Lipstick Jungle

Three months later she saw Howard again in the courtroom. He was as smelly and badly dressed as ever, and completely unconcerned, as if this kind of thing happened to him all the time. She laid out the photographs of Howard’s clothing next to those of her own designs, and when the judge took a recess to make his decision, Howard’s lawyer agreed to settle. If she would pay Howard back his $80,000, they would forgo his thirty percent, and she would be free.

She was hugely relieved. It was a small price to pay for such a stupid business mistake, but she had learned an important lesson: The people you did business with were just as important as the business itself. It was a lesson every designer had to learn the hard way, because they certainly didn’t teach it in fashion school . . .

The telephone started ringing and interrupted her reverie. Victory was immediately filled with dread. It was probably bad news. All she’d had for the past three weeks was one piece of bad news after another, adding up to disaster.

She considered not answering the phone, but decided that would be cowardly. It was one of her assistants, Trish, from the design studio.

“Mr. Ikito’s called three times. He says it’s urgent. I thought you’d probably want to know.”

“Thanks. I’ll call him now.” She put down the phone and folded her arms across her chest as if she were cold. What was she going to tell Mr. Ikito? She’d managed to put him off for over a week now, using the excuse that she was traveling, but when it came to business, the Japanese were insistent about getting on with it. “I like you—you make decision quickly,” Mr. Ikito had said to her five years ago when they’d first started working together. However, Mr. Ikito wanted to make money, and he’d drop her in a minute if he felt she couldn’t sell. But what he was offering as a solution was unbearable.

Victory Ford fashions wasn’t a huge company along the lines of a Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein, but in the five years since she’d begun doing business with the Japanese, it had grown into a mini conglomerate, expanding far beyond the tiny one-person business she’d run out of her apartment. She had eighty-three stores in Japan, and this year, she and Mr. Ikito were going to expand into China, the next great frontier of potential consumers. Mr. Ikito licensed her designs—which included not just clothing, but handbags, shoes, sunglasses, and other accessories—and manufactured them himself in Japan, paying the production costs and giving her a percentage of the profits. With the addition of Mr. Ikito’s business, her company now brought in revenues of nearly five million a year.

Mr. Ikito hadn’t liked the spring line—in fact, he had hated it—and so, two days after her show, she’d flown all the way to Tokyo for a meeting, which had turned out to be an exercise in humiliation. Mr. Ikito wore Western clothes, but preserved the Japanese way of doing business—seated in front of a low wooden table on which they were treated to a typical tea ceremony—while he flipped through her look-book for the spring season. He was a small man with short, graying hair and a mouth like a guppy. “Miss Victory. What happen to you?” he asked, turning the pages with disgust. “Where you get these ideas? This is not you. And who wear these clothes? No woman wear long skirt in springtime. Not fun, flappy fashions. Women want to show off legs.”

“Mr. Ikito,” she said, bowing her head to show deference (she hated having to do this, but it was important to respect foreign business customs), “I was trying something new. I’m trying to grow. Expand. As a designer . . .”

“Why you want to do that?” Mr. Ikito asked in horror. “You big success. You know what you say in America—if not broke, don’t be fixing.”

“But I’m trying to get better. To be the best designer I can be.”

“Pah!” Mr. Ikito said, waving his hands in front of his face as if swatting at an insect. “You always thinking about the self in New York. Here, in Japan, we thinking about business.”

“I am thinking about business,” Victory objected, firmly but pleasantly. “If I’m going to survive as a designer long term, I need to expand my designs. To show that I can do couture . . .”

“What you want to do that for?” Mr. Ikito asked. “No money in couture. Everybody know that. Five year ago, you say you want to make millions of dollar . . .”

“And I still do . . .”

“But now you trying to be Oscar de la Renta. Or maybe Mr. St. Laurent,” Mr. Ikito continued, cutting her off. “World don’t need St. Laurent. World need Victory Ford.”

Does it? Victory thought, looking down at her tea.

“We got no Oscar stores here. Okay, we got one in Tokyo. But Victory Ford, she got eighty-three stores in Japan alone. You get what I saying?” Mr. Ikito asked.

“Yes, but Mr. Ikito . . .”

“I got answer,” Mr. Ikito said. He clapped his hands, and his secretary (Victory doubted that anyone would consider her an assistant) slid open the door in the rice-paper wall, and, clasping her hands together and bowing her head, asked in Japanese, “Yes, Mr. Ikito?”

Mr. Ikito said something back to her in Japanese. She nodded and softly slid the door closed. Mr. Ikito turned back to Victory. “You going to thank me. You going to say, ‘Mr. Ikito, he is genius!’ ”

Victory smiled uncomfortably. She felt a sickening guilt, like she was a small child who’d done something terribly wrong. Well, she had. She had disappointed Mr. Ikito. She never wanted to disappoint anyone. She wanted everyone to love her and praise her and pat her on the head like she was a good little girl. Why was it, she wondered, that no matter how successful she became, she couldn’t outgrow that instinct to kowtow to male authority? She was a grown woman with her own business that she’d started from nothing but her own creativity and industry; she even had a black American Express card. But here she was, sitting on pins and needles with Mr. Ikito, waiting for his solution, when she should have been telling him what she wanted to do. But she didn’t dare insult him. Why couldn’t she be more like Nico? she wondered. Nico would have said, “Mr. Ikito, this is the way it is. Take it or leave it . . .”

And then Mr. Ikito did something that made her stomach sink to her knees. He picked up the teapot, and holding his hand over the top, poured her more tea.

Victory swallowed nervously. At that moment, she knew that she wasn’t going to like Mr. Ikito’s “solution.” In Japan, pouring tea for someone had many shaded meanings, but in this case, it was an act of conciliation, a preparation for unpleasant news.

Mr. Ikito picked up his cup and sipped his tea, giving her a look that indicated he expected her to do the same.

The tea was hot and she burned her mouth slightly, but Mr. Ikito looked pleased at her acquiescence. Then the door slid open again and a young Japanese woman in a navy blue suit entered.

“Ah! Miss Matsuda!” Mr. Ikito exclaimed.

“Good morning, Mr. Ikito,” the young woman said, acknowledging him with a dip of her head. Her voice had a slight English accent, and Victory guessed that she’d gone to university in England, probably to Oxford.

“Miss Victory Ford,” Mr. Ikito said. “Meet your new designer. Miss Matsuda.”

Victory looked from Miss Matsuda to Mr. Ikito, who was beaming broadly. She was suddenly queasy, but she held out her hand politely.