Raiders of the Lost Corset (7 page)

Her disappointment with Vic and the puzzling end to their promising romance somehow made it all the more important now that she go to Paris, that she must have a wonderful time. If she happened to stumble upon a lost corset full of Romanov jewels that had been the stuff of legend for nearly a century, well, that would just be a delightful bonus. But Lacey
had
to go to Paris. Or else she thought she might as well just say to hell with everything and eat every last one of Felicity’s gingerbread men until she exploded like one of Wiedemeyer’s toads.

Paris. I must have Paris.

Lacey Smithsonian’s

FASHION BITES

I

The Red Bra of Courage

Do you need a little something extra? Do you need the swagger of a sexy secret under your conservative suit? Do you need to tell the world, “There’s more to me than this boring uniform”—without telling them
too
much? Do you need a jolt of pure physical confidence that comes from within (or pretty close to it)?
You need the Red Bra of Courage!

Your boss, your barista, that weasel in Accounting, that cute new guy in Sales, they won’t know why you suddenly have an extra bounce in your high-heeled step, why your mood is buoy-ant, your confidence unshakable. But you’ll know. You may not sing and dance in your underwear like Tom Cruise in
Risky
Business
or Madonna, the woman who almost single-handedly revived the bustier and corset as
oh-so-daring
outerwear. But clad in the cozy secret of the right underwear, you might just want to sing
hallelujah.
(Under your breath, of course.) How does your underwear make
you
feel? Like running a 5K, putting on the Ritz, winning your case in court? Or like a five-pack of sturdy white cotton granny panties? Respectable enough to be caught wearing in case of a fatal accident, but about as exciting as eating oatmeal mush and wearing the box it came in? Do your undies make you feel strong and sexy? Courageous? Alluring? Or boring and dull, generic and suitable (barely) for everyday use?

A little-known (except by you, Stylish Reader) fact about underwear is that it can affect your mood, your confidence, your entire style. It is the secret language beneath your clothes. If it whispers to
you,
your confidence will shout to
us.

And there is more to that secret language than the mundane statements of a jogging bra and baggy granny panties.

When it comes to lingerie, one set does
not
fit all. Different clothes may require different undergarments, but you also have maximum freedom in what is most concealed—concealed to everyone except to you. High-cut panties, bikinis, thongs in cotton, nylon, lace, or silk are not just a personal comfort decision; they’re a decision about your identity and attitude. Bras, whether strapless, underwire, eighteen-hour, racer-back, or pushup, not only cover but shape and uplift and determine how you look in that dress or blouse—and who you think you are.

That’s a lot to ask of such a small piece of fabric. Measured in
oomph
per ounce, your underwear can be more powerful than plutonium—or deader than the dodo.

Women in Washington, D.C., are accustomed to wearing business camouflage all day long, an endless array of gray and beige and black suits. One hopes their secret wardrobe beneath those suits is a little more exciting. Remember, underwear can say what your outerwear can’t say, and nobody has to know it but you. Others will feel it in your attitude. Don’t you just love keeping secrets? And isn’t it even more fun to whisper them in the right ear?

• Is your ferocious inner feline just roaring to stalk the jungle, but it’s caged inside your city-bound suit? Hunt down that leopard-skin spotted slip and matching bra and garters, and you
growl
, girl!
Grrrr.

• Do you love that old-fashioned boudoir glamour, the silk nightgowns and robes you’ve seen in late-night movies, satin gowns cut on the bias that caress every curve, but despair of finding anything quite like it today? Check out vintage stores that carry exotic styles from yesteryear. Some even have “new” old lingerie, nightgowns, and robes from the Forties and Fifties with the original tags.

• Is all this beautiful stuff that no one but you will see too expensive? Wait for a sale—it’s worth it. Everyone, including Victoria’s Secret, has sales. Keep your eyes open and go early when the selection is the best, and you won’t have to go manicured
mano a mano
with the satin-maddened crowds swarming around the $5 bra bins after work.

In the eyes of the world you might have to look like someone who wears a boring suit, a uniform, scrubs, sweats, even judicial robes. But underneath it all, you can be who you really want to be in your underwear. And maybe we’ll even see it in the twinkle in your eye, and we’ll wonder: “What’s
her
secret today? Could it be . . .
The Red Bra of Courage
?”

Chapter 6

Because the woman who had introduced her to Magda should not hear about her death secondhand, Lacey walked from the offices of
The Eye
to Stylettos at Dupont Circle, where Stella Lake held court with her scissors and shampoo bowl.

Lacey had spent the fifteen-minute walk trying to figure out how to tell her the awful news, but Stella took one look at her and cried out, “Oh my God, Lacey! Who’s dead?”

“Magda Rousseau.”

Stella dropped her scissors. “No! I just saw her last week. She looked totally healthy.” Her eyes began to moisten. “You know, for an unhealthy crazy old lady. Was it her heart?”

“I’m sorry.” Lacey hugged Stella’s shoulders. “I found her. Can we talk somewhere?”

Stella stood still in the busy salon as her eyes filled with tears.

Lacey couldn’t stand to see her friend cry; she was sure she would be crying herself in mere moments. She handed Stella a tissue and waited while her spunky hairstylist dabbed at her eye makeup.

A young man whose hair looked like a dalmatian got up out of his styling chair and gave Stella a hug and a tip, oblivious to her tears. She had apparently just dyed striking black spots into his short platinum-blond flattop. “Thanks, Stella! Whoa. It’s radical.”

He preened at himself in the mirror and was gone. Lacey glanced at Stella with an eyebrow raised. Stella’s evenly dyed black hair looked positively conservative by comparison.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty cool look, huh, Lace,” Stella said, looking wistfully after her spotted handiwork. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it first.” Then she remembered Magda and sighed.

“Are you okay?” Lacey said.

“Yeah. I’m through for the day.” She turned back to Lacey. “We need to do something in memory of Magda. Let’s go get a drink.

Our own little wake for Magda,” Stella said, stripping off her black Stylettos smock to reveal an eye-popping purple corset — no doubt a Magda Rousseau Original — over tight black capri pants. Her formerly bright red crew cut was growing out. She had dyed it jet-black and was wearing it slicked back and sleek like a seal. She reapplied her eye makeup and checked for imperfections in the mirror. Her eyes were lined with black kohl, her lips were red as blood and matched her long nails. She looked as exotic as if she were channeling a mutant mixture of Mata Hari and Rudolph Valentino. Lacey whistled softly at the new Stella.

“New look, Stella?”

“You like it?”

“I like it lots. It’s you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Totally me. Makes me feel dangerous.”

“Do you need to feel dangerous?’

“Duh, you bet I do. I need a man.”

“What about Bobby Blue Eyes?” Stella had been crazy for months about a certain angelic-looking blond dude who loved mo-torcycles, erotic adventures, and Stella’s very assertive twin peaks —“the girls,” as she called them.

“You know. History. Down the road. Whatever.”

“But I thought you guys were, um, cozy,” Lacey said. Stella was grabbing her jacket and striding toward the front door. “A couple. Permanent. Or at least semipermanent.”

“Permanents don’t last forever, Lace. Life is like hair, you know, sometimes you just gotta cut loose, make a change. And I can’t wait forever for a new man. I’m not like you.” Stella threw her a pointed look that Lacey decoded as
You are so pathetic.
“A woman’s got needs, you know.”

Lacey ignored that. She followed Stella out the front door of the shiny Dupont Circle salon. She didn’t want to get Stella started on what a woman needs. And she didn’t want to get into a long discussion about whether what Lacey needed was Victor Donovan, the big dope who still made her heart race.

They chose a nearby bar that served trendy drinks to a nerdy crowd of Capitol Hill staffers who were trying to look cool. They sat at the bar, lost in their own thoughts, until their trendy drink specials arrived, a Pink Lady with a double shot of gin for Stella and blue champagne for Lacey. Stella took one big gulp of her Pink Lady, opened her eyes wide, and socked Lacey in the shoulder. Lacey spilled a little blue champagne.

“I know! Everyone can wear their corsets to the funeral! For Magda, you know?

Lacey blinked. “Corsets?”

“Yeah, you, me, my assistant manager Michelle, the rest of the salon. All those actresses she costumed. And I know some of her call-girl clients and that corset-kinky crowd.” Stella took another gulp of the pink liquid. “We all got our corsets and bustiers from Magda. It would be one last great costume parade for the old doll.”

Lacey couldn’t imagine the refined Michelle, a gorgeous black woman, in a corset. If Stella had her way, the funeral would look like some sort of misguided Old West saloon gal musical number, or a corset fetishist’s ball. Lacey was still trying to adjust to mourners showing up in their casual Friday clothes or their barest black cocktail dresses, just because they were black.

“Maybe we could all wear black ones. You know, like formal funeral corsets?” Stella looked so hopeful that Lacey didn’t want to crush her spirit with a dose of conventional good taste. All Stella had learned from reading Lacey’s columns was that if you wore clothes to express who you really were inside, you were in fashion and all was forgiven. Stella liked to broadcast her inner vixen through her clothes. Lacey realized that the “dress-to-express” side of her message resonated with Stella’s rebellious little inner vixen, but the other side of the message, the “dress-to-respect” side, wasn’t what Stella wanted to hear.

“Well, my own Magda Original corset is not exactly somber enough for funeral wear,” Lacey pointed out. “It’s baby-blue.” She groaned inwardly for giving in to Magda’s flattery and having a corset made in the first place. Where could she ever wear such a thing in Washington? And Stella couldn’t possibly imagine that Lacey would really wear a baby-blue satin corset to a funeral, she thought.
Could she?

“Michelle has three, Lacey, maybe you could borrow one.”

That suggestion was even more alarming to Lacey. “Stel, it’s not really done, wearing underwear to funerals. Not without wearing something over it.”

“But it’s for Magda! She’d understand.”

“She’s French. Heaven only knows what she’d think.”

“She’d love it!” Stella waved her glass at the waiter for another Pink Lady. “She’d totally love it.
La Vie en Rose
and all that. It would be like a tribute to her life’s work. Can’t you just see it, Lace?”

Lacey sipped her blue champagne. She could see it all too clearly. A chorus line of corset-clad women, all shapes and sizes and colors, rocking Magda’s funeral like a late-night cabaret. They would be wearing berets and scarves and fishnet tights. Edith Piaf would be singing. Then Edith would toss them all top hats and canes and they would dance, like the Rockettes or the Folies Bergère. Would Magda rise up from her coffin and join the corseted chorus line?

“I just want to do something nice for Magda. Everybody’s dying on me, Lacey. First poor Angie. Then that diva supermodel Amanda Manville. Now Magda!” Stella wailed. “What is it about me? I’m like some death magnet.”

Lacey had asked herself the same question. “Don’t be ridiculous, Stella, you had nothing to do with any of those,” she said.

“Coincidence.”

“I can’t believe Magda is dead.” Stella gazed into her reflection in her fresh Pink Lady, as if to divine what fate it was that caused her friends and clients to die.

“It’s not you,” Lacey said, wondering how to avoid the subject of Magda’s unknown cause of death. “She didn’t live a healthy life.”

“That’s true,” Stella mused. Although Stella was in the dark about the lost corset, she was aware that Magda and Lacey were working on some kind of fashion story. “So I guess the big trip is off? The big story, corsets in French couture or whatever?”

“No. France is still there. I’m still going and I’ll write some kind of tribute to Magda.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet of you.” She downed some more of the Pink Lady. “Hey! I know. I could go with you!”

“Uh, right. Okay.” Stella in her corsets and her sleek new look would no doubt dazzle them in Paris.
Think fast, Lacey.
“So, Stella, do you have a passport?”

“Oh, hell, a passport! I knew there was something I’ve been meaning to do. Guess it’s a little late now.”

“This time, yeah.” Lacey wasn’t about to tell Stella how to get an emergency passport application expedited. “But thanks for the offer. Next time.”

Stella clinked their glasses together. “Deal, Lacey. Do you know how the old girl died? Stroke or something?”

The question she had been trying to avoid now hung in the air.

She had only Magda’s word for how she died, though that dying word was “poison.” Lacey had learned the hard way that anything she told Stella would soon be broadcast wider and faster than CNN could ever do it. Even more distressing, Stella would take any of Lacey’s half-formed speculations as the absolute truth.

“Um, the police came. It was a pretty confusing scene. I don’t think there’s an official determination yet.”

“Poor Magda. I’m so sorry you had to find the body, Lacey. As you are all too aware, I know exactly what that’s like,” Stella said, wiping a single tear away with one daggerlike fingernail. They were silent for a moment, remembering poor murdered Angie Woods, the hairstylist Stella had found dead in her own salon last spring. “Wow, we’re like totally maudlin here. Tell a joke or something.”