I Made His Wife’s Dress Now I’ll Marry Another Chapter 56
That afternoon, Whitmore issued a statement.
It said nothing about the nine master patterns. It only claimed that certain historical designs had been “completed by the family’s creative team” and that, having lived in Paris for years, I had not directly participated in the brand’s daily creative work.
Sabine reposted it.
She added a single line:
*Clothes are never one person’s work.*
Half an hour later, photographs of the fourteen garments she had worn reappeared on the company’s home page. People in the comments section began asking that if the designs were team efforts, why had her name alone appeared in every interview for the last six years.
She didn’t answer.
I didn’t argue online, either.
The longtime samplemaker had already confirmed the C-17 original and the tracing process in front of my lawyer. Adrian had turned over the old labels locked in the archive room to an independent custodian, each one still carrying the cut thread ends. The nine master patterns my father had brought me bore my handwriting, my sizing notes, and the pinholes left by repeated revisions years ago.
Those things had existed all along.
All I had done was place them before the people who needed to see them.
The next day, my lawyers sought a court order to halt the next production run of the nine silhouettes and requested that every existing sales page carry a notice of dispute.
That evening, Nathan Cross called me.
“If you withdraw the stay request, Cross will give next season’s windows to your personal studio.”
“I don’t even have a first-season collection yet.”
“Which makes this a very sincere early investment.”
“No,” I said. “It’s an attempt to keep disputed inventory selling.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
I hung up and gave the number to my lawyer.