The morning sunshine wasn't enough to spill onto the ground of Bryant Park, instead, it slashedthrough a blue gallery poster and struck the opposite glass window, skimming
past drifting dust motes and landing over a battlefield of discarded silk scarvesby John Galliano for Christian Dior and a leather hat box stamped with Louis Vuitton.
Though the wind moved freely from the white-tinted entrance through, the air backstage was thick with a cloying cocktail of Elnett hairspray, stale Marlboro Menthol
lights and the bitter, synthetic scent of 'Glade' waterfall.
'Lila. The electric blue, now!' Harper's impatient voice cut through the hum of the radiator, he didn't look up, one hand already
extended, demanding without hesitation.
'Just one minute' Lila snapped, grabbing the eyeshadow duo for Chanel from her pink makeup kit, her jaw was tight, and eyes flickering to the clock mounted on the center of wall, thirty minutes had already vanished.
Meanwhile, at the center of the Chaos sat Sienna, motionless,a golden idol draped in a tan silk knee length dress from John Bartlett that clung to her skeleton frame like a second skin. She stared into the double-sided makeup mirror, but her eyes, dark, glazed and dilated, it looked past with her
own reflection. As Harper pressed electric blue pigment on her eyelid with his
classic Bobbi Brown blending brushes, she didn't blink while he dusted the iridescent powder beneath her under eyes. She couldn't breathe but tasted the copper
of blood and dead skin where she's bitten her lip too hard, hidden beneath thick
layers of MAC Lip gloss.
'Make it pop boy' Jade shouted out from across the fitting room, she wore a white pullover with matching pants cinched by a jeweled belt, her silver shoes flashing like a weapon as she moved 'I honestly don't know why this designer went full heroin chic,' she added. 'But it looks expensive, it doesn't make me and Sienna look dead' she added, grinning 'and it looks…. Immortal!'
'Indeed, honey!' Asa said, crouching in the shadows beneath a rack of unreleased samples.' This is even crazier; he wanted me to accentuate my boobs with this heavy blue necklace.' She laughed softly with hollow
sound 'what is that even supposed to mean?'
From her seat on the floor. Asa noticed the tremor in Sienna's eyelids, she saw the hunger in Lila's lips, and it knew what
happened before, but this time. Something in the room was about to break.
'Do you job and don't look at me Mr Pringle' Lila leaned against the makeup station, ignoring Harper's glare as she inspected her
own reflection in Sienna's face. 'So, how was the great migration? I thought you finally dragged your ass from Lawrence St to SoHo?'
Sienna didn't smile, her face felt stiff under the layers of Laura Mercier translucent setting powder, like a mask that crack.
'Oh, nothing special hun,' she murmured, her voice barely rising above the hum of the below dryers. 'Day after day, nothings feel
fresh here…. not until I have to bleed out to pay my fucking rent.'
Lila let out of sharp, knowing laugh while applying another layer of Lancôme Définicils, 'Honey, the agency says we take those
checks as a 'courtesy' consider it the benefits of …. Professional sassy
behavior.' She winked, mocking the industry's bullshit. 'We sell the attitude,
they keep the soul, fair trade, right?'
She paused and tilting her head to stare at
Sienna's eyelid. The electric blue pigment was jarring against Sienna's pale
skin, violent but beautiful.
'Oh, good job though.' Lila drawled, her tone hovering between compliment and jealously. 'Nothing wrong with a little blue color, is
there?' It hides the lack of sleep.'
'All set, stand up and could you please step back a little bit?' Harper interrupted coldly, pulling the white style chair away.
Sienna stood. The tan silk dress rippled down her body like a Mississippi river. It was a masterpiece of bias- cut engineering, designed to cling, but on Sienna, it hung dangerously loose. The ruffled necklace dipped low, hovering preciously over her chest.
'It's too big!' Sienna whispered while she looked down the skirt, the silk felt cold against her skin. She could feel the fabric
sliding with every breath. 'Harper, it's going to slip, I need tap.'
'No time for tap golden angel!' Harper snapped, grabbing a can of shimmer spray and coating her collarbones in a choking mist. 'Just don't slouch, okay? And for god's sake Sienna, don't breathe so deeply,
you look extremely expensive; now go be immortal.'
Sienna looked at herself one last time. The dress was beautiful, a golden skirt for a golden girl. But as she turned to line up, she
felt the silk shift, a milliliter of skin exposed. This time, she wasn't just wearing a dress; she was wearing a ticking time bomb.
Sienna stepped out the makeup station, the cool air of the hallway biting at her exposed skin. The lineup area was a narrow artery
clogged with nervous energy, cigarette smoke and the heavy, predatory gaze of
onlookers. It wasn't just the production crew. The hall was lined with stylists' assistances, PR girls with clipboards clutching Diet cokes, some photographers were testing their flashes like lightening in a storm. They
weren't here to help, but they were here to witness a catastrophe. In this industry. A disaster was just a valuable as triumph. Sometimes even more.
The models assembled like soldiers awaiting orders, a line of impossibly beautiful creatures draped in silk and sequins, their
faces blank canvases waiting to be projected upon. Sienna found her place between a willowy redhead she didn't recognize and Asa, who had somehow materialized beside her, a silent sentinel in the chaos.
'You're shaking,'Asa murmured, barely moving her lips, a ventriloquist's trick they had all learned to avoid the wrath of
designers who demanded stillness.
'I'm always shaking,'Sienna replied, the confession slipping out before she could catch it. She pressed her palms flat against her thighs, willing the tremors to subside, feeling the cool silk beneath her
fingers like water.
The music shifted, a crescendo building that
signaled their cue. One by one, the models began their procession, a serpentine
river.
Ahead of her. A fresh-faced girl from Australia, barely sixteen stumbled. A sharp echoed off the concrete floor. Her left heel, a strappy Manolo Blahnik has given away.
'Shit!' The girl hissed and her face draining of
color.
Nobody tried to help her, A casting director
standing near the monitor just crossed his arms, watching with cold amusement.
'Take them off if you got fail!' the stage manager barked mad not unkindly, but
with the efficiency of a butcher. 'Two choices, go home or take off your
heels!'
The girl kicked the broken heels aside. Her bare feet hitting the dirty on the cable-strewn floor. She kept walking, chin up, trying
to salvage her dignity, but the whispers had already started. They were dissecting her failure before she even reached the curtain.
Sienna swallowed hard, her hand hovering over the dangerous cowl neck of her dress. She knew the norms, if a hell breaks down,
you're clumsy. But if a dress slips? If a breast falls out on the runway?
You weren't a victim of gravity. You were branded.
'Hey, look at her you folks.' Lila whispered from behind, her voice dripping with fake concern as she eyed another model who was adjusting a sheer top.' Desperate for a cover shot, isn't she? Some girls will
show anything just to get a page six to print their name on it!'
That was the verdict, indecent, trashy and loose. Even if it was the designer's fault for cutting the silk on a bias to steep it
defied physics, the shame always belonged to the girl inside of it.
Sienna pressed her arm against her side, pinning the loose fabric to her ribs. She felt the gaze of the room shift towards her- the
'Golden Idol' in the dress that didn't fit. They were waiting. They were bitting on when the boob would explode.
'Cue Music!' The stage manager screamed into his headset, his face flushed with stress.
The atmosphere shifted instantly. The hum of hairdryers was drowned out by a deafening, industrial baseline that shock the
floorboards. It was heavy, violent and hypnotic, the heartbeat of the city
amplified.
'Go! Go! Go!' A hand shoved the Australian girl forward, Sienna wobbled on her bare feet, terrified but obedient, disappearing
into the blinding white wall of light that marked the entrance to the runway.
'Okay girl, chin down; shoulders back, and don't look at them.'
Harper hissed in her ear one last time, spraying a cloud of hairspray that tasted like prison.' You are a goddess, you are
untouchable.'
But as he pushed her toward the curtain, Sienna didn't feel like a goddess, she felt like a specimen in a jar.
She stepped through the black velvet curtains and into the void.
The light hit her like a physical blow, it was
scalding white, erasing her peripheral vision, all she could see were the rows of photographers at the end of the pit, with a multi eye mechanical beast flashing continuously. Click. Click. Click-click-click. The sounds were like crickets in a nightmare.
Sienna walked with tempo of left and right beats. Her hips swayed with the exaggerated, languid motion that was popular that season – the 'Zombie walk.'
But with every step, the bias-cut silk betrayed her, the dress, designed to flow like water, was now sliding like oil. The cool
air of the venue rushed over her shoulders, seeking out the gab between the
fabric and her skin.
She felt exactly what it might happen in slow
motion.
The right strap, already precarious on her skeletal shoulder, shifted a millimeter, then an inch.
A collective gasp rippled through the front row, the editors, the buyers, the socialites. It wasn't a gasp of awe. It was the
sharp intake of breath a car crash.
Sienna's heart hammered against her ribs,
threatening to bruise the skin from the inside. Don't look down she persuaded
herself. If you look down. You admit that defeat. If you look down, you are just a trashy amateur model losing her dress.'
But the fabric was heavy, it dragged down, exposing the curve of her breast, pale moon of her areola hovering dangerously in the
harsh spotlight. She was nearly one step away from total exposure.
She saw a woman in the second row, wearing oversized sunglasses indoors with lean forward, whispering to her neighbor.
They weren't looking at the John Bartlett dress. They were looking at her. They
were waiting for the money shot.
Sienna kept walking, her expression frozen in a mask of heroin chic indifference, while inside, she was screaming.
Sienna felt the cool air kisses her skin before she saw it. The silk hadn't fallen completely- it hovered, caught on the sharp
angle of her ribcage, leaving half of her right breast exposed. The pale curve,
the hint of a nipple, sliced through the conservative elegance of the dress
like a scar.
The flashbulbs erupted, with the sound of
Click-Click-Click transformed into a continuous, blinding roar. They weren't
shooting the clothes anymore. They were shooting the scandal.
For a split second, Sienna's hand twitched, an instinctive urge to pull the fabric up, to cover herself until apologize.
In that microsecond, the fragile illusion of her
safety shattered completely. The blinding lights stripped away not just the John Bartlett silk, but her dignity, leaving her stranded at the absolute bottom of her own terror. She was no longer a golden idol, she was just a naked, terrified girl failing spectacularly in front of the world's must ruthless elite.
Her heart screamed to hide, look at you, a voice whispered in the dark corners of her mind, you are ruined. Unsexy, Defeated. She had to look at this ultimately vulnerability dead in the eye and ask herself the hardest question; does this broken version of me still deserve the runway?
If she reached for the silk, she would be begging for forgiveness. She would be participating in their life. The lie that this
industry was flawless, and she was just a clumsy mistake from queens. She would
be burning alive just to keep them comfortable.
But then, A cold, hard realization hit her.
If she fixed it, she was admitting that was a
mistake. If she covered it, she was just another clumsy girl from Queens crumbling under the pressure. But in the city island, weakness was the only sin.
So, she didn't fix it.
Instead, she extended her neck.
Now she lifted her chin higher, exposing the long, fragile line of her throat, offering herself up like a sacrificial lamb that had decided to enjoy the knife. Her eyes went dead – glazed over with that perfect, impenetrable heroin chic stare.
She walked. With each step, the exposed flash bounced slightly with her step, vulnerable and raw against the harsh lights.
She didn't speed up and slow down. She forced her breathing to remain shallow
by letting the camera shutters eat her alive.
Reaching the end of the runway, she pivoted on her heel with robotic precision- the silk flapping dangerously and walked back into
the darkness, she left them wanting more.
As she crossed the threshold back into the
backstage chaos, the adrenaline crashed.
The deafening bass faded into the background noise of screaming dressers and rushing bodies. Sienna slumped slightly, her hand finally flying up to clutch the dress to her chest, her breath coming in jagged
gasps.
'Hey!' A pair of arms wrapped around her shoulders, it was Lila.
Sienna flinched, expecting mockery, expecting her to laugh at the disaster. But Lila pulled her into a tight, almost suffocating
hug. She smelled of cigarettes and Christian Dior Eau De perfume.
'Yes, good job honey,' Lila whispered into her ear, her voice was super low and surprisingly steady. She pulled back, her hands
gripping Sienna's bare arms, looking her straight in the eyes.
'The pose was the best, the attitude was perfect, you didn't flinch. You didn't give them the satisfaction of seeing you bleed.'
Lila smirked, reaching out to fix the fallen strap with a rough, proprietary tug. It wasn't kindness, it was camaraderie in the
trenches.
'You sold the garment, and you sold the tragedy, that's why they pay for.'
She patted Sienna's shoulder aggressively, 'now ladies, Go back in line! Be ready for the grand final walk' Stage manager's voice boomed over the chaos, drowning out any moment of reflection.
Sienna stood up straight, the mask slipping back into place. The tragedy was over, now, it was time for the encore.