The air backstage at the Palais de Tokyo was a familiar kind of chaos, a symphony of organized panic that I had once found suffocating. Tonight, it felt like oxygen. The scent of hairspray, hot irons, and the collective adrenaline of fifty people working in concert was the smell of my own name being spoken with respect. Hissing steamers, the staccato click of a photographer's shutter, the hushed, urgent French of the dressers—it was all music.
I stood by the lineup board, a headset on, though I wasn't speaking into it. I was observing. My VÉCU team, the five master artisans who had walked out of Julian’s gilded prison with me, moved with a quiet, focused intensity. Anja, my head of atelier, was making a millimeter adjustment to a structured shoulder on a black wool coat, her weathered fin
