Begin Again

Ace Beppy was a fashion designer who won a fashion design contest put on by the fashion department of the Eckermann School of Fashion. He won fifty thousand dollars, a feature article in Vogue magazine. The plan was to make a spring/summer collection titled: End of an Age. He was given use of a sewing room in the fashion department to make his spring/summer collection.

The room was full of drafting tables and floor to ceiling windows that let in the natural, bright light of the mornings and afternoons. The fashion building was old; it had been a boy's school back in the 1900s. The floors were original hardwood floors; the walls were white.

Sometimes, late at night, in the wee hours of morning, when Ace Beppy was working alone in the building, he would hear marbles scattered across the third floor. Then he would hear children’s laughter and go to investigate. He would go up to the third floor and see nothing and no one working there, the rooms still lit up with light but no students working at the tables.

Ace Beppy would return to his room on the first floor and the security guard who had been sleeping, slumped over, would startle and nod and murmur to him as he passed by.

He said nothing about the sounds upstairs. Everyone knew the building was haunted by ghost kids. But he figured he was only tired, needing more sleep, too exhausted to think clearly.

Ace Beppy was always the only one in the fashion building when it was that late at night. It was three or four in the morning, and he would be sitting at a sewing machine, foot pressed down on the pedal, the stitches racing in a line. Or else he would be drafting patterns at the tables. Or he would be draping garments on the dress form. There was always so much to do and not enough time to do any of it.

When he won the contest, the heavens opened and a bright light shone down on his face and warmed it radiantly. All was well, suddenly. Everything was good and he was happy. The future, his future, was decided and it was good. An expansive sense of hope in his chest, burst out. His arms and feet tingled, his head was a balloon disconnected from his body. This was success. This was radiant and amazing success in all its forms, dimensions, and glory.

Ace Beppy first designed his twelve looks on paper. The entire process was something he absolutely loved. Every part of the process spoke to him and made him complete. The designing, draping, drafting, the making, it all worked together to create a piece, a look, a garment that he loved.

Ace Beppy began his collection with the help of an assistant, Kathleen Manon. He started to feel she was against him somehow, that she was trying to sabotage his collection. There was no real reason for Ace’s thinking that. He was a good designer, but he was nervous and felt pressured.

First, it was the installation of an invisible zipper. He swore Kathleen put it in wrong. He plainly did not trust Manon; she was trying to sabotage his success. But he needed her help. No one else was available to help him with his collection. And because he wanted to make it all himself, he needed her for the trivial things. To sew buttons on a vest, to hem a pair of trousers, to hem a skirt, a dress.

Buzzy was the brand. Buzzy was the brainchild of Ace Beppy. Ace Beppy made Buzzy.

Buzzy was what got him known in the elite fashion circles as a wunderkind, an up-and-coming talent in a world where new is in. Ace was known for his style lines, his silhouettes, his color palette, his mood boards. Ace was known for the fabric he used and how he used it. He was known for doing simple well which was harder than it looked. So many fashion designers would make chaotic things. But Ace’s fashion designs were more subtle than most. He knew how to use chaos and he did, sometimes, and then, he would revert to simplicity and wow them.

Ace was given models who were mostly thin and tall. But he felt sabotaged when he was given a bigger girl. Some models had curves on them. He needed tall and skinny models. Not plus size models, duh. No offense to the bigger girls but he needed models who were like hangers he could toss couture or ready to wear garments onto. The tall and rail thin models looked classically suited to wearing his creations. It was that nineties heroine chic look.

Ace Beppy for Buzzy made some amazing looks. The first look was some lime green high waisted wide legged trousers with side seam pockets that curved. There was a top with orange and teal stripes that went up to the mock neck, capped sleeves.

The next look was a dress made of olive-green chiffon and light grey tulle. There were layers of the tulle so the dress poofed out like a princess ball gown. There was a neat appliqué on the front of the gown that went in a zip zag down the front.

Ace Beppy was trying his best to finish the looks. He had Kathleen Manon’s help, but she was often occupied by other things, distracted. She was on her phone texting. Ace did not feel he could ask her for help even though she was right there. He felt he had to make the collection on his own, entirely. Otherwise, it would not be his own collection at all. So, even though he had an assistant to help him, he did not request her help at all, after a while. He sweated over buttons, pockets, zippers, and collars. Ace stayed up all night redoing the things he messed up when he did them tired.

Ace Beppy for Buzzy began to unravel. He had written a quote inside his leather notebook, and it said: Beware of doubt—faith is the subtle chain that binds us to the infinite. — Elizabeth Oakes Smith.

But he felt doubts about the whole situation. He wondered if he was good enough if his collection was going to be well received. He wondered who exactly had awarded him the contest winner. He wondered if it were a sick trickery of some nefarious genius. There were so many good designers, and everyone had some statement to make, something to say.

When Ace Beppy won the contest, he intended to make a winning collection but had to figure out how to make it within the given time limit or the fashion industry would laugh him back to Minnesota.

Time was slipping away from him, unraveling like a spool of thread. Everything needed to be finished and there was no time for it. He tried to prioritize his list of things to do. He tried to finish the garments he knew would be a hit. Meanwhile, Kathleen was there lurking around the sewing room. The needles broke on the machine, and Ace had to fix that. Then the tension of the sewing machine went wonky, and he had to fix that. Kathleen was doing something wrong. But he never saw her do anything, except sit down and be on her cell phone too long.

Ace Beppy for Buzzy had to make so many new garments from scratch. He scrapped the chiffon and tulle dress, threw it into the trash. Time was running out, and he had so many things to make. Then some of the models did not show up to a fitting so he could not alter the garments until the models came back.

Do you need some help with anything? Kathleen asked, one day.

Of course I need help! I need help with everything! I need help with these pockets and the zipper.

Let me help you, Ace, Kathleen said, calmly.

Fine. I will let you help me. Ace replied.

Kathleen was able to make the pockets lie flat and the zipper worked. Ace considered letting her help some more since he had so much left to do. Every time he finished a garment, he put it up on a dress form and appraised it, cocking his head to the side, inspecting it up close. And then he would take it off the dress form and throw it in the trash.

Not good enough! He wailed to no one in the empty room.

Sometimes he would forget to take the garment off the dress form, and he would leave the garment on. Then his garment would be visible to anyone who came through the hallways or the sewing rooms of the fashion department.

People were always saying, who did that?

But Ace Beppy for Buzzy never claimed any of those pieces as his own. He would shrug it off.

Not good enough, he would whisper to himself and any who could hear.

The deadline for his fashion show was quickly coming up.

Ace began to redesign everything and start from the beginning.

I am a king, and this is my world, begin again, he thought, while his head was spinning.

He looked out the window into the black night sky. He stared at his reflection in the window for a moment, then the moment passed him by. He got on the sewing machine and pressed his foot down hard. The stitches went racing like so much horsepower, horses gassed up and running in a straight line. He sat hunched over the sewing machine for hours at a time. Then one night it hit him, his failure to express the beauty of St. Augustine of Hippo in Confessions and the perfect dress.

Ace wailed, he railed, he impaled a piece—it was a top of gauzy organza. He stuck his scissors into it and cut a large hole in the middle. Then he lifted the top to his right eye and peered through it like it was a monocle or just a hole. He surveilled the sewing room, he was utterly alone, Kathleen had left for the night. He set the top down in the trash bin with the scraps of fabric, the loose threads, the scraps of drafting paper. The trash swallowed his top just like that and it was as if it never happened.

Every time he drew a line for a pattern on drafting paper he thought, I can make a better line than the one that I just drew.

So, he would draw it over again. He wasted so much time redrawing the pattern lines. But they were finally perfect. Ace did not eat anything for he felt he had no time to eat. The morning sun would rise and cast shadows and light on the garments on the tables or the fabric on the sewing machine. The light illuminated everything.

Tell me, how is it going? Mr. Kipling, a man in a tweed suit, the department chair once said.

The man in his tweed suit was standing in the sewing room that had been given to Ace for the time being so he could make his fabulous collection.

Ace looked at the dress forms, now naked of his apparel. The garments he made were in the trash now. He had ripped and cut them up. There were pieces of patterns cut on the tables and pieces of garments on the tables in little heaps and lumps.

Ace Beppy for Buzzy felt like the world was not on his side. Time certainly was not. And he still had his pride.

What happened? Mr. Kipling, asked.

I don’t know. I…it…it all…came to nothing…Ace Beppy stammered.

Well, you do not have much time left before the fashion show. You’d better get going. Do not forget to ask Kathleen for help. We are paying her to help you. Mr. Kipling said.

Mr. Kipling went away, leaving Ace Beppy in the sewing room alone with the naked and plain dress forms, the chalk board with measurements scrawled on its surface in white chalk and scraps of fabric and patterns lying everywhere.

Ace Beppy was not sure where to pick up from or where to start. He had decided to redesign the collection and had started to remake so many of the looks.

Begin Again, he whispered, to himself.

Now he was in that middle phase where nothing is done and everything is almost done, but not quite. Kathleen helped him but it was too little too late. The new garments were all in phases of being done. Some were more finished than others. But all of them were still unfinished.

When Mr. Kipling returned to the sewing room on a fitting day to see the looks on the models, he scratched his head and squinted at the girls shifting silently. And the unfortunate plus sized model could not fit into any of the garments, so she stood off to the side, with her arms crossed over her chest and a look of annoyance and shame written on her pretty face in a scowl. But no one paid any attention to her. Ace Beppy for Buzzy more intrigued the professors and Mr. Kipling than anything else they were seeing. They gathered around the models who stood stiff and akimbo, with annoyed looks on their faces like models do.

But my man, you are not finished. Not nearly, in fact! Mr. Kipling exclaimed, looking at a zipper that was tacked on but not sewn into the dress.

I will be finished by the deadline. Wait. Can you give me an extension? Ace Beppy asked.

We will make an exception for you this one time, Mr. Kipling replied.

You have one more week and then time is up. You will have to show your collection and if it is unfinished, then…there will be no fashion show. You will lose your feature article. Understood? Mr. Kipling said.

Yes, sir. I understand. I am going to make you proud. Ace replied.

I have no doubt you will finish it. Now get to it young man! Mr. Kipling said, dramatically.

The professors left Ace Beppy and he slowly undressed his models.

What about my look? The plus sized model, Karine asked.

I’m afraid that I have only made size fours. And you are a size ten. But I will try to make a dress that can fit you before the end, the deadline. Ace Beppy replied.

Ace Beppy wanted to please Karine, he took it upon himself at once. He would make her a dress that she could wear. A size ten or even twelve. He had so many other priorities to carry out and things to do. He had a list a mile long of things to accomplish soon.

He tried to make the looks of his collection. End of an Age. It was ephemeral and dreamy with streetwear looks, costume styles, the catwalk would be the stage. Ace used subdued pastels mixed with bold pops of color. All the fabrics were luxurious satins, brocades, velvets, corduroys, chiffons. His silhouette was sculptural and flowy, billowing, meant to move as the models walked down the runway to techno music. The song was a techno remix with violins, cellos, keyboards, and drums.

Ace Beppy sat at the drafting table for a while daydreaming. Staring at the white walls. He gazed at the fashion drawing and thought, I can do better. The people will finally see. I have what it takes to do fashion design. I am the next big thing in fashion. I have a statement to make about life and how everything works. My fashion design speaks to a time when everyone is happy and free, healthy, and confident. But why did I not design a collection titled: Nineteen Eighty-Four? I should redo it quickly and make it simpler. Simple is the hardest, isn’t that what Professor Henry once said?

Ace Beppy scrapped what he had and started it all again. He crafted a new mood board for a theme of Orwell’s 1984. He created new fashion illustrations. He made the designs darker and more complex. The style lines were extravagant, running all around the design. The silhouette was something straight from the eighties with big shoulders and tiny waists. The old looks did not work with the new inspiration.

And so, in this way, Ace Beppy ran out of time to make a collection of his designs. He kept changing the ideas, the sketches, the styles. He knew time was running out but he could not stop processing or swinging about like a pendulum in the creation phase. Kathleen was still sabotaging him, and he did not trust her.

She is jealous of my success, he thought.

Ace Beppy stepped outside and sat on the front steps of the building, chain-smoked cigarettes, waiting for a new epiphany to hit him. He watched the traffic move rushing down the one-way street in front of the fashion building and it reminded him of a river.

Do you ever feel like you are floating around like a lost balloon heading for the spike? Ace wondered aloud to no one, cigarette smoke trailing up.

Ace Beppy ran out of time, and his collection of designs were unfinished to the point of being too unfinished to show them in the fashion show. The models were relieved, and they rolled their eyes, and sighed and waved goodbye to Ace.

The fashion department called off the fashion show. No one saw a fashion collection from Ace Beppy for Buzzy. When he thought about it, having failed so spectacularly, he decided he should never have trashed anything. He lost his chance to do fashion design in the industry, moved back home, and had a fashion show in Minnesota once he finally finished the pieces. Made peace with himself, still loves fashion.