The silence in my studio was the most damning sound in Paris. It wasn’t a peaceful quiet; it was the hollow, airless silence of a tomb. The bolts of exquisite fabric Sienna had sourced from Como and Lyon stood in their racks like colorful, accusing ghosts. The long cutting tables were clean—too clean. Nothing was being made here anymore. We were just manufacturing noise.
I slammed my fist on the polished concrete floor, the impact jarring up my arm. “Industrial waste,” I snarled, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. I kicked at the mannequin in the center of the room. It was draped in Valerie’s latest “creation.”
A monstrosity of cheap tulle and poorly-set Swarovski crystals, it looked like a prom dress that had lost a fight with a glue g*n. There was no structure, no form, no soul. I
