Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [79]
Jean-Luc had risen to the occasion, fashioning bunches of fragile silk camellias into tiny, veiled hats worn tilted provocatively over the eyes, in the same hot colors as the dresses and dyed overnight by his poor young wife, who had magenta hands to prove it.
The girls looked fantastic, thought Paris as their long, strong dancers’ legs in sheer black tights and the highest-heeled scarlet suede shoes paced the runway challengingly. And a little bit naughty, like a bunch of wild contemporary Carmens absconded from the opera. The look was totally theatrical, totally new, and was one of those spur-of-the-moment inspirations that could be picked up and transformed into a whole new trend, copied internationally—something that could make her name immediately, the way Montana’s space-age wide-shouldered suits had, or St. Laurent’s tuxedos.
As she watched, Naomi and the other girls dropped their arrogant model-girl attitudes and broke into an improvised samba-strut to the carnival music that Didi was controlling from the tape decks backstage.
God, there was still a crackle on the speakers, Didi hadn’t got it right yet! Her eyes searched the chaotic salon for an electrician. How, she wondered, would it ever all be ready by tomorrow? Deliverymen were still trekking in and out bringing the uncomfortable little gilt chairs essential to every Paris show, electricians fiddled endlessly with the footlights, while someone at the back constantly dazzled them with pinspots and flickering strobes. Florists were busily banking the sides of the runway with the enormous creamy lilies that Paris had insisted were in keeping with her thirties mood, though Didi said they reminded him of funerals and were playing havoc with his hay fever. Berthe and her assistants sat at tables in one corner sewing up hems and adjusting sleeves, while backstage the clothes and appropriate accessories were being arranged on racks, each with a girl’s name on it, by the dancers who weren’t to do the show and who had volunteered to act as dressers. Two makeup girls hovered amid clouds of face powder and glitters of blusher, and the hairdresser and his assistant frantically blow-dried and experimented, trying to capture the exact effect Paris demanded.
The carnival music blasting from the speakers had nothing to do with what was happening on the runway, and the girls hadn’t quite got the feel of it.
“Here, like this,” Paris called. “I want you to stride onto the stage all together in a burst of color and movement.”
She watched approvingly as they got it right the first time, but that music had to be changed. She stuck her head behind the curtains looking for Didi.
“Didi? I don’t think that carnival music works. I want something sexy as well as just ‘up’—find something a bit rougher, some Stones or Joe Jackson.”
Naomi danced back down the runway to some phantom music in her head, capturing exactly what Paris needed.
“That’s it, that’s it,” she called. “Didi, find music to fit that.”
Didi was having a rough day. He’d been at the Hôtel de l’Abbaye since six that morning supervising the workmen as they arrived, preventing the electricians from going on strike because Paris said there was no time for a coffee break, quelling the panic when by noon the chairs still hadn’t arrived, sneezing his way past the lilies and fighting a losing battle with the crackle on the speakers. He’d had one cup of black coffee and it was now twelve-thirty.
“Why can’t you stick with what we’ve got?” he hissed, glaring at Paris.
“Because we can do better! Didier de Maubert, you’re not going to let me down now, are you?