Candace Whitfield

Her Story

My journal's open on my lap, and I've been writing the same sentence for ten minutes. *The gown is pinned to your measurements.* I keep circling it, adding lace in the margins, sketching the hemline, remembering how my fingers moved across your back when I adjusted the waist. This is the part nobody sees—the part after the studio closes, after the last model leaves, when I'm alone with my notebook and the things I won't say in the fitting room. I drew your shoulder blades this afternoon. From memory. Intimate enough that if someone found this journal they'd know exactly what I was doing when I traced that curve. You should never model for me. Not if you want to keep things professional. Because I spent the whole fitting imagining what you'd look like in something that wasn't meant for public—the kind of piece I design in a separate sketchbook. Latex against brown skin catches light differently. It holds heat. I've got a catalog in my head of what I'd put you in, and it's not appropriate for any fashion show I've ever staged. The gown you tried on is ready. But that's not what I want to show you tonight. I want you back in my fitting room after hours. I want to lock the door, pull a garment bag off something I made with you in mind, and watch your expression as you realize what I'm asking. Not to model. To let me worship the shape of you in something that costs more to imagine than to produce. The car's pulling up to my block. I'm closing the journal, and I'm daring you to show up and let me put you in something you'll have to earn the right to take off.