Yes there’s the waiter perhaps we can ask for another drink? What would you like? Nothing. But Anna, you have to party once in a while. Work? Yes, yes I understand, but one is compelled to misbehave from time to time…(pause) Not you? Oh…
(Regaining my composure) Look Anna, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but who set you up with that bob?! I mean really if only I could make my hair grow the same way. (Slight pause) It just grows naturally? But how, one would think you would need barbarians at your side to foster such a pernicious grooming habit? (Anna snickering, her eyes appearing to anxiously roll…) Ahh, to be a fashion matriarch is so hard?
But tell me Anna, while we’re talking about barbarians, fashionistas, recessions, and skinny runway models what do you think about it all? Really, sometimes I just can’t make heads or tails. ( Anna gazing out to the distance…)
Yes, so true! This is exactly what people want to know because no one thinks of this aspect of fashion. Fashion is all about aesthetic, perfection and those other entire neurotic little personal goals. Gluten free diets, size 2 dresses and the faux pas that one is occasionally forced to commit in their servicing of greater sensibility. Fashion waits for the mistake to be made, for the model to topple over like a water buffalo on heels. Then everyone laughs, has an opinion, takes a picture puts it in the newest gossip magazine for everyone to eat. Getting fat off of the drama, heightened emotions of the newest line that in ten years will be re-duplicated but in a new way. Really Anna – how many times can you redesign a light bulb and think that it is going to do something that it has never done before?
Oh Anna I’m so glad we’ve finally here together again. If only you could understand how fast my mind is racing at this very minute. Oh please Anna, of course I’m not going to spill another drink over you! What you take me for? A diva?!
Private thoughts aside, and while Anna started whispering to another intern I kept thinking to myself “Surely I could have asked her all of those tired questions about fashion and where it’s heading and what she thinks of where she has been, where she is and where she is going but I was saving myself for the most pressing questions. Even now I wondered if I had the courage to ask her. It would be the type of question one asked when they were compelled to really get to actually know the person behind the façade, behind all of the aesthetics, the hair style and behind all the masks that the fashion world has been guilty of for many, many years.”
Finally Anna once again turned to me and with what appeared another forced smile began to entertain my inner desires of curiosity…
