“This is Jamie. The one I told you all about, Bonita.”
The woman took a step back, sizing poor Jamie up as if she were about to be feasted upon. Or at least trying to decide if she was worthy of such a feast. “She is so American.” The woman named Bonita whipped out a cigarette and lit it without a second thought. Her first smoke trail clouded the small corridor. Both Adele and Jamie wrinkled their noses. “I can work with this. You challenge me, though.”
“I hear you’re all about challenges these days.”
“If I could dress that scruffy princess and make her look like actual royalty on her precious big day, then I can work with this. You say herfiancée’s loaded?”
“Come on, Bonita, you remember Etta.”
“Yes, yes, Etta,il tuo donna grande.” Bonita spat out more smoke. “Si, let us do this thing.Benvenuto, Jamie, I am Bonita Bocelli, the next big thing in wedding fashion. I hear you have no goodvestito. I mean, dress.”
“Um… yeah.” Were they dress shopping? Was that the big surprise?Oh, my God.
“Then come here so I can make you the best dressedsposain yournon sofisticatoexcuse for a country.”
Jamie had no idea what that meant, but it probably wasn’t nice.
“Ignore her mannerisms,” Adele said into Jamie’s ear as they went into the studio. “Bonita has gotten this far since I knew her in undergrad because she likes to slice stomachs open. Including a woman’s.” She snorted. “Ask any of her girlfriends.”
They were probably working the studio, which was filled with nothing but women, all of them thin, young, and beautiful. Some of them were stuck in front of computers. Most were hunched over yards of beautiful, glistening fabric or painstakingly adding beads to bodices.The whole studio was aparadiso bianco. Bonita Bocelli, as Jamie would soon learn, was about to give the other Italian wedding dress designers runs for their Euros and liras, if they still had them. She had made that Northern European excuse for a princess look like a fairy-tale on her wedding day last year, which had spread her name all over the Eurosphere and allowed her to move up in the Italian fashion world. She had boutiques in Paris, London, and Stockholm. To hear her tell it, it was only a matter of time before she was in New York.
The cigarette was long extinguished before they entered the studio, but Jamie still smelled the tobacco hanging off Bonita as she went to a huge rack of finished wedding dresses – all of them impeccably Italian and regal.
“I promise you, Jamie,” Adele said as they were sat on a bench and served more sparkling water. “If we can’t find you something perfect here, we willfind you something in this city. I have faith in Bonita, though. I’ve known her since undergrad in London. She has perfect taste and knows how to dress a woman. Could’ve been the best personal stylist in the world if she wasn’t obsessed with wedding dresses.”
“This is almost too much to take in…” Jamie watched as Bonita and one of her assistants spoke in clipped Italian in front of the rack of dresses, gesturing to Jamie and saying the colors of her skin and hair over and over. “If you say she’s the best…”
“Oh, I didn’t say that. I said I have faith in her.”
“It’s so kind of you to do this.” A dress was coming in Jamie’s direction. “Really.”
Adele shrugged, and left Jamie in Bonita’s eager hands.
This was a completely different experience from shopping at the boutique in New York. Those women had been all about Jamie’s tastes and trying to match them. Bonita? She didn’t give a fuck about what Jamie envisioned herself in. “Women don’t know what’s good for them,” she sighed more than once, motioning for an assistant to put another dress on Jamie. “I do. No, no,idiota, I said get the one with the tulle! What is this?Che ho fatto…”
Jamie wasn’t a bride. She was a model, and Bonita ran her models through ringers designed to test their stamina until they collapsed dead on the floor. It also didn’t help that these dresses were made for women one, two sizes smaller than Jamie, so trying to fit into them was like trying on her old high school clothes.Fat chance. Literally. I’m too fat.Adele assured her that Bonita and her team of seamstresses would make anything fit before Jamie’s big day. Bonita kept looking at her as if she werecosi folle.
“Stop this pain you are inflicting upon me,” the designer lamented more than once. “Does she look like some ugly duck who needs a mermaid dress? When did I design a mermaid dress? I would never! Someone put this on my rack without permission! Where is she? I will cut hergolabefore she hasthe chance to wake up from her nightmare! Get me a fucking ball gown before I burn this place down! Princesses! That’s our money! That is the name Bocelli!”
Jamie barely had time to see the dresses on her. They were on and off before she could glance in the mirror. They came in such spurts that all she saw was white, ivory, and light creams covered in tulle, beads, and the occasional sequins, depending on what phase of Bonita’s life they represented. Sometimes she expressed such hatred for her designs that Jamie was afraid the designer would rip them off her body and burn them in the middle of the studio. These dresses that had to be worth thousands of dollars already…
“Stop!” The studio went silent as Bonita stared in fascination at the latest piece Jamie wore. Even if they weren’t involved with this fitting, women all around the studio looked up to see what was going on. “This is it. Adele, come here, tell me I am a piece of shit.”
“I’m sure that’s not necessary.” Nevertheless, she rose from the bench to view Jamie from the front. Her face instantly changed from indifferent to…
To…
“Holy shit. Jamie, you have to look at this dress on you.” Adele grabbed Bonita’s arm. “You’re a piece of shit.”
“I know. I do my job.”
Jamie slowly turned with the help of an assistant, for the skirt was so full that it was easy for her to lose her footing on the raised dais. When she looked into the mirrors now in front of her, Jamie had to wonder if she were still sleeping – for what dream had she stepped into?
It was not the first princess dress she put on, although this one borderlined on ball gown territory. It was, however, the first one that fit right and didn’t make Jamie feel like she was sucked into a dress vacuum.
While its flaring skirt and strapless, sweetheart-shaped neckline was not a new idea, the way it hugged Jamie’s body and accentuated herfigure was something she had never seen on her frame before. She… well, she looked like a princess, but not the fairy-tale kind. She looked like a modern day princess, the kind who worked a shitty desk job as opposed to cleaning out fireplaces for an evil stepmother. Until Her Royal Highness – who was probably her boss – showed up and changed her life forever.
The gentle slope of the silk skirt moved whenever Jamie did. Fluid movements. The kind that made her and the dress look like one as opposed to two entities fighting for control. Her breasts neither bulged from the top nor disappeared into oblivion. There was enough flesh and cleavage to be sexy without vulgarity. And her arms! They miraculously didn’t look fat, which was Jamie’s biggest issue with strapless gowns.
