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Madame’s instructions, in French. I sped back to my post, kneeling among the forest of naked model legs as skirts came off and evening gowns were wriggled on. Size nine feet were put into size ten pumps with lumps of tissue crammed into the toes, missing bracelets were found and fastened, queries, complaints, and swear words made a sotto voce hum drowned out in front by the music now emanating from the record player. It was the “Anvil Chorus,” I think.
    Out on the stage, Mme. P gave her own commentary on each design as the models marched out, turned, posed, and marched back, passing each other as they went. It was unusual for a designer to perform this role, but Mme. P was famous for it. For the finale, all six of the models would be onstage in evening gowns, each with a fichu of a different style and color. Except that when the moment came, there were six girls and only five fichus. Red satin, green peau de soie, ivory chiffon, blue watered silk with seed pearls, burgundy cashmere, but no black velvet with rhinestones. I had forgotten to wait to bring it back. Madame’s eyes alone, when she came backstage after taking her bows, could have singed hair. Marjorie tried to hide me the rest of the afternoon, and for days afterward I crept around the studio, pretending not to cast a shadow, not sure if I even had a job anymore, though the very unpleasant things Madame had yelled at me had not included the word “ terminée .”
    D inah roared with laughter when I told her the fichu story, which wasn’t quite the reaction I had hoped for. She, after all, was comfortably ensconced in an ivy-covered dormitory with three meals a day paid for, even if she did have to maintain a B average to keep her scholarships. But later, when she went to work for “New York Eye,” she was a huge help to me with Mme. Philomena. She’d come to our collections and plant items in the column about them. “What chanteuse in a hit Broadway musical was seen ordering Philomena’s new Grecian Column cocktail dress in three different colors of silk charmeuse? Maybe the rumors about her very well-heeled new inamorato are true.” The actress and Mme. P both loved it, as long as the inamorato’s wife in Rome, also a sometime client of Mme. P, didn’t catch on. Mme. P began asking why I didn’t bring that charming Mlle. Dinah around more often, especially after Dinah persuaded the very young, very photogenic wife of a major New York philanthropist to model the bridal gown in our spring collection that year. (Which was 1971. I just looked it up.) It was an innovation at the time to send a nonprofessional out on the runway, but it turned into a PR coup—it proved that our clothes could be worn by a younger customer and caused demand for seats at our shows to skyrocket. And got Dinah a very nice scoop for her column. “Would you take to the fashion runway in Mme. Philomena’s bridal offering, as pretty Bettina Cosgrove did last week, if you could wear a size six? Can’t say for sure, kids, but Dinah Might.” The column ran with a photograph of Bettina in our dress.
    Bettina, who later became a particular friend of mine, had married a man whose terrifying former wife vowed that Bettina and her husband would eat dinner at home alone every night of their married life. But Bettina had nerve and a surprising cunning on her side, plus a press agent. We lost the former Mrs. Cosgrove as a customer, along with a few of her friends, but more than replaced them with a new, younger group who wanted their pictures in the paper too, and not just when they chaired a junior benefit. Bettina was well pleased because it induced several fashionable hosts to invite the Cosgroves to dinner, even over their wives’ objections. And Dinah was given her own column to run in place of “New York Eye” every Friday, entitled “Dinah Might.”
    M eg Colbert was married on a summer weekend