It was the dress he’d always wanted to make; the one that answered the question posed by his mentor. “What would you want to wear if you were a woman?” he’d ask when one of his acolytes devised a very conceptual and very very uncomfortable piece at the atelier. “Imagine yourself having to do anything but stand still in that…” the great teacher would continue, before hitting them with the clincher: “Uncomfortable is unattractive.”

The spring breeze was, for him, the former student, and now fledgling designer, meant to be interpreted, transformed, manifested into a garment. He’d first had the inkling as a teenager, while wearing his father’s too-wide pants, and feeling the simple freedom that comes with ease of movement and wind at the ankles. Later, after a splurge purchase at Saks, he experienced the cool of the May breeze at an outdoor art fair, through a shirt of fine linen, loosely proportioned at the shoulders so as to gather the air like a sail. He’d been taken by the feeling, so much so that his inspiration wall was filled with loose fitting but well tailored models draped in supple fabrics and photographed against the product of a slow fan and in light meant to evoke a spring sunrise.

He purchased a roll of the softest, cleanest linen and cotton blend, a luminescent white, another splurge, but one that limited creasing and repelled stains, making it easier to work with and to wear. He hung  three yards of it on a wall, and sat in his big leather chair, staring at it. He was thinking of his mentor when the design of the dress just came to him, he didn’t need to drape the form, or model the pieces in muslin, though he would, to assist in detailing construction, before he sent the handmade sample, instructions, and drawings to the pattern maker for multiple production.

He’d been taken lately by the curiosity of similarities, and in this instance began to design a tribal pattern that passed for art deco as an adornment. The applique tightened the dress at the waist and neck, which in turn loosened the look at the sleeves and skirt, allowing for the swing below the hips that would evoke movement, ease, and of course, the cool breeze of springtime.

It was a beautiful May afternoon. He would loosen his cravat, and walk home across the courtyard, barefoot, listening to the soft rustling of the new foliage. In his pocket would be a swatch of the fabric he’d been working with, and a sketch of the dress. Later, he would add them to the memorial binder he’d created to his mentor, while sitting on the balcony with the potted lilies, his baggy silk pajamas succumbing to the breeze.

–Danny Grosso

“Long ago, long ago” he said, or rather muttered, to himself over and over, all day.  To see him now was a sad vignette, a tragedy within a tragedy, a moment within a life.

Once he was tall and straight, with a Clark Gable mustache and an eye to the future, but now…

Living in the past is not really what it is, more like living in moment, past and future unimaginable,  in a room with a window but no door.

Sometimes he went outside, on his bicycle, to scrounge around for things you can find when your head is down. The averted gazes of others left a wider space for him to operate, though operating often just meant looking for discarded butts. He knew that he knew many of these people, and that he was not entirely unrecognizable under the beard. He also knew they wouldn’t confront him. He’d burned enough emotional bridges to insure his relative isolation, and the hat and beard did the rest.

Long ago he didn’t have to hide. He wore loud clothes in the club, he dropped names, he chased pretty girls. The quiet confidence of that age is gone, another tragedy within a tragedy.

-Danny Grosso