Air Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Author:Hank Phillippi Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2009-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“Let me show you what we call ‘the magic closet.’” Urszula Mazny-Latos, marketing director of Delleton-Marachelle, is impossibly chic in precariously high burgundy lizard pumps, an impeccably tailored black suit, and a recognizably Hermes scarf around her neck. Tied in a way that, somehow, only someone who’s studied scarf-styling in Paris can carry off. She’s leading us down the lushly carpeted corridor of the D-M design headquarters, past closed doors marked Art, Graphics, Fabric.

Our taxi had dropped Franklin and me at what turned out to be a startlingly authentic copy of pre-Civil War Tara, opulent and luxurious. White Corinthian columns fronted the vast stone portico, the red-brick edifice stretching on either side, massive banks of rhododendrons surrounding what looks like a renovated mansion.

Up the wide front stairway and through a lofty set of double doors. Inside, a guard in a sleek charcoal jacket, that iconic D-M logo of intertwined initials on a front pocket, greeted us from behind a spacious glass-topped rococo desk, all swirls and carved curlicues. He’d waved us to a white-on-white striped settee along a dark mahogany-paneled wall.

“Miz Mazny-Latos is expecting you,” he’d said, as graciously as if we were arriving for afternoon tea with Scarlett and Melanie. “May I get y’all anything?”

No sign-in, no security check, no asking for IDs.

For a city girl, I’m now feeling pretty country mouse in what I’d thought would be an appropriate “yes, I’m a reporter but I’m still fashionable” look, a black knit dress with a curvy black jacket. Pearls. No scarf. I suddenly feel short in my mid-heels.

She’s already instructed us: “Just call me Zuzu.” On anyone else, Zuzu would sound like someone’s poodle. On her, Zuzu is so cosmopolitan it makes “Charlie” sound like a klutzy fourth-grader.

Zuzu selects a key from a crowded, jangling key ring. I notice it, too, has the D-M logo stamped on a pale green circle of leather. She puts it in the lock, and with a flourish, waves us into fantasy land.

I can’t even take a step as my brain struggles to assimilate acquisitional overload. I’m hoping my country mouse jaw isn’t dropping. On long white-lacquered shelves, floor to ceiling, is every Delleton-Marachelle purse I’ve ever seen in their Madison Avenue atelier, posh department store catalogs, the pages of Women’s Wear Daily. It’s a purse museum.

We walk past dozens of them. Hundreds. Each in clear plastic, each nested in white tissue paper, coddled as if they were irreplaceable jewels or antiquities. There are rows of black with glints of brass and gold trim, then a section of beiges and cream, camels and chocolate, a row of white. And then, a rainbow. Red, lilac, yellow. A vibrant orange. Braiding, piping, tassels and fringe. The place smells of leather. And money.

Thou shalt not covet? Not a chance.

“Wow,” Franklin says. Luckily one of us is not speechless.

Zuzu steps across the deep pile of the champagne-colored carpeting, taking center stage, surveying her domain. “This is where we keep all of our prototypes, as well as the first off the production line for each design.

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