Tami, nerdy fashion designer

Up on the fourth, top floor of Thayer Hall, in the office of Department of Fashion Technology Chair Albert Girardo, that person sat with Professor Shel Wanamaker as they absently gazed out the big bay window that overlooked the bright snow-covered campus.

        Then Girardo, an old guy in a turtleneck sweater, black pants and moccasins, looked down again to leaf through the portfolio, as if he were looking at photos of persons with two heads.  “There’s only one word for these: weird.”

        “Also inventive, ingenious, possibly groundbreaking if you ask me,” Wanamaker said.  “Come on, admit it.  If you didn’t know it was Tami Smithers --”

        “I just can’t get my mind past it.  Clothes designed by someone who can never wear any.  There’s no denying there’s some kind of genius here, but it’s a genius from another dimension.  How long has she been ‘au natural’?”

        “Three and a half years.  Not one stitch, not so much as a pair of flip-flops on her feet either.”

        “Is this a pant or a very long boot?” Girardo said, turning the portfolio sideways and then upside down.  “I hate to say it, but she’s probably forgotten what clothes feel like.  Maybe she doesn’t really know what she’s doing any more.”

        A moment went by.  “We’ve got to send someone to the International.  We haven’t sent anyone in five years.”

        “That’s because we haven’t had anyone good enough in five years,” Girardo countered.  “And even that last time, it was a close call.”

        “You know the problem as well as I do.  If we keep on not sending anyone, they’ll drop us from their panel.”

        “Where is it this year?”

        “Montreal.”

        “Oh Christ!  I forgot.  Right in our goddamn back yard.”

        “So this is something we might have to do.”

        “She’s not a major,” Girardo said lamely.

        “We’ve sent submissions from students minoring in fashion before.”

        Girardo put the portfolio down.  “What if she makes the cut?  We can’t send a goddamn naked girl to a goddamn fashion award show.  And what if she wins!!  What if she wins!!  The most prestigious fashion industry fellowship in North America, and it goes to a naked woman!  They’ll get publicity like never before, but not the kind they want -- a naked woman who will be bopping around the campus of --”

        “They would never give the fellowship to a naked woman.”

        “Then aren’t we setting her up to fail?  And besides, there’s no way she’s going to win.  Even if she was clothed.  They’ll give it to one of those inbred French kids like they always do.  The odds are a thousand to one.”

        “We could make that clear to her when we tell her.  She could handle that.  Fashion isn’t the center of her life.  Her being a minor is actually an advantage as to that.”  Wanamaker continued, “Time is short.  You know how I feel.  We should tell her we want to submit her as our candidate.  The deadline is in three weeks, and we have to give her a chance to put together her submission portfolio before that.  She won’t win, but at least we’ll stay on their panel.”

        “Here she comes,” Girardo said, looking out the bay window.

        “Where?  Oh.”  On the main concourse, in the middle of dozens of students going here and there for the next class, the naked girl, easy to pick out of course, was happily chatting on her cell phone, bookbag flung over one shoulder, hanging down to where it bounced against her bare buns as she walked with the swiftness of someone who was used to a tight schedule.

        “Seems like she’s in a good mood,” Girardo said.

        “She usually is.  Everyone loves her too.  And she’s got a statue named after her.”

        “What?”

        “Ever see that girl sticking her arms out like she’s about to fly?  Near the Union?”

        “I hardly ever go there.”

        “It’s called ‘Tami Takes Flight’.  Latimer did it.”

        “When was that?”

        “The year you were on sabbatical.”

        “Oh... Well that’s certainly interesting, though not relevant... Look at her,” Girardo said as Tami broke into a little skip, going off the path to take a short cut toward them, kicking up snow with her toes.  “She’s traipsing through that snow like it’s summer and it’s sand on a beach.”

        “A nude beach, it would have to be.”

        “Right.  My point is, how is a person like that supposed to know what anyone wants as far as clothes go?  The International is not a bunch of dilettantes who design monstrosities for the Oscars red carpet.  They affect real mass-production decisions, like what the chain stores will carry.  The first thing a person wants clothes for is warmth.  And there she is,” he said, motioning toward the approaching Tami, “skipping barefoot and naked through the snow... What’s her needs status?  They take that into account these days, or least they’re supposed to.”

        “She’s married, to a recent engineering graduate, who’s working for base pay on his first real job.  She’s from Providence -- that’s another thing in her favor.  Her family is working class, she has a younger brother in Iraq, no other source of income aside from her father’s Navy pension and his hardware store, which according to our search is not doing too well.”

        “Think she knows that?”

        “Probably not.  I hear the father is proud of her but is a real stubborn, Irish beer drinking kind of guy.”

        “Not your typical designer background.”

        “I’ll say.  She also had a couple of close friends who died in 9/11.”

        “What, that plaque in the admin building?  What’s their names again --?”

        “Mandy Rabinowitz and Jeffrey Dillon.”

        “Oh right.  The kid who had the show on the 68th floor.  Man.  What a horrible loss.”

        They both sat in silence.  Before they were ready for it, they heard the door to the stairwell close shut and the approaching slap of bare feet.

        Though their door was open, they saw a bare arm reach around and knock.  “Come on in, Tami,” Wanamaker said.

        She moved into the doorway slowly and politely.  “Hi Professor, hi Mr. Girardo,” she said with a little nod.  “How did you know it was me?”

        Wanamaker said with a smile, “We heard the stairwell door close.  Everyone else takes the elevator... I told Mr. Girardo about your presentation on bra measurement.  It was excellent as always.”

        A blushing “Thanks.”

        Putting on sociability, Girardo looked up and said, “That’s a wonderful new hair color you’ve selected, Ms. Smithers.”

        To his surprise Tami looked down at her crotch and opened her legs slightly.  “Thanks.  It’s called ‘plum’.”

        Girardo gave a quick and pointed look to his colleague.

        Sitting right next to where Tami was standing, Wanamaker tried very hard not to notice the dark red curls right near his face.  Or the interesting fact that her pubic lips, jutting out slightly, were the same color as the surrounding curls.  He cleared his throat, looked up at her face, and said, “We’ve been enjoying your... portfolio.”

        “Oh that,” Tami said.  Then perhaps thinking she shouldn’t have been so dismissive, she said, “I hope it’s O.K.”

        “It’s more than O.K, Tami, it’s very... inventive,” Girardo said, paging through the computer graphics and freehand drawings, accompanied by more explanatory text than usual and, very unusual indeed, mathematical equations of some sort.

        “Thanks.”

        “This uh, tank top or whatever it is,” Girardo said, resisting the urge to turn the damn album upside down, “design 17A.  How did you get the neckline so high with so little material?”

        “Well it’s in the equations there,” Tami said.  She dropped her backpack and turned toward it, apparently not aware that her butt was sticking in their direction.  She fished a kind of ruler out.  “Let me show you.”

        Girardo had some kind of vague memory from his 1950’s high school days of this sticklike thing Tami now waved in front of him.  “The neckline is a catenary, which you get by calculating the hyperbolic sine -- “

        “The hyperbolic -- what?  What is this thing?”

        “It’s a slide rule.  I got it off the internet.  These are really great, in fact they’re beautiful.  This one’s a Hemmi.  You see the SH scale here, you read it along with the C scale for radians -- “

        As Tami went on and on in what seemed to Girardo like a foreign language, his mouth slowly opened in utter incomprehension.  Halfway through he realized Tami’s left breast was almost slapping him on the side of the face as she leaned alongside him so they could both see these sticks she was sliding back and forth.  Wanamaker looked on in amusement.

        When she was done, Girardo said, “I’m afraid it’s been a while since --”  Actually, he had never, ever been able to --

        Tami stood up and started over.  “The slide rule is based on logarithms rather than linear relations.”  Her fingers danced along the scales as she explained.  “See how the distance from 1 to 2 is the same as from 2 to 4?  It’s because that distance is a factor of 2.  From 4 to 8 is also the same.  Now let me set it to  show 6 divided by 3 is 2.  See?  Without moving the scales you see at the same time that 12 divided by 3 is 4, 38.4 divided by 3 is, 12.8, and so on.  The whole operation of division unfolds before you in one panoramic sweep!”

        Tami was trying to light a bulb over Girardo’s head with this picturesque phrase but there wasn’t even a bulb there to turn on.  “Oh,” he said weakly.

        By way of nudging Girardo in the right direction, Wanamaker said, “Tami, I wonder if you have any ambitions for your designing talent.”

        Tami thought for a second, then said, “I’ve designed dresses and clothes for my friends.  It seems whenever there’s a wedding or a formal dance I get called.  It’s just my minor, though.  My major is math, and my project is math with biochemistry.  My friend Gretchen and I are working on a biodegradable, toxin-proof fabric that holds heat in the cold and breathes in the heat.”

        “That would be quite an accomplishment.”

        “I heard about that project from Professor Ling,” Wanamaker said.  “That’s Gretchen Spaulding, right?”

        “Yes, Gretchen and me.  What we want is to develop something that can be used by our troops in Iraq.  My brother tells me it gets both very hot and very cold there, at least where he is.  Gretchen’s fiancé is there too.”

        “I hear they need equipment there,” Wanamaker said.  Then, perhaps tactlessly, “I hope they’re safe.”

        “Joe is in a part of the country where not much happens, and Roger, that’s Gretchen’s fiancé, he’s training helicopter pilots.”

        “I see,” Girardo said.  “Well, good for you.  And good for Gretchen too.”

        “Thanks.”

        There was an uneasy silence, at least uneasy for the two professors.

        “Well, Ms. Smithers,” Girardo said, “we just wanted to say that we’re very impressed with your work, not only on your biochem project, but also in our classes.  I hope you stay interested in this field of endeavor.  See you around.”

        “Thanks again.”  She picked up her backpack and started to leave.  From out in the hall she said, “What happened to that cartoon thing?”

        “The what?”

        “You know, that old magazine thing?”

        She was referring to an old National Lampoon item entitled, “What high fashion would look like if designers were heterosexual.”  It had a picture of a so-called designer in a sweatshirt and jeans, pointing to his new “design”, an invisible dress on a naked woman.  “And if she gets cold, she can always wear a car,” he was saying.  Girardo, who was gay, had put the item up some years ago as a joke on himself.  But he took it down recently out of sensitivity to Tami’s plight.

        “Um, it was time to change the board a bit,” Girardo said.

        “Oh.  Too bad, it was pretty funny.  Well, bye.”

        They heard the bare footsteps receding and then the stairwell door close.  Soft descending footfalls faded into silence.

        Wanamaker said, “I knew you’d chicken out.  You won’t get many more chances.”

        Girardo sighed and said, “Shel, you know I’m always swayed by you.  I have to admit, strange as it is, this girl’s work is exceptional.  She probably really does deserve to be our candidate.  But a naked fashion designer... This is the weirdest situation I’ve ever been in.”

        “I think you’re being hyperbolic.”

        “Oh shut up.”