Fur and different types of fabrics covered
the floor of the warehouse. At the center, a man with tight clothes threw
everything around, apparently looking for something in particular. He stopped
for a moment, having a bright yellow patterned fabric on one hand and a bright
pink vest in the other, covered in glitter and feathers of many colors. He gave
them those to an assistant and then stepped out of the mound of clothes as if
nothing had happened. He walked elegantly and steadily towards the warehouse’s
exit.
The rest of the people had to stay there and
get everything in order. They had to put everything into the proper bags and
boxes and those bags and boxes into very tall shelves where everything was kept
in order and very clean. When the last worker left the warehouse, they realized
their boss was still there and he seemed to be drawing something on a notebook,
against the hood of his car. He didn’t seem to be conscious of his
surroundings, only focusing on the
movement of his hand and the trace of the pencil.
His personal assistant, the young man who had
grabbed the selected pieces of clothing, touched his shoulder and whispered in
his ear something about a meeting he was late to. The man seemed a bit startled
at the beginning, but then he just closed the notebook and entered the car.
Later that day, he attended several meetings, having to do with his next
collection and with everything that had to do with the financial results
achieved by the company. However, he wasn’t really there in any of them.
Colors flew all over his brain, as well as
textures and different kinds of fabrics and so on. He kept drawing in some of
those meetings and people knew he had to be left alone while he was being
creative. The only thing he had to say in meetings was about the clothes and
the line that was about to come out was already in production, so he had not
much to say in those last few meetings. They just invited him because they knew
he was essential to the success of the company but not because he was actually
needed.
The truth was that some of the people on the
board felt that he was losing his touch. People didn’t seem to like his most
recent creations, with many critics chiming in saying that it all seemed a
little bit too boring and that “it had been seen before”. He was very aware of
these criticisms but the had already said, several times, that he thought
creativity could not be judged by anyone and that people saying whatever they
wanted without context was just an insult to his imagination and his skill as a
designer. He thought he should have all the freedoms needed to create and that
was it.
However, the company was secretly against
this. They didn’t tell him any of it, but it was clear that if he didn’t
deliver results, he would be kicked out without any consideration to his talent
of his past results. At the end of the day, the only thing those people
considered was money and if he wasn’t the one bringing it into their lives,
they would find some other person that could have his vision and theirs, at the
same time. It was clearly a possibility and they had in their minds at all
times, even if he didn’t realize it.
In his creative studio, everything was about
lights and colors and all the beautiful fabrics that could be brought from
every corner in the world. Everyone there was as beautiful as what they used to
make dresses and other fashion products and everyone also seemed to be young
and always happy, smiling and showing their teeth every step of the way. For an
outsider, it was a very strange place to be in, even intimidating because of
the attitudes of the people working there, some for years.
The biggest office there was for him, the top
designer, the one that had been the head of the whole creative area for the
last two years. And he was a young man but he was already tormented by
everything he had done in the past and his present ideas. He felt he was being
left behind by his surroundings and that his past work was the result of some
silly ideas that had come up from the mind of a naïve young man. And he always
felt like that, never really feeling great about any of his work.
He would spent his days drawing and coloring
and checking new products and fabrics, talking to other creative like him and
with people creating new things to be used in fashion. His whole life was about
being creative and imaginative and sometimes he felt he just didn’t have enough
of it. He even felt he had landed his job because of some astronomical mistake,
because it was often that he felt like a failure, unable to make what people
expected from him. He felt he was not what he was supposed to be.
As a designer, he was very aware that he had
to bring in results in order to have the chance to have such a group working
for him, so he had recently visited some stores to check out his success with
his own eyes. However, he noticed the latest collection was not working as well
as he intended. He had worked so had and his team had put everything on it, all
at once if that was possible. But apparently people were not nearly as excited
about as they were while making it. That made him feel something he had not
experienced before in his very short career filled with success.
He realized that success could have really
disastrous effects in a young man. After all, he had been forced to grow up
very fast in order to be the person that was needed in such a competitive
world. He remembered the days when he drew several drawings every single day,
the days when he would be happy just coloring some nice drawing and then buying
his own fabrics to make his creations a reality. He had to make the effort and
it was hard and that felt good when he had a final product in his hands.
The massive appeal of his designs had been his
downfall; a crazy idea that had grown inside his head but that was only a lie.
They had made him believe he was the only one doing fashion that young and that
he was a special little flower growing in some kind of dark moat. But that sure
wasn’t the case, and he noticed that from the beginning, with his first fashion
show, where he was able to see how talented people was. They were better than
what he was lead to believe, beautiful and creative people.
And it was a mosh pit between them, a storm of
talented souls that clashed one against the other. It was horrible for them and
for the people that worked with them but they mostly never realized how vicious
their world could be. They only thought about the imaginative process, about
how beautiful it was to combine one thing with the other. They felt it was the
best job in the world, the most glamorous and beautiful in all of existence,
and that it couldn’t be topped by anything on the world.
So he just decided to stay in his office for a
whole day, working and working, not caring about anything else. He tried to
create something that could really make him someone different, that could
really tell others that he was a very unique soul and that his creations were
much more than just clothes and accessories, more like works of art being
carried around by beautiful people that knew how much effort and imagination
had gone into their creation. He didn’t stop until his hands hurt.
They found him the following day, dead on his
working area. According to the doctors that examined him afterwards, he had
died of a heart attack. It was very uncommon for such a young man to die like
that, but his body had been under severe pressure and it was a very obvious
conclusion to his story.
However, others took his drawing and
everything he had created that whole day in order to make one last collection.
They said it was in his honor but it was only to make money out of his talents
and his death. And people did fall into that trap, buying it in large numbers,
save the company from its own demise.
