Page 14 of Wrapped Up at the Vintage Dress Shop
It could all wait until later. Padma was their priority and all Phoebe really cared about was making sure that she was as happy with her dress as she was with her choice of a groom. Phoebe had never met Adam but she doubted he could be as perfect as the utterly stunning red dress Padma was poured into when she emerged from the dressing room.
It was long-sleeved and high-necked in the bodice, then the skirt was artfully gathered up and draped in a waterfall of delicate pleats. Phoebe wouldn’t even know how to begin hemming a skirt like that but Cress . . .
‘Oh, this iseverything!’ Padma exclaimed once she was up on the dais and slowly rotating so she could see what she looked like from every angle in the mirrors that captured her on three sides. ‘I’m wearing my wedding Louboutins and this is just the right length now.’
‘Is that the underwear you’re going to be wearing?’ Cress asked.
‘I’m just wearing M&S’s finest, but it looks all right.’ Padma craned her neck. ‘Even my bottom.’
‘Oh, you’d look gorgeous in a just-around-the-house tracksuit,’ Cress said, as she approached the dais. ‘But the dress has got an in-built corset so you can wear something quite, quite . . . you know,sexy, if you wanted to. As it’s your wedding day.’
‘Well, I have got a reinforced bodysuit as one option and also a quite indecent underwear set from Agent Provocateur as another option,’ Padma said with a grin.
Phoebe allowed herself to sigh in relief as Padma and Cress discussed the final alterations. Little details that probably didn’t matter to anyone else but they mattered to Cress and Phoebe.
‘So, are you happy for Cress to make those slight changes then come in for a third and final fitting?’ Phoebe asked with her appointment book open. ‘When do you think the dress will be ready, Cress?’
‘I can get it done for this Wednesday,’ Cress said because she really was an absolute alteration goddess.
‘Look, I trust you guys so I’m happy for you to courier the dress over when it’s done,’ Padma said, which was music to Phoebe’s ears. A whole symphony. ‘It’s my hen next weekend and then it’s only two weeks to the wedding so anything that’s going to make my life easier.’
‘If you’re sure . . .’
Phoebe never found out if Padma was sure because there was a thudding noise and the gold spiral staircase began to shudder because it wasn’t designed to have five people thundering up it all at the same time.
Rosie Robert’s head was the first to appear, then the rest of her, her face showing her displeasure as she took in the atelier.
‘I suppose this will do to shoot some fits though the dresses up here are, like, really boring. So one note.’ She bypassed Phoebe and the furious look on her face, to light upon Padma still standing on the dais and, to her credit, still smiling even though her most special bridal experience was currently being ruined. ‘Oh, I like that. I’ll try that on.’
‘You absolutely will not be trying it on,’ Phoebe said in a low voice because it was taking every fibre of her being not to go all the way up to eleven. Sophy was the last to come up the stairs then stood there, wringing her hands and mouthing what looked like, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Seems like you’re really busy,’ Padma said because really, she was a saint. ‘I’ll get changed and we’ll sort out the details if you can help me out of this.’
They might be very angry with each other but they were still friends, so Cress could tell that Phoebe was five seconds away from losing her shit. Maybe it was the clenched fists and the flared nostrils that gave her away.
‘Pheebs, can you help Padma?’ Cress asked diplomatically. ‘I need to finish making my notes while they’re fresh in my head.’
‘I’m so sorry that you had your special moment interrupted,’ Phoebe said when she and Padma were in the changing room and she was carefully inching down the concealed zip.
‘No problems,’ Padma assured her. She was the most laid-back bride that Phoebe had ever met. ‘I used to follow Rosie on Instagram but after a while it was all #sponcon and not even humble bragging, just bragging, so I had to unfollow her.’
If Phoebe didn’t already have ominous dread settling over her like a fine mist, then Padma’s words would have sealed the deal. Why hadn’t Sophy, or Freddy for that matter, properly vetted their influencer of choice?
By the time that Padma was back in her everyday clothes and Phoebe had delivered the dress in its garment bag to Cress, Rosie and the entourage seemed to be contained on the sofas and Sophy was opening one of the bottles of champagne they kept in a little fridge up here. To make each bride and VIP feel as if they were getting a special experience. Not for ungrateful people who said loudly, ‘I can’t believe this isn’t Cristal.’
Phoebe was trying to stay calm. She practised taking deep breaths in and out as Sophy asked in a tightly controlled voice, as if she too was hanging on to her sanity by the thinnest, most frayed of threads, if Phoebe wouldn’t mind bringing up the dresses from the shop for Rosie to try on.
Usually, Sophy didn’t tell Phoebe what to do. She wouldn’t have dared. But Phoebe was only too happy to make her excuses and hurry down the stairs to the shop, which was heaving with customers. There was a queue for the two changing cubicles, which snaked around the shop floor. Bea was having trouble changing the till roll and Anita was trying to mediate an argument between two women who had both fallen in love with the same 1960s mod-inspired minidress in navy blue with a red trim.
‘If you like the mod look then we have another minidress in a chequerboard print on the white rail over there,’ Phoebe said, eyeing up the women. She was not in a mood for messing and they both quaked under her gimlet gaze. One of the women was a cool-toned blonde, the other a striking brunette with warm-toned skin with yellow undertones. ‘You’d look better in this. You’d look better in the other one.’
It was Phoebe’s party trick that she only had to glance at someone to know whether they were a warm autumn or a true spring. She was never wrong and the brunette grudgingly relinquished the navy blue dress so she could investigate the other option.
By now, Bea had succeeded in changing the till roll, Anita had instigated a strict three dresses only changing-room policy and said, ‘I’m sorry, people, but you can’t be doing fit checks in there and posting them to Instagram when we have a massive queue waiting.’
It was good to know that Anita had learned some of the lessons that Phoebe had tried to teach her.
Pausing only to tell a woman that teal and taupe were two completely different colours and not interchangeable shades of blue, Phoebe retrieved the dresses she’d selected for Rosie, and with heavy heart and heavy tread, she returned to the atelier.
