I always fold my clothes and put them away, because, if I don’t, then, in the half-light, the faces of monsters materialize. It always starts with two shadows for eyes. Then, the rest of a twisted expression comes into sight.

I tell myself it’s just my imagination. I’m a rationalist. Still, it’s hard to argue with a gut feeling so strong I don’t want to put my feet on the floor because there might be more than shoes under the bed. Me, a grown woman!

As a clothes designer, I can usually avoid these problems by staying at home. I used to have to go to fabric warehouses, and that was a trial, with all those prints and draperies.

Things have changed- I’m a “big name” now, and they send boxes of samples to me. Last year, we even took over the design of most of our own fabrics.

Twice a year, though, I still have to travel to big cities- old and famous ones, the ones that were around during the Black Plague. My ‘condition’ especially kicks in when I’m in one of those old hotels.

Thinking to do us a favor, the company’s travel agent puts us up in hotels that don’t just contain antiques, they are antiques. You don’t have to be a leading fashion designer to see they have a talent for awful carpeting and even more hideous wallpaper.

Every lobby is made of dozen different kinds of marble and the wainscoting is a festival of hand-carved ‘baroque’ ornamentation. If I am lucky, there will be a marvelous crystal chandelier. I look up and see mesmerizing rainbow glints from the facets. Sitting in some big wing-chair, I won’t have to look down. If I do, pretty soon I’ll be seeing, not floral motifs, but some Green Man or gargoyle leering up at me.

This time we are staying at a hotel in New York for the event now called Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. “Fashion Weeks” (they are held in several major cities, around the world) come twice a year. The most prestigious are in Europe, and to some designers, New York is “slumming it”. As for me, personally, I find America’s east coast exhilerating.

This event is to be a Spring show. I live an upside-down world where the spring line is shown in the fall and the fall line is shown in spring. It is our only chance to find one more way to convince the stores’ buyers that there is something special about my brand’s shirts, or skirts, better than all the other shirts and skirts out there.

If I have to set those shirts and skirts ablaze and send the models down the runway with smoke and flames on the them, I’ll do it. Actually, I did that last fall, and a few of the models swore they would never work for me again. I can’t blame them. Nobody was hurt, but they could have been, and burn scars don’t go over well in the modeling business.

I pay well, and models dedicated and brave enough to work with me enjoy an extra-special reputation. Just this once, I had the magazines asking us to arrange photo shoots for them, for free. With the clothes on fire, of course. That’s a great boon; my company usually pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for full-page ads in glossy color magazines.

After all this hype, though, most buyers are skittish and cautious. They’ll wait two or three years to see if what I created, actually sells, in the most expensive boutiques. My first sales will be to mavericks; it takes a maverick to get their attention.

That’s why designers have to have a lot of money. The company has to run for three years before what was displayed makes anything back. It’s not enough for my name to be on the fashion world’s lips for a year. I’ve got to do the same thing every year.

The very best part, for me, is working with the runway models. Except for being gorgeous, they’re all so different. Physical beauty can develop in someone poor or rich, slow or clever.

Much of the preparation can not be done in the hotel. We own a special trailer. Inside is a row of salon seats, sinks with running water, and mirrors. The vehicle is huge but there’s two attendants for each model (except Janine, who will need three), so it is very cramped.

Today’s efforts begin at 10 a.m. with waxing. Every shin, every armpit, and then every eyebrow, is painted with the hot gluey stuff. I let one of the makeup artist do my eyebrows, too. There’ll be a few cameras focusing on me, too, as the designer.

As the little strips are yanked away bearing unwanted hairs, we all bear our discomfort stoically. It doesn’t really hurt that bad; the beauticians are merciless, swift, and professional. Nonetheless, the momentary festival of ouchies is almost a bonding experience.

From down at the end of the row of seats, I hear a tiny muffled yelp escape from behind a hand. It seems someone is not used to having their legs waxed.

To be a model, you have to be willing to let people press cloth to your body and touch you on all except the most private places. There’s much trust; we can’t help but treat each other as family when we’re backstage or in the trailer.

Outside the shows, though, we go our separate ways. This camaraderie, I’ve learned, it’s usually not real. A week from now, none of us will miss any other. What personal stuff I know, I know because they wrote it on their applications, which I reviewed.

Our shows are some of the most elaborate in the world, and there are usually eight rehearsals. We do get to know each other a little, especially the “veterans” from previous shows who get hired again for six months later.

Some of my shows have male models, and they get prepped alongside the women. Beauticians can be either gender. Like the medical profession, there’s no room for body-shyness in front of the opposite sex. This show, however, happens to be all female models.

Some of the women don special harnesses, each one custom-made for that individual model out of fifty different components. Clothing designers are engineers before anything else. We have to know where points of stress will be, how to spread the stress like a spiderweb, what range of motion is needed for arms and shoulders.

I don’t just sketch on paper. I use three-dimensional computer programs to assist my visualization. I assure you, though, my first drawings looked exactly like yours did, and I started with crayons, pencils, and colored markers on paper.

You learn it in art school, and you get a degree in textile arts. It was heavenly for me, to net, weave, knit, crochet, quilt, spin, tie-dye, and everything else, through college. I also have an engineering degree. There is a lot of strange science lurking inside the world of high fashion. And there is also “The Urge”.

My fellow designers are every shape and color, every gender (some of them appear to have invented a couple new ones along the way). The youngest is twenty (her grandfather was a celebrated clothing designer too), and the eldest is 99. We energize one another at the schools of design. Artists are most artistic when we’re around other artists.

The only thing you probably can’t be taught, and that is, how to want to fill gobs of paper with endless drawings, especially pictures of people wearing impossible things. We scribble on the margins of our homework, we doodle on our napkins. If we can’t, we’ll give ourselves what look like mad henna tattoos with ink pens. Most of us, to some extent or another, have an instinct to produce drawings.

Or maybe it’s a disease? For me at least, it sort of is. I can’t stand blank areas. It’s just wrong. To me, a sheet of empty paper feels like an open window. I have to do something to keep evil things from coming through.

My therapist (recommended to me by a fellow designer and doodler) assures me I’m not the only one to have ever felt this way. It’s a psychological condition that’s so old that it has Latin names: ‘Horror vacui’, and ‘Cenophobia’, the fear of open spaces. Behind those charming Where’s Waldo? illustrations is a known psychiatric aberration.

The elder tailor Mr. Mansard is my long-suffering associate. He puts up with my plethora of personal quirks with stereotype British seriousness. Today he has a mouthful of about twenty pins as he goes down the line doing the very last adjustments. I had said previously, “Mansard, I want the clothes to fit the way a snake’s skin fits the snake.” I take up a needle and whip-stitch a seam down a model’s body, on the spot.

When Mansard and I are done, you can’t force a marble into the space between the model and the garment she’s wearing. The version that the customers commission will actually allow breathing, but this is for the show, and I am going for an unreal perfection.

After the models don my latest creations, the stylists translate my colored marker head sketches into reality. For me, it feels like the girls are being transformed into my sketches.

Janine (whom I have hired despite being, at 25, over-the-hill by my competitor’s standards) is massaging her neck because it aches from having to keep her head in the same position for so long. Her hair has been stiffened into shiny flat bands an inch wide. The process is taking well over an hour.

She has consented to let three hair stylists cut fifty star-shaped openings into her actual long hair with surgical lasers. It fills the trailer with a horrible smell and we have to open the door on either end, but the end result looks stunning. Her hair is standing out in wavy strips a full meter behind her.

Little stars made out of hair have fallen on the ground. I’m staring at them, unable to stop myself from seeing a constellation of an animal in their random arrangement.

Just as they’re about to be swept up I say, “Wait! Gather those up. We’ll auction them for charity.” I wink at Janine. She nods and and smiles, and I seem to read in her eyes that she thinks I’m either a nutty old bat, or a batty old nut.

Carmen, another model, is enduring a different elaborate and uncomfortable procedure: her hair is being woven into what looks like a neck and shoulder covering with hood. It has a point protruding from the back, a medieval thing called a liripipe. She points at me in mock-accusation: “You’re a sadist.”

I recall she looked positively darling with fire licking at the edge of her evening gown, hazardously near her long graceful legs. I tell her, “This is your fourth show with me. I think you are a masochist.” We all share a laugh.

Janine is still smiling at me. She has a strange look on her face. Almost as much as a photographer, it is my job to notice every nuance of a face, and I’ve never seen that expression before on her. In my gut, I suddenly have an insight that Janine is actually unhappy, deeply unhappy.

I have a moment of confusion. Is her harness pinching terribly somewhere and she doesn’t want to make trouble? Should I ask her what is wrong? I catch sight of the prominently displayed clock, though- our appointment with the runway is getting nearer and nearer.

I owe part of my fortune to Janine’s little cleft chin and unusual but appealing green eyes that slant downwards on the outside corners. She trusts I will not forget that. She is a grown-up and if she had a problem, I assume she would say so.

I heard she sold her condominium in the big city this past month. We both know that this is her last show. By spring, I expect that she will be back in her home town, with her family, raising show horses.

I glance over and see how a new girl, Sashi, is faring. I wonder if I should go over and make smalltalk to help fend off boredom. Ah, no need; she’s asking questions about how to bleach hair and the stylist is eagerly “talking shop”.

The crew uses little machines the size of electric toothbrushes to turn Sashi’s hair into hundreds of tiny glossy dark braids. Thanks to wires hidden amongst the strands, they can bend and position the braids. Pretty soon Sashi’s head resembles a porcupine.

I cheer them. “Excellent! That’s just how I pictured it!”

Sashi doesn’t have such a distinctive face but the shape is perfect. I chose her over other models because she has a touch of muscle tone, and this show will require a bit more than just walking.

We’ve put these custom-made contact lenses on her, to change her eyes into enormous lavender-edged aquamarine circle, like an anime character. She’d be able to pass for fourteen with those on.

I keep it to myself that I don’t think Sashi has such great modeling prospects ahead of her. The most famous faces have just the right balance of ‘typical’ and ‘unusual’.

That means models often begin as something of an “ugly duckling”. Runway models are scouted as young as thirteen, but often, nobody can guess at the swan they will someday become. Seventeen is more usual.

By age eighteen, the proportions change quite a bit, and some facial feature that used to be “ositively enormous” is now just “intriguingly different”. That hawk nose or an overbite with big front teeth that loomed so large in the morning mirror now just makes her “Aztec princess”, “Wholesome country girl” or maybe even some look like Janine’s that’s so unique they call it the “Janine” look.

There’s also a need for pictures of less “erfect” and less “unique” people. Between shows with runway modeling, there is also modeling clothing for catalogs and so on.

My right-hand woman, Dorothea, and I are now at opposite ends of the trailer, communicating via headset. She was a part-time model herself for some years. Her snub nose and full lips are exotic and primordial; her cheekbones swell like the breasts of doves. She appeared in ‘Big and Beautiful’ lingerie catalogs.

Obviously, she isn’t beautiful in the classic sense. She’s so nice, though, that you start to think that what she is, is what ‘beautiful’ should be. She has what the beauty pageants call ‘oise’. She has the self-confidence to show her honest compassion. That’s what being sent to little girl make-up and charm camp gave her.

She’s nicknamed “La Titaña” (pronounced tee-TAN-ya), and you might not guess from her appearance how great she is at negotiating, coordinating other people, and keeping things organized. She started as our wardrobe manager, just tracking clothes and props, occasionally dry-cleaning things.

It’s time for makeup, and that isn’t just faces. For this show I’ve decided we’ll use the liquid pantyhose. We open the trailer doors for ventilation, and spray it on. Now the girls’ legs are nicely shiny. We spray a second coat on, and throw handfuls of a very fine glitter dust to stick to this. Then a third coating of spray is applied.

As their legs dry, the models receive layers of makeup for a base. We have to do it standing up; no resting in the ultra-comfy styling chairs now.

I open a plastic scrap-booking case that contains stencils cut with tiny robot-controlled razor-sharp swivel-knife. I can tell Sashi thinks they are exciting; her eyebrows have gone up just a little. She asks me how I made them. I tell her the cutter uses ‘vector’ graphics, a way to save illustrations as dots and lines. Really, not any different than what vinyl sign-makers use. Now Sashi is nodding and smiling.

That just won’t do. “Relax your face, please,” I say. “And sit still.” Sashi sobers up right away. Every model gets stencils lightly plastered to her. We powder on the motifs in double time, quick pat-pats. In a few cases, another shape overlaps a previous one.

We’ve actually done this before— twice— with trusted interns as stand-ins. All the components of the process have been rehearsed. We’ve just never put it all together before. Unlike a play, we most likely never will again. It’s one-day-only, and this one day is make-or-break. Did I mention there is a lot of pressure sometimes?

I’ve made each facial design starting with digital photos of each model. Janine’s has colorful wedges like a spectrum, sweeping back from either side of her mouth. Hooded Carmen has a simple dark purple moon-crescent on her forehead, and a single little dot on each cheek. Sashi’s is more elaborate, with red-brown, ochre and black jagged areas on pale yellowish-green. Her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.

The models are now looking like living sculptures or paintings.

With assistants holding up huge black umbrellas on all sides, to discourage sneak preview photos, we scurry into our appointed section of the backstage area. Covered by black cloth, and guarded by an armed guard, our prosthetics are waiting.

Dorothea’s big personality soon takes over as she calls out, with no need for a loudspeaker, what everyone is to do next. She tells me, “You go, girl!” It’s her catch-phrase. It means I must now abandon this area, and go out to the audience area.

I must make a good impression on the buyers, who are, for the moment, not “customers”, but “guests” at a somewhat exclusive event. I look at the reserved seats, and find mine without incident. Before I sit, I wave, and flashbulbs pop.

My “image” this show is “The Inventor”. I’m wearing a long light coat with straps and silver buckles on the sides, and black silky skirts. In this lighting, my spectacles have turned crystal-clear. (The high-tech changing glass lenses were set into the vintage 1900’s gold-plated steel frames at my bidding.)

Most of the time, my hair is in a simple ponytail. For shows, I let the stylist do something more exciting with it. This time they’ve pulled it severely back away from the forehead, with a few wisps deliberately left free, and the rest is in an elaborate bun at the back. A small slender screwdriver with a clear golden-yellow plastic handle is holding it in place, at an angle that looks as if I often casually yank it out, fix something, then jam it back in.

The fashion mavens take notice of the watch on a little strap clipped at my left hip, and small scissors in a wonderfully ornate case at my right. What looks at first to be a big amber pendant turns out to be machine oil in a fine glass bottle on a silvery chain. A small prop notebook with brass gears expertly riveted into the leather completes the outfit.

Other designers are, of course, making their own bids for attention.

Toku, a Japanese fellow from Wyoming in his 20’s, is accompanied by his shy and homely cousin. I overhear someone next to me whispering, “Is it true they’re going to get married there, just to challenge the law?”

Konnie Kloo, self-proclaimed queen of geeky-is-chic, wears a shirt whose soft surface is video screen accomplished with LEDs. It displays the colorful patterns known as the “Mandelbrot Set”. My honest enjoyment manifests as a glassy-eyed stare.

I’m saved from the mesmerizing patterns by Konnie’s wild arm waving. She is throwing a tantrum now because her garments are being dubbed ‘gimmicky’ by a tactless fashion reporter. Over my headset I hear Dorothea say, “Just pick up a chair, bust it over the guy’s head, Konnie!” Well, Fashion Week has drama but we’re not as far gone as professional wrestling. Yet.

(continued in Part 2)
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