, isn’t it?’

      The showroom of designer Guillaume Riche’s Parisian atelier was alive with colour. Stork-thin models strutted down the makeshift catwalk with smoky eyes and hair so straight it swung in time to the music. Each girl brought out a look which was more beautiful than the last: a cashmere wrap coat in cyclamen pink, a bone white chiffon blouse with a graphite wool pencil skirt, a voluminous evening dress in amethyst. This was ready-to-wear at its most bold and luxurious. Finally Alexia Dark, one of the industry’s hottest models, walked past in a gown sculpted in layers of primrose tulle so delicate it looked like the ripples of water on a tropical beach. Tomorrow, the unveiling of Guillaume Riche’s Autumn/Winter collection would be the hottest show in town, but tonight it was a dress rehearsal and a private view for the luckiest, most talented fashion magazine editor in Paris: Cassandra Grand.

      Standing at the end of the catwalk was a small man in tight charcoal jodhpurs. From the back he looked like a jockey except for the long grey hair that fell down between his shoulder blades. As the music died, he spun around dramatically to face the woman sitting in the front row and threw his hands into the air.

      ‘Cassandra!’ he cried. ‘You are not clapping! Tell me why you are not clapping? You hate it! You hate the show!’

      Cassandra laughed. She stood up and pulled on the little mink shrug that had been sitting on her lap.

      ‘The beauty of the dress rehearsal, Guillaume,’ she said, linking her arm through his, ‘is that I don’t have to clap. I’ve spent the last four weeks of shows clapping. I can’t stop clapping because some devious design houses such as yourself have been known to film the audience to make sure they are clapping and withhold advertising if you do not show sufficient ardour. I’m sick of clapping. I practically have RSI.’

      ‘So you hate the show?’ Guillaume said nervously.

      ‘As we both know, clapping is really no indication of the quality of a collection.’ She paused dramatically and gave him a playful smile. ‘But in this case I think the show is absolutely sensational.’

      Guillaume stopped in his tracks and collapsed to his knees, offering a silent prayer of thanks to the god of fashion.

      ‘Sensational. Do you mean that?’ he said, slinking into a Louis Ghost chair next to the catwalk. ‘I am not sure the hair is absolutely right. I think maybe the girls need white lips. Merde. I wish the venue would be ready so we could have a full dress rehearsal. But the sets aren’t ready. They are imbeciles. Useless.’

      Cassandra sat down and put her hand on his knee to reassure him. Guillaume Riche, one of the world’s most beloved designers, really did not need overblown sets or white lipstick to show off the brilliance of his latest collection – it was amazing. Although he was nearly sixty, Guillaume was a designer at the peak of the game. In 24 hours’ time, celebrities, editors and buyers from all the top retail stores in the world would throw themselves at his feet and scratch each other’s eyes out to get hold of their favourite pieces. But tonight, Guillaume’s genius was for Cassandra’s eyes only – as his collection always was in the final hours before it was unveiled. Her position as editor-in-chief of Rive meant she could not be Guillaume’s official muse – other advertisers would not be happy – but she would always be called upon to make final suggestions, perhaps a change of shoes or accessories, or change the running order. Occasionally Cassandra actually recommended the axing of a look entirely and although Guillaume would naturally throw a hissy-fit to register on the Richter scale, he trusted her implicitly. And why wouldn’t he? Wasn’t it Cassandra who, almost single-handedly, had resurrected his career? The Nineties minimal aesthetic had very nearly killed off the flamboyant Guillaume Riche brand entirely, until Cassandra, then a junior stylist, had championed him on every shoot she styled. But much more significantly, when Cassandra had graduated to dressing up-and-coming starlets, she had used Guillaume’s designs to dress them for the red carpet – and Hollywood needed little encouragement to fall back in love with Guillaume; his luscious clothes were old-school, movie-star glamour that flattered the legends and made the younger generation look sophisticated and worldly. And where the A-listers led, the rest of the fashion industry followed. Today Guillaume was now one of the most important designers in the world, a flamboyant foil to Lagerfeld’s commercial brilliance and this show, Cassandra was sure, would be his biggest triumph yet.

      ‘But how can we improve it?’ said Guillaume, getting up and pacing around.

      Cassandra flipped open her Moleskine notebook and reviewed her scribbled comments. Even in a mediocre collection she could pick out the one gem that could make a woman beautiful and elegant.

      ‘I adored the inverted pleating, the volume of the skirts. However … the penultimate exit…’

      ‘What is wrong?’ said Guillaume, his eyes blazing. ‘What?’

      ‘The obi-belt on the amethyst dress, perhaps you should try it in pumpkin rather than black? It’s just a little too predictable.’

      For a moment, it looked as if Guillaume would explode. Then he reached out and pinched Cassandra’s cheek affectionately.

      ‘Ma cherie, you are always right.’

      He clicked his fingers in the air and an assistant came running with two cups of espresso. Cassandra glanced at her watch. It was time to go back to her suite at the Plaza Athénée and prepare.

      ‘You are coming to the party?’ she said, downing the coffee in one.

      ‘Of course, but only for a short time, I’m afraid. Your timing before my show is very bad and then …’ he threw his hands in the air again, ‘… you request pumpkin obi-belts! But don’t worry, the rest of Paris will be there.’

      ‘Not all of them. Only those who are lucky enough to have been invited,’ she smiled.

      ‘Is Glenda coming?’ he asked. Glenda McMahon was the editor-in-chief of US Rive and therefore one of Cassandra’s most bitter rivals, despite the fact that she was Cassandra’s former boss and mentor.

      ‘Darling Glenda!’ she exclaimed, without a hint of irony.

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