Beneath a Starlet Sky Read online

  “Rise and shine, sunshine,” I say, jostling him awake. “We’ve got a huge day ahead of us.”

  “Tom Ford and I didn’t get to bed until after three. We were working on the new ‘Dogshmere’ collection all night and we’re exhausted. Just give us a few more minutes of REM. Please,” Julian begs, flipping over onto his stomach. He buries his head in his pillow and reaches over to the adjacent pillow to pull a sleeping Tom Ford closer to him. Julian’s newly rescued Mini-Pinscher is dead asleep in the crook of Julian’s neck.

  “Julian, I think it’s great that you’re teaming up with PETA to do a knitwear collection for dogs, but you need to finish hand-dyeing the gowns for Nic Knight. They’ve got to go on the plane with me today. We have to go over the agenda for our conference call with LVMH at noon. The stock market is still down and so are sales for all the designers. Coz is coming this afternoon. Saks wants you to do a personal appearance next week. And my plane leaves at eight p.m., which means I have to be there by six to give them time to do the full cavity search.”

  A loud sigh gutters from Julian’s lips as he flips onto his back. He lifts off his sleeping mask, his raven hair the embodiment of bed head, then throws his hand out expectantly for his morning tea. “Lo, Tom Ford’s dog groomer also does Barbara Walters’s Havanese, Cha Cha, and she’s going to hand-deliver Barbara the custom outfits I’ve designed for her dog. If Barbara likes them, I bet she’d put me on The View and do you know what that could mean for our company and PETA?”

  “Julian, it’d be amazing but it’s a real long shot. In the meantime, what about the PA at Saks?”

  “Last time you made me do a personal appearance at Bergdorf’s I ended up wasting the entire day trying to help that woman find a dress for her twenty-year high school reunion—and she ended up buying a Chanel. Jesus, Lola, when are you getting your own apartment so that I’m not forced to have my CEO breathing down my neck the minute I wake up every single day? I can’t take it anymore. You’ve turned into—Kate.”

  “If you mean that I’m actually a competent, capable businesswoman, then yes, Julian, I’ve become Kate. While you’re out at the Boom Boom Room till four a.m. drooling over Chace Crawford, one of us has to actually run this company. I’m the one doing the spreadsheets and P&Ls while you’re schmoozing Rachel Zoe at Bungalow 8. I signed on to be the CEO of Julian Tennant Inc. And suddenly I’m also the director of PR, head of marketing, production manager, design assistant, your personal assistant, and the receptionist.”

  “I liked you so much better when you were just my best friend,” Julian says, struggling to sit up on his elbows.

  I throw Julian a death dagger. He’s probably gotten at least a million thrown at him by now over the seventeen years we’ve been friends. He’s been my BGF since we were ten and collided while reaching for the last Rifat Ozbek studded belt at Neiman’s.

  “I’m sorry,” Julian says. “I don’t really mean that. That was the me pre-caffeine talking. I’d never have gotten my first gown onto the Oscars red carpet without you. There’d be no JT Inc. if you hadn’t gotten LVMH to back us. I’d have nothing without you, Lo. I’m just so afraid that we’re going to lose it all again.”

  I sit down on the bed next to him. “I’m not going to let that happen, Julian. Because of you I finally have a career that I love and I may actually be good at, but this is really, really, really serious. Three more boutiques that were carrying the collection just closed. Women aren’t spending like they used to and stores and brands are folding every day. LVMH isn’t going to carry us forever if we can’t get the numbers up. We need to figure out something to subsidize the lack of sales until this economy bounces back—if it ever bounces back.”

  “Lo, I think this Dogshmere collection could be as big as Juicy. Maybe they won’t shell out for a fifteen-hundred-dollar dress, but people will still buy for their pets no matter how dead the economy is. I’d eat Tom Ford’s Flint River Ranch myself before I’d cut corners on his food—or his outerwear,” he says, nuzzling his dog closer. “And what about all those Russian billionaires? That Sweet Sixteen gown I made was killer. It actually made that little matrushka doll look like she had a waist.” I was sure that getting Julian to make a coming-out gown for that Russian financier’s daughter would help us break into that Billionaire Boychik club.

  “Sure, we’ve gotten referrals, but they’re not generating nearly enough sales or press coverage. And even the rich Russians aren’t as rich as they used to be,” I say, and can’t believe what I’m about to say next. “I heard that American Airlines is looking for someone to redesign their uniforms. How about I try and get us a meeting?”

  Julian waves the thought away. “Because nothing says couture like spill-proof double knits.”

  “Julian, every designer is making concessions. Ralph Lauren is designing couture work gloves for Home Depot, and Alexander Wang is doing a capsule collection for Fruit of the Loom. Proenza Schouler is making their PS1 bags in canvas for Walmart.”

  Julian sniffs. “Lola, I don’t want to do gimmicks to promote myself. I’m an artist. I just want to design,” he says. “Don’t you think we’ll be able to get major press off the gown I’m designing for Nic?” Nic’s the lead in Papa’s first film since he won his second Oscar. San Quentin Cartel is about a transvestite drug lord operating the largest cocaine cartel in Colombia from a four-by-six San Quentin jail cell. It had taken a lot of begging to get Papa to agree to let Julian do the designs.

  “I hope so, and I hope you don’t think it’s gimmicky, but I’m going to pitch Vain to put Nic Knight on their cover in full drag in your gown. I don’t think they’ve ever done that before. It could be revolutionary and create a huge buzz for us and them.”

  “I actually think that’s a genius idea, Lola, do it!”

  “I will, this afternoon, but let me pitch your fall collection first, because that’s where the money comes from. You know how hard it’s been to get Coz to come look at your stuff; she’s been putting us off for months. I want her to bite on the collection first. Then we’ll try to sell her on Nic in drag.”

  “Okay, any news on the Luhrman gig?”

  “Nothing yet. Julian, I’m doing the best I can and so is Kate,” I say. Julian was thisclose to being one of the four designers hired to create wedding dresses for Baz’s musical extravaganza, Four Weddings and a Bris, shooting down in Australia now with Kate’s other huge star, Saffron Sykes. It killed him when the final slot went to Chili Lu, the exuberant prince of “cyber couture,” whose slashed silk sweatshirts with live Facebook status updates have scored him legions of devotees from the Olsen Twins to Miley Cyrus. Even Michelle Obama was spotted pulling up deep purple dragon carrots from the White House garden while wearing one of his Glitter Twitter “garden” dresses, which simultaneously broadcast the news of the harvest to her followers. Who cares that he’s supposed to be the fresh, brash new voice of fashion? He’s only in the tenth grade, for crying out loud.

  But I’ve got the audacity of hope. It seems as though little Chili Lu can’t drape, gather, cinch, ruche, and sew like the second coming of Coco Chanel after all. Rumors are leaking out that Chili’s gowns for Four Weddings and a Bris are a disaster, and that Baz has been quietly shopping around to replace Chili. I’ve been killing myself to get Julian the gig this time.

  Julian fumbles around on the nightstand for his sketchbook. “Lo, just look at these and tell me they wouldn’t be perfect for the movie.” He’s right. Julian’s strapless ivory chiffon siren gown with petal-like ruffles fanning to a beaded flyaway train and his fairylike, frothy, tulle-and-lace bustled dress deserve to be on the big screen. I really want us to get this movie. I want it as much as I want to move out of Musée de Julian and find my own apartment where I’m allowed to drink liquids that aren’t all clear because Julian’s worried about staining his all-beige furniture.

  “Julian, you know I agree. Listen, I’m about to call Kate about Cricket. I’ll see what I can find out about when Baz is going
to make his final decision.”

  “Lo, just make it happen, please,” Julian begs. “I just really, really, really, don’t want to have to redesign the American Airlines uniforms. If I could design costumes for one of your dad’s films and a Baz Luhrman film in the same year, it would be the coup of the century.”

  “I’m going to try to make it happen, but for god’s sake, don’t breathe a word around Coz,” I remind Julian. “If she finds out that you could be replacing her precious Chili in Baz’s film, we’ll be lucky if your name is ever in Vain again.”

  “That woman is dreadful.” Julian shivers. “I have no idea what Grace Frost even sees in her.” He tucks Tom Ford in closer; the tiny dog gives a faint sigh. “Now can I just have ten more minutes of REM. Please.”

  “Julian—”

  “I’ll do the appearance at Saks,” Julian interrupts.

  “Fine. I have to call Kate anyway,” I say. “But I’m coming back in ten minutes.”

  I walk back out into the living room and grab my phone. As I glance out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the falling January snow, a chill runs down my spine. What if Baz chooses another designer over Julian—again?

  I pick up the phone to dial Kate, who’s been lobbying Baz on our behalf since she’s got Saffron as her “in.” Saffron is Kate’s biggest client to date and it was a huge coup when she signed her away from the William Morris Endeavor Agency two weeks after Bryan invited her to join CAA. Aside from the fact that I know Julian will design a dream wedding dress, Kate owes me.

  I did something for my BFF that I’ve rarely done in my twenty-seven years: I asked my father for a favor. It’s not that our father doesn’t love his kids. It’s that he made it in Hollywood totally on his own and he’s tough as tacks because of it. He was a Jewish kid from Georgia who stuck out like a sore thumb among the peach farmers. The only place he felt at home was in the Coronet Theatre on Main Street, watching Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, James Dean and Liz Taylor, light up the screen. Every penny he made working after school and weekends at Saul’s Shoes, the shoe repair shop owned by his first-generation Russian émigré father (who, according to Mom, made Mussolini look like Mr. Rogers), was spent escaping into that darkened theater. Papa still can’t stomach the smell of shoe polish. It takes him back to those tough days before he got on that bus to Hollywood and changed his name from Sitowitz to Santisi to be more like his idol Marcello Mastroianni—who he also happened to resemble when he was young—and thin.

  Kate begged me to beg Papa to hire her client Nic Knight for the lead in San Quentin Cartel. Which I did. Nic, whose drug-addled antics had squandered any box office cachet he’d once had and made him uninsurable to boot, especially after his umpteenth failed stint in rehab, when he famously ran starkers down the aisles of a 747 during a flight to the Grenadines. Nic, who traded his Golden Globe for a hit of Ecstasy, who’s punched out the paparazzi more times than Sean Penn, and who once asked Chris McMillan to trim his pubic hair. After weeks of badgering, my father finally agreed to hire Nic only after he spent ninety-three days at Utah’s Cirque Lodge rehab, traded in his old friends Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniel’s, and Mr. Belvedere for a gang of eastern ayurvedic practitioners/sober coaches, paid for his own insurance, and agreed to have his AA sponsor on set daily. The gamble seems to have paid off. Rumors on the set are that Nic’s scenes are incredible, maybe even Oscar-nomination-worthy. I’d like to think that Julian’s gowns help keep him in character—which was the very angle I used when I asked my father for a second favor: hiring Julian. Now it’s time for Kate to return the favor for me. I press “2” on speed dial.

  “Christopher and I haven’t had sex in a week,” Kate barks into the phone after one ring.

  “Jesus, Kate, what ever happened to hello?” I say. “And you’re talking about my brother.”

  “I’m talking about my—” Kate struggles to get the word “boyfriend” out—even after eleven months and being in love with him since she was sixteen. To say Kate has intimacy issues would be an understatement. In Kate’s case, the apple didn’t fall very far from a pretty barren parental tree. Her mother and father were divorced for three years before they told their teenaged kids. They maintained separate bedrooms because their father “had a bad back and needed his orthopedic mattress,” while Kate’s mother had “insomnia” and had to have her waterbed—it was the only thing that soothed her. The kids were the last to find out about the split. The announcement came on the heels of her mother’s decision to marry the tennis instructor she’d secretly been dating for five months. This was after Kate found out that she’d been secretly dating the personal trainer for fourteen months before that. Kate’s mother now lives in South Beach with Hubby No. Five. I was with Kate for every one of her mother’s weddings—until this last one, when Kate had finally had enough of playing Maid of Honor in her mother’s Beaming Bride Redux. Meanwhile, her father’s living in Southampton with Countless Girlfriend Under the Age of Twenty-five. They split holidays with the kids.

  “And you were the one who convinced me it was a good idea for us to live together,” Kate continues.

  “Because that’s what adults do when they’re in love and in committed relationships, Kate. And besides, if you didn’t live together, you’d never see each other.”

  “I barely see him as it is. We’re on totally different schedules. He’s been doing night shoots for the last three weeks. I don’t understand why musicians can’t film videos during the day.” Kate expels a long sigh. I picture her twisting her glossy chocolate tresses around a finger. “He’s so talented, he should be shooting a feature film instead of wasting his time with music videos and commercial shoots for Jennifer Aniston’s new line of “Smarter” Water and Ashley Tisdale’s new protein bars for tweens, but he doesn’t want to hear it from me or let me help him. His Burning Man doc was so good and it’s been so nicely received, but he hasn’t seemed to want to capitalize on the momentum. And the sex—”

  “Kate, please. I don’t want to hear about you and my brother having sex,” I interrupt. The only “L” word Kate is interested in is that of her “Libido”—it’s so much easier than that other one: “Love.” Kate doesn’t go for easy in any other area of her life. She’s a fighter. I mean, the way she took on Katzenberg for Cricket, for instance, or the way she’s taken on Baz Luhrman for me. She’s no coward. She’s one of the bravest people I know. But when it comes to her personal life, it’s as though the Great Wall of China took up residence around her heart.

  “Lola, it’s six a.m. I’ve already done an hour of cardio, rolled all my NYC and European calls and I’m still stressed,” Kate says. “Is it so bad that I just want to sleep with Christopher before I have to spend the day with Nic and your father on set? I thought the whole point of living with someone was so that you could have sex at any time. But since Christopher isn’t here I have to settle for my vibrator.”

  “Okay, I’m going to pretend like you didn’t just say that. New topic: How are the reshoots going?” I ask. A sore point. The studio is forcing Papa to reshoot some of Nic’s scenes because he tested low with the fourteen- to-nineteen-year-old demographic during some prescreenings.

  “The studio is obsessed with those moronic test-screening feedback cards. Now your father is blaming me for convincing him to cast Nic instead of Emile Hirsch, and the studio’s hired some kind of ‘cool hunter.’ Who gives a shit about what some pimply teens think? We’re talking Nic could win another Oscar and there’s already been buzz about Cannes. Plus he looks hotter than Penelope Cruz. And Hollywood loves a comeback story. Can’t you just tell your dad to leave Nic’s scenes alone?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Do you know how hard it was for me to ask him about Nic the first time? Kate, just be glad you got Nic back to above the title, especially after he was caught in the wardrobe trailer with that coke. Did he really think he was fooling anyone by saying it was baby powder and patting it under his armpits? Lucky for him th
at the judge let him pull a Paris Hilton and trade community service for prison.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Kate sighs. “He’s hard enough to control; I just don’t want anything to happen to freak him out. So how’s his gown for the prison break scene? Am I going to see you on the set next week?”

  “The gown is unbelievable. It’s an orgy of hand-embroidered flowers, paillettes, and tiny crystalline beads. I’m flying it back to L.A. tonight, with a few backups.” I take a deep breath and go for it. “Kate, I hate to ask again, but do you know if Baz has made a decision yet about Julian?”

  “No, not yet. I told you, I’ll let you know the second I hear anything.”

  “Okay, okay. We really need this movie,” I say, my desperation seeping from every pore. “Also, I’m really worried about Cricket. Do you think there’s any chance Baz will consider her?” Not only did Chili Lu’s gowns not work; the actress wearing those two gowns didn’t work either—apparently she made Megan Fox’s performance in Transformers 2 seem Oscar-worthy. Baz has been very quietly on the hunt for a fresh new face he can use to plug this hole in his movie—and to quiet the bad buzz that’s snowballing before Perez Hilton and TMZ tank it before the first screening. I don’t want Cricket to know, but Kate and I have been campaigning for him to test her for the role.

  “I’m trying, Lo,” Kate says, exasperated. “I already sent Baz Cricket’s head shot and reel, but there’s only so much I can do. Now, I have to go take care of myself since your brother isn’t home.”

  Click.

  I walk back into Julian’s bedroom to rouse Sleeping Beauty.

  “Julian, it’s been ten minutes. Get up,” I say, stirring him.

  “Just ten more minutes. Please,” Julian begs.

  “No, Julian. You have to get up. Now!” I demand.

  Suddenly there’s a loud knock at the front door.