Sunday Short: It's Fashion!
- Faiz Faisal
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
The lights of the Champs-Élysées blurred into streaks of cold silver as Elodie hurried toward the atelier. This was it: Paris Fashion Week. She had been cast as the "exclusive" for L’Écorché, the most avant-garde house in France.
The lead designer, a man named Marc-Antoine whose skin looked like stretched parchment, didn’t greet her. He simply pointed to the garment hanging in the center of the room. It was a gown of iridescent, vein-like crimson silk.
"The masterpiece," he whispered. "It requires a perfect vessel."
In the dressing room, Elodie struggled. The silk was cold, almost damp. When she finally zipped it, the bodice crushed her ribs. It wasn’t just tight; it was suffocating.
"It’s beautiful," Elodie gasped, stumbling out to the mirrors, "but it’s too small. Maybe we can pin the seams? Or let out the waist just a centimeter?"
Marc-Antoine’s reflection appeared behind hers. He held a pair of long, silver shears and a tray of curved surgical needles. "You misunderstand, ma chérie," he said, his voice as sharp as the blades. "In high fashion, we do not insult the art by altering it. The dress is absolute. The body is merely clay."
Before Elodie could pull away, two silent assistants gripped her arms. Their hands felt like iron clamps.
"If the waist is too wide," Marc-Antoine murmured, pressing the cold steel of the shears against her side, "we remove the excess."
He didn't cut the fabric. He cut her.
The silk didn't just feel cold anymore; it felt alive. As Marc-Antoine leaned in, the iridescent threads began to pulse against Elodie’s skin like a hungry heartbeat.
"The dress demands a perfect fit," he whispered, his eyes gleaming with a feverish light.
Instead of cutting the fabric, the assistants began to pull the crimson threads tight. Elodie felt a strange, numbing sensation spreading from her waist. The dress wasn't being adjusted to her body; it was as if the fabric was absorbing her. The crimson silk began to weave itself into her very pores, the shimmering fibers lacing through her skin like a second, tighter nervous system.
Every time she tried to breathe, the gown constricted, molding her ribs and spine into impossible, ethereal angles. She looked into the mirror and saw her own reflection fading, replaced by the terrifyingly perfect silhouette of the garment. Her skin took on the same iridescent sheen as the fabric, her humanity being traded for the "absolute" beauty of the art.
By the time the music started for the runway, Elodie was no longer a girl wearing a dress. She had become a living extension of the couture. Her movements were no longer her own, guided by the rigid structure of the silk that now held her bones in place.
As she stepped out onto the catwalk under the blinding white lights, the audience fell into a deathly silence. She moved with a haunting, liquid grace that defied human anatomy. They saw a masterpiece of fashion, unaware that the girl inside was disappearing, being woven stitch by stitch into the legendary history of the house.
The horror wasn't in the pain, but in the realization that she was being erased. The dress didn't fit her; it had replaced her.
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