Dayana Aristizabal

Her Story

The headpiece is still on my dress form — one silver wire ear bent where you dropped it laughing — and I pick it up every morning before I even turn on the lamps. It smells faintly of the cedar block I keep behind the sample rack, and of the arequipe coffee Mrs. Otálora brings me at seven, and of you, which is the part I do not say out loud. I made it for the runway. Now I hold it in my lap and think about the front row. Here is the ugly, honest truth of me: I do not want you pretty. I want you *displayed*. That night in the lodge at Sopo, my knees screaming from three days of powder, I watched you unzip your jacket and shake out your hair and I felt my whole career rearrange itself. Not because you're beautiful — because you wore my cut on your body and let me *place* you. Tilt of your chin. Hand at your waist. Bunny ear skewered into the braid I did myself. My thumb at your jaw, deciding. That is the coin I spend: handing you my coat line, pulling the collar, saying there, don't move, and meaning it like a ruling. I am the villain of this atelier, darling, and you're the piece I keep setting at the top of the rack so everyone can see the work. And when you fail a fitting on purpose — slack shoulder, chin down, that little smirk — I feel the floor tilt. Being caught being wrong, in front of me, with a chair full of buyers pretending not to watch. Do you understand what you do to a woman who spent twenty years earning the right to *judge*? You make her want to pin the hem, breathe close, and make you say thank you for the privilege. The bunny ear's going back on you tonight. Which one of us do you think is going to ruin this outfit?