Love Redesigned - Jenny Proctor Page 0,39
January, there wasn’t a word about Sasha’s dresses anywhere.
Chase dropped the latest edition of Elite Fashion onto my desk with a dramatic thump. “Page seventy-two. Quick.”
I shot him a look—I hated being bossed around—but flipped open the magazine anyway. There didn’t seem to be much on page seventy-two, just a few random blurbs of industry-related news. But then I saw, in the bottom right corner, a photo of Sasha and Alicio on the red carpet of some awards show they’d attended together. I quickly read the caption.
Wedding bells approach for designer Alicio LeFranc and his fiancée, Sasha Wellington. In a recent press release, it was revealed that Wellington—a senior designer at LeFranc—will debut the first in a line of signature gowns bearing Wellington’s name and backed by the Le Franc brand at their December wedding, a preview of the rest of collection, debuting in January. “I’ve been working on the dress for months,” Wellington told Elite in an exclusive interview. “It’s the truest representation of my style and what I want this line of dresses to be. I can’t wait to share it with the world.” For those of us in the fashion industry, that’s one wedding dress we can’t wait to see.
“So she’s finally gone public,” I said. It had been nearly three weeks since I’d handed over Paige’s wedding gown to Sasha’s greedy hands.
“Wait, you knew about this?” Chase said, pulling my attention back to the article. “How has she kept an entire line of wedding dresses a secret from the rest of the design team?”
“I don’t know much,” I said. “But she did mention it.” I bit my lip, hesitating before admitting what Sasha had specifically asked me not to tell Chase. “She actually asked me to be on her design team for the new line. I’ve been working on dresses at home.”
Chase’s eyes went wide. “Dani! That’s excellent news!”
I shook my head, cutting short his congratulations. “I thought it was too, but I don’t know, Chase. Something isn’t right.”
He narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean?”
I looked over his shoulder, making sure we were well and truly alone at my desk. “Sasha has been completely avoiding me since we first talked about it. She’s hardly been at work. She’s avoiding my phone calls. She told me the line is supposed to launch in January, I guess right after the wedding,” I said, motioning to the article, “but she hasn’t said anything about the actual dresses. She made it seem like they already exist, but they might still need a little tweaking so that they coordinate with Paige’s dress and I thought she was going to have me do that. But she doesn’t seem to be concerned about any of it. If she wants me to be lead designer, why is she avoiding me? Why aren’t we collaborating? Brainstorming? Working?”
Chase gave me a worried look. “Dani, why do the dresses all need to coordinate with Paige’s dress?”
Doubt welled up in my stomach. “Because I gave it to her. To include in the line.”
“But you haven’t seen any of the other dresses?”
“Well, no, but they have to be somewhere.” I pointed at the magazine still open on my desk. “I mean, she’s wearing one of them. I can’t imagine Sasha’s wedding dress being anything but top priority for everyone involved.”
“That’s just it, Dani. Who is everyone? No one else on the design team knows anything about this. The article says she designed the dress herself. Do you really have confidence in Sasha’s ability to create a designer wedding gown on her own? She can’t design anything on her own. Something doesn’t add up.”
“She told me she has a new design team that’s handling the dresses. Maybe they’re off location somewhere?”
“I guess that part makes sense,” Chase said. “Of course she would need a separate location. That way no one here has to know she isn’t actually designing the dresses herself.”
“Truly? You don’t think she could design a gown?”
Chase put a hand on my shoulder. “Dani, Sasha’s only contributions that actually get taken seriously are the pieces you design for her. The woman is a cheat and a master manipulator. That she’s convinced Alicio to give her a line of wedding dresses is evidence of that. Because she doesn’t have the talent to justify it.”
“But designers get help all the time,” I argued, feeling the futility of my words even as I said them. Chase had never spoken so blatantly about Sasha before. “Alicio has a full team of