Story: 1
The London Look
Chapter 1:
The Pedestrian and the Prodigy
The air in the Chroma office was a specific kind of London haze: part diesel fumes from the Thames-side street below, part ozone from overworked computers, and entirely suffused with the cloying sweetness of ambition and panic. It was Issue Week. The September Issue. And Isla Reid, junior features editor, was drowning.
A forest of Post-it notes waved at her from the rim of her monitor. A tower of sample garments—silks, wools, and fragile lace that collectively cost more than a small car—threatened to topple from the spare chair beside her. She was deep in the trenches of a piece on sustainable glitter, a substance she was now convinced was a paradox designed solely to torment her, when a shadow fell over her keyboard.
She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. The air itself seemed to compress and crackle around him.
“Reid.”
Luca Thorne, Creative Director and resident deity of the Chroma pantheon, placed a layout sheet on her desk with a quiet, definitive thud. His hands were what she noticed first—long-fingered, elegant, with a single, simple silver band on his thumb. Hands that could sketch a masterpiece or eviscerate a sub-par photoshoot with the same effortless precision.
“The Vanguard spread,” he said, his voice a low baritone that cut through the office din.“The copy is… pedestrian. Make it sing. Or, at the very least, make it hum in tune.”
He was already turning away, a study in monochrome severity—a perfectly tailored black suit, a white shirt so crisp it looked like it could draw blood, hair the colour of dark roast coffee falling just so over his brow. He moved through the chaotic bullpen like a shark through choppy water, and the junior staff visibly flinched as he passed.
Isla waited until he was safely enclosed in his glass-walled office before letting out a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding.
“Pedestrian,” she muttered, picking up the sheet. The layout was, of course, flawless. The models looked like avenging angels, the clothes like architectural wonders. Her words, describing the“sharp silhouettes” and“innovative textiles,” suddenly felt woefully inadequate. Like describing the Mona Lisa as“a nice painting of a lady.”
An hour and one very strong coffee later, a new angle began to form. It was risky. He could hate it. But‘pedestrian’was a challenge she refused to fail.
She marched towards his office, her knuckles rapping softly on the glass before she could lose her nerve.
He was bent over his drafting table, a large-format print of a beauty spread before him. He wasn’t on his phone or barking orders; he was entirely focused, using a ruler and a pencil to make a tiny, almost imperceptible adjustment to the alignment of a headline. The intensity of his concentration was a physical force in the room.
He looked up, his gaze—the colour of a stormy North Sea—impatient.“Well?”
“The Vanguard copy,” Isla began, her voice only wavering slightly.“Calling it‘futuristic’is lazy. It’s not just futuristic. It’s… structural. It’s a love letter to the architecture of the female form. We can tie it back to London itself—the lines of the Gherkin, the curve of the Shard, the brutalist strength of the Barbican. Make it feel… rooted. Specifically here.”
She held her breath. The only sound was the distant hum of a colour printer.
Luca Thorne leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrowed. He scanned her face as if seeing her for the first time—not just Isla Reid, the junior editor, but a person with an idea. A real one.
A slow, deliberate smile touched his lips. It was a rare sight, like the sun breaking through a London fog, and it transformed his entire face. The severity melted away, replaced by a spark of genuine, unadulterated appreciation.
“Yes,” he said, the single word landing with the weight of a benediction.“That’s it. Do that.”
He turned back to his work, the moment over. But as Isla walked back to her desk, her heart was pounding not with anxiety, but with a fierce, bright thrill. She had not just passed a test. She had, for a fleeting second, sung. And he had listened.
Chapter 2:
Midnight Oil and a Glimmer of Something More
The office emptied around her in a slow, steady trickle. First went the interns, then the other juniors, then the senior editors with weary, sympathetic nods in her direction. By 9 PM, the vast, open-plan space was a ghost town of dormant screens and empty chairs, the only light spilling from Isla’s desk and the bright rectangle of Luca Thorne’s office.
Isla was deep in the architecture of her new copy, the city lights of London twinkling like a scattered necklace beyond the glass walls. She had just typed“a sartorial echo of the city’s steel and glass spine” when a shadow fell across her keyboard for the second time that day.
She jumped.
Luca stood there, holding two steaming cardboard cups. He’d shed his suit jacket and loosened his tie, the top button of his shirt undone. He looked less like a deity and more like a very tired, very attractive man.
“You’re still here,” he stated, placing one of the cups on her desk. It wasn’t a question.
