“I love Paris in the spri-ing-time,” was playing
in Kimberley Renton’s mind as she headed to her first big
event of couture week in her favorite city in the world.
Her over-the-top heels clicked like fingers snapping to the beat
of the song as she walked along the Rue de Rivoli. Her designer
skirt in black and white taffeta pirouetted around her, the matching
black jacket frowned down at such skirtly exuberance while the
crisp white card in her hand gave her entrée to one of
the best parties in the fashion world.
As fashion editor for Uptown, one of the most respected
women’s magazines in the States, Kimi was in Paris for couture
week to see the greatest clothing designs in the world unveiled
for the very first time. She had a front row seat to every fashionista’s
fantasy.
She watched for a moment from the street as celebrities arrived
at the discreet address of Simone, enjoying her current reign
as the top French designer. The tabloids, TV and gossip mags would,
of course, feature the stars and starlets who helped give couture
week its sex appeal, but she knew that for this one week, she
and her kind were more important to the top designers than that
pop singer and her movie producer boyfriend, now stopping for
a photo at the top of the red-carpeted stairs, or the recently
reconciled pair of formerly married A-list stars emerging from
their shiny black limo.
Still, it was fun, in an Academy Awards night kind of way to
watch the hoopla surrounding the celebrities. There were plenty
of photojournalists and broadcast cameras to document the arrivals
and probably a hundred or so fans and gawkers hung around at the
bottom of the steps watching the show.
As the black limo glided away, a white limousine pulled up and
as the door opened a kind of muffled scream ascended from the
crowd. Nicola Pietra emerged from the limo and paused, so accustomed
to being photographed that she had her trademark sexy, but rather
sad smile on her face even before the folds of her gown had settled.
A waif-like young woman with cascading dark curls and dark, slightly
slanting eyes, she was an Italian screen goddess who had recently
brought her gorgeous face and body and her searing sexuality to
the American screen.
Her accent was slight enough to be pretty and she seemed to cultivate
the inevitable comparisons with Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.
Kimi, half Italian herself, had enjoyed watching Nicola’s
rise to fame, first in Italian art films and then in bit parts
in English speaking films, to her current status as bonafide movie
star. The actress’s jewels flashed in the glare of the cameras
as she waited for Mark Apple, America’s Number One Box Office
Stud to join her and then the pair of them gave the photographers
and fans a few moments to snap and gaze their fill.
With efficient bodyguards keeping autograph seekers at bay, they
walked slowly up the steps arm in arm. Their approaching wedding
was causing a frenzy not seen since TomKat had obsessed the world.
Like TomKat, Bennifer Brangelina and Posh and Becks, this couple
also had its cutsie moniker.
Nicola Pietra and Mark Apple had only too easily become ApplePie.
And not a slice would be left after the media were done with the
pair, Kimi thought, watching the flashing bulbs, and listening
to the questions and good wishes shouted in many languages. It
was one of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood that the pair was
in Paris for fittings for the wedding dress for the wildly-anticipated
nuptials.
Even in Paris, a city famous for its disdain of celebrity, there
was a crowd out to gawk and cheer at the couple. Rumor had it
that Mark Apple, whose string of hits seemed to have gone to his
pretty head, had tried to rent Buckingham Palace for the wedding.
When told he couldn’t rent the Queen of England’s
home, he’d attempted to buy the luxurious palace. He’d
been quoted as saying that since he had three times the net worth
of the Windsors, he was still willing to negotiate a deal.
Based on the couple’s idea of a wedding venue, Kimi could
only imagine what the gown was going to be like and wait –
along with the rest of the world – for its official unveiling
this week.
The gown was to be modeled here at the couture show before the
wedding. That was the condition that Simone had negotiated before
agreeing to design the exclusive gown. Simone, as full of whims
as the bridal couple, was arguably the greatest designer of the
new millennium. Her visions were outrageous, unforgettable and
the cost of a gown was never revealed. It was another of her conditions.
She’d taken the maxim that if you have to ask the price
you can’t afford it to the ultimate degree.
At last Mark, in Armani, and Pietra in a stunning Valentino gown
of crimson silk with a feathered train, entered the hallowed halls
of fashion and, almost immediately, the crowd thinned. In a mixture
of French, Italian and English, Kimi heard the verdicts. The English
comments were mostly about the couple’s looks. He was so
much shorter than he looked in the movies, she was too thin.
The French comments concerned the couture. Armani, how obvious.
With her chicken bone frame, the red was de trop. But the Italians
were more forgiving. Such a body. Have you ever seen such gorgeous
hair?
Now that the celebrities seemed to have made their entrances,
Kimi thought it was safe to follow. As she walked the final few
steps to the stairs, she allowed herself one last moment alone
with her favorite city.
A glance up Rue de Rivoli showed a tree-lined boulevard so fashionable
it couldn’t exist anywhere else. Lights twinkled and well-dressed
pedestrians enjoyed the crisp evening air. If she tilted her head
she could see the Louvre as elegant as a lady holding court. The
Seine drifted by, never in a hurry, keeping time it seemed with
the lovers strolling along its banks.
One of these nights she’d sneak off and enjoy Paris as
a tourist but tonight, she reminded herself, turning back to the
fashion house, she had to work.
As she turned and took a step in the opposite direction she nearly
collided with possibly the only unfashionable man in the whole
street. She caught a glimpse of a tall, rangy build, hair that
was thick and shaggy, a tweed coat that had to have belonged to
this guy’s dad – if not his grandpa -- worn over jeans
that no designer would ever grace with his or her name.
“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping back from a
surprisingly solid belly she’d bumped.
“You speak English?”
“Oh. Oui. Yes.” In the shock of the moment she’d
forgotten to speak French and from the pleading note in the stranger’s
tone, he didn’t understand the language anyway. “Can
I help you with something?”
He pulled out from an inner pocket a white cardboard rectangle
very similar to the one she held in her hand. “I’m
looking for number 45.”
