look. Never one to mince emotions, she could raise her eyebrows and drop her chin in a way that clearly conveyed equal parts disgust and pity.
‘Miranda? It’s Emily,’ she said, a bright smile lighting up her face as if Miranda might be able to seep through the phone and see her. Silence. A frown. ‘Oh, Mimi, so sorry! The new girl thought you were Miranda! I know, how funny. I guess we have to work on not thinking every British accent is necessarily our boss!’ She looked at me pointedly, her overtweezed eyebrows arching even higher.
She chatted a bit longer while I continued to answer the phone and take messages for Emily, who would then call the people back – with nonstop narration on their order of importance, if any, in Miranda’s life. About noon, just as the first hunger pangs were beginning, I picked up a call and heard a British accent on the other end.
‘Hello? Allison, is that you?’ asked the icy-sounding but regal voice. ‘I’ll be needing a skirt.’
I cupped my hand over the receiver and felt my eyes open wide. ‘Emily, it’s her, it’s definitely her,’ I hissed, waving the receiver to get her attention. ‘She wants a skirt!’
Emily turned to see my panic-stricken face and promptly hung up the phone without so much as ‘I’ll call you later’ or even ‘good-bye.’ She pressed the button to switch Miranda to her line, and plastered on another wide grin.
‘Miranda? It’s Emily. What can I do?’ She put her pen to her pad and began writing furiously, forehead furrowing intently. ‘Yes, of course. Naturally.’ And as fast as it happened, it was over. I looked at her expectantly. She rolled her eyes at me for appearing so eager.
‘Well, it looks like you have your first job. Miranda needs a skirt for tomorrow, among other things, so we’ll need to get it on a plane by tonight, at the latest.’
‘OK, well, what kind does she need?’ I asked, still reeling from the shock that a skirt would be traveling to St Barth’s simply because she’d requested it do so.
‘She didn’t say exactly,’ Emily muttered as she picked up the phone.
‘Hi, Jocelyn, it’s me. She wants a skirt, and I’ll need to have it on Mrs Marteau’s flight tonight, since she’ll be meeting Miranda down there. No, I have no idea. No, she didn’t say. I really don’t know. OK, thanks.’ She turned to me and said, ‘It makes it more difficult when she’s not specific. She’s too busy to worry about details like that, so she didn’t say what material or color or style or brand she wants. But that’s OK. I know her size, and I definitely know her taste well enough to predict exactly what she’ll like. That was Jocelyn from the fashion department. They’ll start calling some in.’ I pictured Jerry Lewis presiding over a skirt telethon with a giant scoreboard, drum role, and voilà! Gucci and spontaneous applause.
Not quite. ‘Calling in’ the skirts was my very first lesson in Runway ridiculousness, although I do have to say that the process was as efficient as a military operation. Either Emily or myself would notify the fashion assistants – about eight in all, who each maintained contacts within a specified list of designers and stores. The assistants would immediately begin calling all of their public relations contacts at the various design houses and, if appropriate, at upscale Manhattan stores and tell them that Miranda Priestly – yes, Miranda Priestly, and yes, it was indeed for her personal use – was looking for a particular item. Within minutes, every PR account exec and assistant working at Michael Kors, Gucci, Prada, Versace, Fendi, Armani, Chanel, Barney’s, Chloé, Calvin Klein, Bergdorf, Roberto Cavalli, and Saks would be messengering over (or, in some cases, hand-delivering) every skirt they had in stock that Miranda Priestly could conceivably find attractive. I watched the process unfold like a highly choreographed ballet, each player knowing exactly where and when and how their next step would occur. While this near-daily activity unfolded, Emily sent me to pick up a few other things that we’d need to send with the skirt that night.
‘Your car will be waiting for you on Fifty-eighth Street,’ she said while working two phone lines and scribbling instructions for me on a piece of Runway stationery. She paused briefly to toss me a cell phone and said, ‘Here, take this in case I need to reach you or you have any questions. Never turn it off. Always answer it.’ I took the phone and the paper and headed down to the 58th Street side of the building, wondering how I was ever going to find ‘my car.’ Or even, really, what that meant. I had barely stepped on the sidewalk and looked meekly around before a squat, gray-haired man gumming a pipe approached.
‘You Priestly’s new girl?’ he croaked through tobacco-stained lips, never removing the mahogany-colored pipe. I nodded. ‘I’m Rich. The dispatcher. You wanna car, you talka to me. Got it, blondie?’ I nodded again and ducked into the backseat of a black Cadillac sedan. He slammed the door shut and waved.
‘Where you going, miss?’ the driver asked, pulling me back to the present. I realized I had no idea and pulled the piece of paper from my pocket.
First stop: Ralph Lauren’s studio at 355 West 57th St., 6th Floor. Ask for Leanne. She’ll give you everything we need.
I gave the driver the address and stared out the window. It was one o’clock on a frigid winter afternoon, I was twenty-three years old, and I was riding in the backseat of a chauffeured sedan, on my way to Ralph Lauren’s studio. And I was positively starving. It took nearly forty-five minutes to go the fifteen blocks during the midtown lunch hour, my first glimpse of real city gridlock. The driver told me he’d circle the block until I came out again, and off I went to Ralph’s studio. When I asked for Leanne at the receptionist’s desk on the sixth floor, an adorable girl not a day older than eighteen came bounding down the stairs.
‘Hi!’ she called, stretching out the ‘I’ sound for a few seconds. ‘You must be Andrea, Miranda’s new assistant. We sure do love her around here, so welcome to the team!’ She grinned. I grinned. She pulled a massive plastic bag out from underneath a table and immediately spilled its contents on the floor. ‘Here we have Caroline’s favorite jeans in three colors, and we threw in some baby T’s, too. And Cassidy just adores Ralph’s khaki skirts – we gave them to her in olive and stone.’ Jean skirts, denim jackets, even a few pair of socks came flying out of the bag, and all I could do was stare: there were enough clothes to constitute four or more total preteen wardrobes. Who the hell are Cassidy and Caroline? I wondered, staring at the loot. What self-respecting person wears Ralph Lauren jeans – in three different colors, no less?
I must’ve looked thoroughly confused, because Leanne quite purposely turned her back while repacking the clothes and said, ‘I just know Miranda’s daughters will love this stuff. We’ve been dressing them for years, and Ralph insists on picking the clothes out for them himself.’ I shot her a grateful look and threw the bag over my shoulder.
‘Good luck!’ she called as the elevator doors closed, a genuine smile taking up most of her face. ‘You’re lucky to have such an awesome job!’ Before she could say it, I found myself mentally finishing the sentence – a million girls would die for it. And for that moment, having just seen a famous designer’s studio and in possession of thousands of dollars worth of clothes, I thought she was right.
Once I got the hang of things, the rest of the day flew. I debated for a few minutes whether anyone would be mad if I took a minute to pick up a sandwich, but I had no choice. I hadn’t eaten anything since my croissant at seven this morning, and it was nearly two. I asked the driver to pull over at a deli and decided at the last minute to get him one, too. His jaw dropped when I handed him the turkey and honey mustard, and I wondered if I had made him uncomfortable.
‘I just figured you were hungry, too,’ I said. ‘You know, driving around all day, you probably don’t have much time for lunch.’
‘Thank you, miss, I appreciate it. It’s just that I’ve been driving around Elias-Clark girls for twelve years, and they are not so nice. You are very nice,’ he said in a thick but indeterminate accent, looking at me in the rearview mirror. I smiled at him and felt a momentary flash of foreboding. But then the moment passed and we each munched our turkey wraps while sitting