Page 11 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
Phoebe much preferred it when the shop was busy. She loved her job but on quiet days even being in close proximity to so many gorgeous dresses wasn’t enough to speed up the working hours. Saturdays were always their busiest days and it was quite staggering just how many women were going to Halloween parties over the coming fortnight as sexy witches and needed the right kind of black dress.
Not to mention two brides coming in for fittings and a blonde bombshell of a woman who’d come all the way from Yorkshire to buy a tight, figure-hugging gold lamé dress she’d seen on the website to celebrate her divorce.
Phoebe was in her element and the morning just sped by. This good mood of hers was settling in for the day. When she nipped out at lunchtime so Coco could have a comfort break, there was no queue at the cashpoint and Phoebe’s favourite café hadn’t run out of her favourite falafel wraps.
She found herself humming a jaunty tune once she was back at the shop. Even Sophy couldn’t harsh her mellow. ‘Do you want to do that edit now?’ she asked Phoebe, running her hand over her sorry little collection of rental dresses.
‘Give me five minutes,’ Phoebe said, taking a crisp twenty-pound note and five pound coins out of her purse. ‘Just need to nip upstairs.’
Cress must have still been out at lunch because the workroom was empty. Phoebe wondered where would be the best place to leave the money. Probably right in front of Cress’s big fancy sewing machine. She looked around for a Post-it note. There was a pad of pink ones on the long counter that ran the length of one wall. Or rather they were sitting on Cress’s open sketchbook.
Phoebe wasn’t a sneak but she just happened to glance down at the pages as she picked up the Post-it notes and saw a sketch of a chic fifties-style, halter-neck wiggle dress. In Cress’s beautifully loopy handwriting were the wordsThe Sophy.Fine, of course Cress would name a dress after her stepsister, especially when she’d made her a similar dress in an ice blue satin. But on the facing page was another sketch of the dress that she’d reproduced for Anita a few months ago after Anita had absolutelydestroyeda poor defenceless frock then blamed it on the harsh chemicals in modern antiperspirants. The dress was called, not surprisingly, The Anita.
It stood to reason that Cress must have designed a dress inspired by Phoebe too. The Phoebe. After Phoebe had discovered that Cress had reproduced a dress for Anita, she’d asked her to replicate one of her own frocks that had been a victim of the Bastard Moth Infestation of 2019. Which Cress had done though she’d point-blank refused to replicate another dress that had fallen prey to the moth menace, because it had a peplum and knife pleats and she said it was too complicated.
However, maybe Cresshaddone a sketch of it and called it The Phoebe. Idly she flicked over the page of the sketchbook to find an illustration of a sleek black column dress, heavily reminiscent of the look Audrey Hepburn had worn in the opening scene ofBreakfast At Tiffany’s, Cress’s favourite film. Phoebe would have understood if Cress had called it The Audrey or even The Tiffany, but she’d called it The Tanya after a client who’d commissioned a similar dress for her fiftieth birthday. A client, not even a colleague, or a very dear friend, had a dress named after her but…
Phoebe heard a step behind her and whirled around to see Cress standing in the doorway. Immediately, Phoebe could feel heat flare up in her face, in her veins, because she’d been caught snooping even though she hadn’t meant to. Also, heat because . . .
‘I was going to tell you!’ Cress burst out, her own red face a perfect colour match for Phoebe’s own. ‘You weren’t meant to find out like this.’
‘I needed a Post-it note,’ Phoebe said haltingly. ‘I didn’t mean to look . . .’ Hurt trumped guilt. Or maybe they had equal footing. ‘I can’t believe this, Cress. I thought we were friends. You haven’t even named a dr . . .’
Cress covered her burning cheeks with her hands. ‘Freddy said not to tell you!’
It just kept getting worse.
‘Oh he did, did he? Freddy knew about this?’ Since when did Freddy keep secrets from her?
‘There isn’t really anything to know about,’ Cress insisted, her voice catching. ‘I’m only thinking in the loosest possible sense about designing a capsule collection of reproduction dresses. They’re just sketches and I’m just working up some costings to give to Freddy so he can see if it’s a goer and something we might work on together.’
Phoebe wanted to clap her hands over her ears so she didn’t have to hear this garbled explanation. Each word a dagger to her heart. She settled for putting her hands on her hips, drawing herself up, chest out, chin tipped forward.
‘You and Freddy are working on a collection of reproduction dresses?’ Phoebe echoed incredulously. She might look her most imposing but inside she was reeling. Cress was her friend, which was a huge deal as Phoebe always tried to maintain a professional distance with her staff. Freddy was also meant to be her friend, actually a lot more than a friend. A whole lot more.
It was almost as bad as if they’d been having a torrid affair.
‘It’s simply a few drawings right now.’ Cress blinked back tears but Phoebe was unmoved. She’d never met anyone who cried as much and as easily as Cress did. ‘And maybe a name. I was thinking, “Thank you, it has pockets”, because all the dresses will have pockets.’
Ordinarily, the mention of pockets would calm Phoebe right down. Pockets were one of her top five favourite things in the world, but not now, not today, Satan.
‘You know how I feel about reproduction dresses! You’re ripping off the designs of countless designers of actual vintage dresses . . .’
‘I’m not ripping off anyone. They’re my own designs. They’re an homage to vintage dress styles.’ Cress wasn’t blinking back tears anymore but actually sounded quite peeved.
Still, Phoebe was undaunted. ‘You’ll be flooding the market with tenth-generation copies of dresses that have history and stories to be worn by people who don’t have any appreciation for those histories or stories.’ Phoebe had to take a calming breath. ‘Worse! Then some of those people might decide to buy actual vintage dresses when it’s already becoming impossible to source decent vintage . . .’
‘Oh for goodness’ sakes, you’re being ridiculous!’ Cress snapped. Yes, she actually snapped at Phoebe, who was so shocked that she stopped mid flow and nearly bit her tongue. ‘Not everyone can afford vintage. Or even wants to wear vintage dresses. I’m offended that you would even think that I was doing this with bad intentions. Also, my dresses would go all the way up to a size twenty-four, unlike the dresses in this shop, most of which I couldn’t squeeze into and I’m a size sixteen.’
Talk about the mouse that roared. ‘It’s very hard to find vintage dresses in extended sizes,’ Phoebe said icily because it was.
Cress looked Phoebe right in the eye. ‘Well, maybe you should try harder,’ she said in a tight voice that was very unlike her and there wasn’t anything that Phoebe could say in reply.
Instead she slapped down the coins and the twenty-pound note, which was damp and crumpled after being clenched in her fist, and stalked out of the workroom, brushing past Cress in the process who bristled like a cat who’d had its fur rubbed the wrong way.
Of course Phoebe couldn’t let Cress, or anyone, have the last word. ‘And you didn’t even name a dress after me!’ she said, her voice petulant and whiny when she’d wanted to maintain her dignity.
God, she hated it when that happened!
