The Devil wears dalmations

The Devil wears Dalmatians

“It's always bloody spots with her.” Said the first one. The tall one with the funny hair.
“I don’t get it.” Said the second, bracing herself on her cubicle wall as she stretched to look through the gap in window.
“I don’t think there’s anything to get, that’s the point Deirdre.” Said the third one, sitting down in her own cubicle, flicking through a portfolio.
“Don't be asinine Deborah, there isn’t any point. Its just clothes.”
Deborah and  Deirdre recoiled in mock horror. No small feat for Deirdre who was currently braced between the opaque editors window and her cubicle wall like a tiny, waif thin rock climber.
“Ella!” squeaked Deirdre, “How could you say such a thing?”
“I'm assuming you have some passing interest in fashion” said Deborah, gesturing at the impeccable offices of Hard Fashion inc,“You do work at the finest fashion house in all of London”
“All of London” Deirdre echoed, lowering herself to the ground.
Cruella, or rather Ella nowadays, sighed deeply. She'd let her mask slip again for a moment. She kept forgetting that these women were not her friends, not even her colleagues. They were competitors, the enemy.

The three of them were the last remaining interns in Hard Fashions young talent program, three months of gruelling busy work and occasional hefting of massive unpaid responsibility which had driven 27 of their cohorts to quit or fail. Cruella had been out of University and any semblance of regular work for three months when her mother, the same mother whose name she had sworn off, whose millions she had refused and whose nepotistic clutches she had evaded, appeared out of the blue and finally made an offer Cruella couldn't refuse.

Many years previously, Cru (as she referred to herself during those turbulent teenage years) had stormed out of her mothers home and vowed to never take an unfair advantage again. She applied for, and by some minor miracle received, a student loan and took up residence in a cupboard in Bow. She had worked three jobs throughout her education, only one of which she ever liked, and generally grafted. She toiled for four years. And for her great efforts she received a First, a firm handshake, an awful hat with a square on top and a graceless shove into the job centre.

It had been an argument about Fashion college that started it. Her mother had always assumed Cruella would take an interest in something more intangible, like poetry or philosophy, not a subject wherein the ultimate goal was something as base as retail. Cruella was to find something wishy-washy to excel at and then wander back to the family pile in Kent and marry that nice Philip boy from down the road, the one that’s on the fast track to parliament. Many years hence she would become the new Lady De Vil and continue to plunge the family's millions into the campaign to bring back the hunt. It was the done thing.

But Cruella had been something of a black sheep from the day of her thirteenth birthday when she emerged from her bedroom and entered into her party with what her mother will always refer to to as “the monstrosity” on her head.

She didn't want to be a lady. She wanted to own a shop and make clothes for businesswomen. She wanted a monochrome hairdo and the long gloves her grandmother left her.

“It just catwalk clothes. They mean nothing to the consumer, the closest thing to an influence a piece like that will have is a range of polka dot skirts in topshop for twenty minutes in the spring.” Nice one, Cruella thought, saved.
“I like polka dots.” muttered Deirdre, returning to her desk.
Deborah wasn't entirely satisfied. She carefully slid her magazine on to her desk and stood up, making her way to the water cooler knowing full well how her voice could carry..
“You know, Ella, that Madame Tinkerfoff is one of the worlds greatest living designers. Something of a jewel in Hard Fashions crown. I imagine it will be difficult working with – for her. Should you get the job of course.”

Deirdre turned her chair around, shrinking back from the ice cold glare radiating from Cruella.

“Ella!” the yell came from the editors office, accompanied by the crash of a door being opened by the most masculine homosexual In All Of London. “Ella! Job for you!”

“Yes Mr Davison!” Davison looked like a lumberjack, and this week was dressing like one, it was very in.

Cruella hurried into the office, leaving Deirdre and Deborah, that smug bitch, outside. Davison's office was a Spartan affair, a few memorable covers graced the walls along with a dozen varied award on the windowsill. A huge dark wood desk sat in the gloss white room covered in drawings, fabrics and a colossal spotted coat. It was horrible. The cut was all wrong and the fabric felt awful, but Madame Tinkerfoff, a dubious octogenarian vision in fluorescent orange and novelty spectacles, fawned over it.

“Ella, Mme Tinkerfoff here will be presenting a show tomorrow morning,” said Davison, lowering himself onto a spare corner of the desk, “And this astonishing piece will cap off the show.”

Cruella tried to look impressed, she really did, but it was so difficult, she was certain she had developed a twitch under her eye by the end of the ordeal. But it was not enough.

“You don't look that intrigued Ella,” he eyed her for a second, gauging her reaction before breaking into a grin,”Neither was I when she brought it in, thought you'd gone mad for a moment Ethel!”
“Mad dear?” said Madame Tinkerfoff in an accent that certainly didn’t sound like it had been formed in the finest fashion houses of Paris, “You bloody wish you old queer.”
“Hah! Classic Ethel! But anyway Ella, put it on and look in the mirror”
“It doesn't look like it would fit me,”
“That's the point dear!” squawked Tinkerfoff.

Cruella took up the coat, the fabric didn't feel half as bad as it looked, and pulled it on. Hidden folds stretched, and strange patterns in the fabric emerged and seemed to twist, she looked into the mirror to see not the dreck the coat had been lying on a table, but the glorious origami like symmetry of an utterly brilliant piece. It was astonishing, it was the greatest piece of clothing she had ever worn and it fitted her perfectly. She stood in stunned silence.

“It's good isn’t it,” said Tinkerfoff, “Fits everyone first time, I'm going to build the idea into everything in my next collection, this first one is only the start. But that’s where you come in Ella. Davison here, big fat fag that he is, tells me you are the best drafter in the building.”
“Well I wouldn't say best...” mumbled Cruella.
“I don't mean to be mean dearie, but your opinion means less than nothing to me, Davison says, therefore its true. Now the problem I have dear, it that I'm not entirely sure how this dress works.”
“How can you not know how it works? Didn't you make it?”
“I did dear, but in my old age I've succumbed to some weaknesses during working hours.”
“She gets smashed on gin and laudenam while she works,” Davison chimed in, “She wakes up in a sweat hours later with a completed piece. Its barbaric.”
“Thank you Davison. So, what we want you to do, dear Ella, is take this dress away, examine it, and get exactly how it works down on paper. All I want you to do is quantify my genius.”
“And do so before tomorrow morning.” Davison added.
They gently prised the coat off her and the magic was broken. It was vile again.
“Well dear?” said Tinkerfoff, nudging her out of her funk, “there'll be a full time position for you should you pull it off.”
“And a bonus. You'll get one of those backrest things for your chair and an intern to torment.”

Cruella wandered out in a daze, the spotted fabric draped over her shoulder like a half erected tent. She'd take it home, get two glasses into a bottle of wine and start sketching. But it was so complex, its dimensions couldn't fit. Parts folded into other parts a seeming infinity of time. Weird concertinas of ruffles and poufs seemed to melt together. It would be a challenge and after all, it was so beautiful.

The tube was uncomfortable. She cradled the coat like a newborn, terrified of any skuff or tear. She stumbled out on to the streets of Bow, practically running home in fear of a sudden burst of rain. Her flat was a single room on the third floor of an end of terrace. She lived above two lovely west African families and one horrible English one. They had dogs. Loud, defecating and vaguely threatening Dalmatians. Where  did they even get the money for them? None of them had ever held a job as far as she could tell, they just had fights in the shit filled front garden late at night and occasionally gather round rancid plastic filled bonfires. They were out tonight, the dogs were pawing against the French doors.

She quickly made her way upstairs and into her own room and locked the door. She carefully hung the coat over the mannequin in the corner and sat down in front of it. Her hands scrambled across her desk for her sketchbook, closely followed by a bottle of wine. She got to just the right stage of drunk before picking up a mechanical pencil and starting to sketch.

Her hand moved as if possessed. Her eyes jumped across the fabric in front of her, never settling for too long to avoid the inevitable migraines. The coat would... judder as she looked at it, as if it were trying to avoid being analysed to closely. Cruella's head pounded as she tried to pin the design down on paper.

It was raining by now. A great thunderous storm boiled outside her window. It was late and she was exhausted and it was only 3 am. Those dogs were yowling at the storm outside, sounding a descant to the iron thump in Cruella's head. She dropped her pencil and slid back from the sketchbook. It still wasn't right. It was infuriating.

A closer look, she thought, a closer look will do it. She hefted her last glass of wine and drifted over to the coat. It seemed obvious afterwards. Drunk intern sashaying about an expensive piece, glass in hand, shocked by a sudden bolt of lightening ruins a coat so unique and so important that said intern may fear for her very life in such a situation and be driven to odd behaviours.

Cruella sat looking at the wine stain spreading across the spotted fabric, ideas popping and fizzing wildly in her mind. The worst had happened, the bottom had dropped out of her stomach and her vision had tunnelled. The stain would not move. She had contained it, removing one of the flanges from the coat and discarded it.

She would fix this. She would not fail. The laser like intensity of the thirteen year old that insisted upon monochrome hair and her grandmothers sheer elbow length gloves rose within her.

A piece of fabric. Spotted. All I need. Not asking much.

She paced up and down, her bare feet sounding a tattoo on the wooden floors as she thought.

Spotted fabric. Spotted. Where have I spotted spots?

One of the dogs downstairs howled.

Something in Cruella did too.