it.
“I'm not sure what I think of that yet. It's a little strong for some of our clients.”
“I think it's a great look.”
Zoya smiled, it was so odd to think of this rugged man, who looked more like a football player, discussing Elsa Schiaparelli's Shocking Pink, but there was no doubt that his coats were the best made in the States, and it was obvious he had an eye for fashion and color and he knew what he was doing. “My father was a tailor,” he explained, “and his father before him. And he started Hirsch and Co., with his two brothers on the Lower East Side. They made clothes and coats for the people they knew, and then someone on Seventh Avenue heard about them, and started ordering goods from them, and my father figured to hell with that,” he glanced apologetically at Zoya, who was too intrigued by the tale to care about his language, “he moved to Seventh Avenue, and opened a workroom there himself, and when I came into it I turned everything upside down, with something called fashion. We had some terrific fights over it, and when my uncles retired, I really got my hand into it, with English wools, and some colors that almost made my father cry. We got into ladies’ coats then, and well, for the last ten years we've done pretty much what I thought we should from the first. It's a good look, particularly now that Pop has retired and I'm bringing in new designs from Paris.”
“It's an interesting history, Mr. Hirsch,” Axelle said. It was the kind of story that had built the success of their adopted country. “Your coats are beautiful. We've done very well with them.”
“I'm happy to hear it.” He smiled, he was a man at ease in his own skin. He was enormously successful, and he had done it all almost single-handedly. “My father swore I'd ruin the business. It was a real vote of confidence when he retired last year, and now he pretends he's not interested anymore. But whenever I go out, my tailors and cutters tell me that he sneaks in and patrols the workrooms.” Zoya laughed at the image he created, and he turned to her again. “And you, Countess … sorry, Zoya … how did you get to Axelle's?”
“Oh,” she laughed, feeling oddly at ease with him, and closer to Axelle than she had before, “by a long, hard road.” Her face grew serious then. “We lost everything in the Crash,” she said it honestly, and Axelle knew that much anyway. “Overnight, we were destitute, our two homes had to be sold, our furniture, my clothes and furs, even our china.” It was the first time she had actually spoken of it to Axelle, and she seemed at ease as she said it. “I had two children to support, and virtually no skills. I danced with the Ballet Russe here in Paris, during the war, and with another ballet company as well, but in 1929, I was thirty years old, and a little too old to join the ballet again.” She looked at them both with an amused smile, and Axelle was in no way prepared for what she heard next. “I applied to the Ziegfeld Follies, but I wasn't tall enough, so I got a job dancing in a burlesque hall.” Axelle's jaw almost dropped, and Simon Hirsch looked at her with intense respect. Not many women would have gone from riches to rags so courageously, or admitted that they'd worked in a dance hall. “That must surprise you, Axelle. No one knows that, not even my children. It was awful. I worked there for a year and a half, hating every minute of it, and one night,” her eyes still filled with tears at the memory, “there was a terrible fire when I was at work, and I almost lost my children. They are all that matters to me, and I knew I couldn't leave them alone at night anymore, so I packed up what was left in two boxes, moved to a hotel, borrowed a hundred dollars from a friend, and knocked on Axelle's door. I don't think she ever knew how desperate I was,” she looked gratefully at her friend, as Axelle tried to absorb what she had just heard, she wanted to cry just hearing it, “and I was very lucky, she hired me. And there I have been ever since, and always will be,