The Fashion Orphans by M.J. Rose

Author:M.J. Rose [Randy_Susan_Meyers_MJ_Rose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Randy Susan Meyers, MJ Rose, family drama
Publisher: Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

After work, still troubled by Thea’s confession, Gabrielle, desperate for comfort and quiet, headed uptown to the Met.

Gabrielle walked up the granite hill of steps towards the entrance. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had been her safe space since third grade. Other children pumped on the swings at the nearby 84th Street playground; Gabrielle sheltered at the museum. Bette had considered the Met, with its plentiful uniformed guards, an ideal babysitter for her child. As an adult, Gabrielle found it hard to imagine merely dropping off a child at a museum, but her mother’s decision had inspired Gabrielle’s life.

Within three months, Gabrielle had learned the name of every guard on duty in the European painting department, her favorite section. It never occurred to her not to feel safe with them watching over her as she sat on the floor, drawing copies of the elaborate clothing worn by the women in the paintings.

In fifth grade, she’d discovered and practically lived at the Met’s Costume Institute. In tenth grade, she got a summer job interning with one of its department’s curators, returning the following summer and the one after that.

What a long time ago that had been, when the whole world appeared wide-open and waiting for her.

Now, Gabrielle sat on a bench in front of her most beloved painting: Madame X by John Singer Sargent. From Gabrielle’s first sighting, the woman captivated Gabrielle; she’d chosen to write about her for an art history paper in the tenth grade.

When Sargent had first shown the portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau at the Paris Salon in 1884, the public had been shocked and outraged that he’d painted the young socialite with one of her dress straps slipping down her shoulder. Stung, the artist kept the painting hidden in his studio for more than thirty years, eventually repainting the strap so that it sat properly and appeased society’s mores.

Gabrielle thought about the notorious American expatriate, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, who had possessed such a daring style. When it was unheard of for women of her stature to even model, she’d posed in a revealing costume. Despite the practice being scandalous practice for the era, she dyed her hair and eyebrows and wore lavender-colored face and body powder that gave her an otherworldly glow. The woman had lived the way she wanted, hampered by no one, despite being hounded by gossip.

As a girl, Gabrielle had seen Madame Gautreau as a tragic but heroic creature, born in the wrong era. Now she realized the American woman had taken charge of her life. Freed herself from rules and expectations—something Gabrielle had not done at all.

Every day since her divorce Gabrielle had indulged her worst fears and obsessed over how far she still might fall. She’d imagine winding up as an elderly saleswoman at Bergdorf’s, having to drape former friends in Valentino and Dior. Gabrielle pictured herself toting heavy beaded evening gowns, five or six at a time, to a waiting doyen. As she’d approached the dressing room, she’d hear

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