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Summary: Fashion is companionship. Fashion is grief. Fashion is recovery. Fashion is armour. Fashion is future.
AO3
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When for the first time in his life Kurt held a reel of thread in his hand, he had no notion of fashion. As he grasped the reel with his tiny chubby fingers, feeling proud at being trusted with it, he never took his eyes off his mother’s hands and a huge (must be his dad’s) sock with a hole instead of a heel. He watched and watched, and the hole disappeared, like magic, with flicks of a hand.
When his mother was done, he reached forward and asked to try. But she tucked the needle into the cushion and gently pried his fingers from the reel, “Oh sweetie, you’re too young. Wait a couple of years, and I’ll teach you how to sew.” She ruffled his hair and returned the box to its place on the top shelf.
His mom knit him scarves and sweaters and let Kurt hold the clew. He sat transfixed, staring at the two big needles flying and it was another kind of magic. Elizabeth let him touch the needle that time and it was big and when he lifted it, he imagined that he was a knight with a sword and that he was with other princes fighting dragons.
He clasped the material while his mother sewed. He held his breath, watching the mechanic needle create seams and connect pieces of fabric together. It was plaid, sky, cobalt, white and a bit of navy; his father wore it to Friday night dinner that week and Kurt bounced with pride. And when Burt came to work in it and took his son with him, Kurt told everyone he could find that he helped make it. His father’s friends smiled, ruffled his hair and asked if he could make them one too when he grew up.
He noticed that something was wrong when his mom couldn’t get the thread through the eye. Her hand trembled and it’d never happened before.
“Mom, you need to lie down,” Kurt said firmly. “You’ve been cooking all morning, you’re tired.”
She smiled at him with the corners of her mouth. “It’s alright, sweetie. I didn’t sleep well, that’s all.”
When he learnt the truth, there had already been no sewing or knitting for a few weeks. He avoided the sewing machine like plague and he never looked up, at the top shelf, where reels of thread and pin cushions gathered dust.
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His aunt visited once a month and created a semblance of order. She wiped the dust from the top shelf, rearranged dishes according to their size, turned cups upside down and made sure that handles were always sticking out and not tucked in. She mended his father’s huge socks and bought vegetables and made cake for Kurt’s birthday. The frosting was wrong, and the chocolate was too dark, but Kurt shoved it down and thanked her. He couldn’t miss the relieved sigh from his dad.
His first scrambled egg almost set the house on fire. His first toast got stuck. The bag of flour was too heavy and it slipped. He cut himself when he was cutting onions because even though he was standing on a foot rest he was still too short and his eyes were too close and he couldn’t see anything.
Every night after finishing homework Kurt settled in front of the TV with his father. It never mattered what they were watching as long as they were doing something together. One Tuesday in November Kurt noticed that not one but two of his father’s socks had holes in them and two buttons were missing from his plaid shirt - the one that was sky, cobalt, white and a bit of navy. The next day when he returned from school he stood on the chair and reached the top shelf.
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He borrowed a book about sewing from their school library and the boys from his History class were there and they saw him in the girls’ section and they taunted him and laughed at him for the whole week.
The next time when he borrowed books he did it right before closing time so that no one was there.
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He helped his father in the garage and spent his first earned money to buy more fabric. He copied clothes from old magazines but a few years later he had a subscription to Vogue and had discovered the Internet.
Because of his clothes and his voice he got called a girl at least three times a day at school but it was alright, he got used to it pretty quickly. He liked girls better anyway.
But when they started to call him other names, he pulled a cardigan over his shirt.
When he got his first bruise from being shoved into the locker, he added a brooch.
When at the end of the day he had to climb out of the dumpster to be in time for the school bus, he bought his first poncho.
When he had to climb out of the dumpster to be in time for the first class, he spent all his money on a Vivienne Westwood scarf.
He didn’t want to hear people whispering behind him at class so he started to draw. At first it was absent-minded, circles, squares, flowers and hearts. Then it was people-shaped sketches, bodies and clothes. At fourteen he sewed his first T-shirt. At sixteen he made his first pants.
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It’s one thing to wear clothes you designed yourself but it’s absolutely different to see it worn by other people. Gorgeous people. The most handsome people he’d ever met. He couldn’t help himself, he really couldn’t, and he ended up sleeping with his first model. It was unprofessional and Kurt was a nervous wreck for a week until he told Isabelle and she laughed.
“Oh honey, it’s completely normal! We work in the beauty business after all, don’t we?”
He calmed down after that and hired another model and in no time he had two models, and the number kept growing and by the time of his first fashion show he was ready to take over the world.
The morning when his first collection went on sale was a rainy one. He stood in front of the window and sipped hot tea. He hadn’t slept and wandered around his apartment, spinning in his chair with closed eyes. He arranged pencils, sharpened them, reorganized files with his old designs and for a long time sat in front of the blank sheet.
He started drawing at dawn and by the time the first ray of sun ambled into his living room he already had what could be the start of his new spring collection.
