Free City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert Page B

made sense to me because they didn’t have any plans behind them. Her mind skipped straight to fame and riches, with no apparent map for how to get there—other than to keep looking like this, and to assume that the world would eventually reward her for it.
    It wasn’t much of a plan—although, to be fair, it was more of a plan than I had for my own life.
    I was happy.
    I guess you could saythat I had become the costume director of the Lily Playhouse—but only because nobody stopped me from calling myself that, and also because nobody else wanted the job.
    Truth to tell, there was plenty of work for me. The showgirls and dancers were always in need of new costumes, and it wasn’t as if they could just pluck outfits out of the Lily Playhouse costume closet (a distressingly damp andspider-infested place, filled with ensembles older and more crusty than the building itself). The girls were always broke, too, so I learned clever ways to improvise. I learned how to shop for cheap materials in the garment center, or (even cheaper) way down on Orchard Street. Better yet, I figured out how to hunt for remnants at the used clothing shops on Ninth Avenue and make costumes out ofthose. It turned out I was exceptionally good at taking tatty old garments and turning them into something fabulous.
    My favorite used clothing shop was a place called Lowtsky’s Used Emporium and Notions, on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Forty-third Street. The Lowtsky family were Eastern European Jews, who’d paused in France for a few years to work in the lace industry before emigrating to America.Upon arrival in the United States, they’d settled on the Lower East Side, where they sold rags out of a pushcart. But then they moved up to Hell’s Kitchen to become costumers and purveyors of used clothing. Now they owned this entire three-story building in midtown, and the place was filled with treasures. Not only did they deal in used costumes from the theater, dance, and opera worlds, butthey also sold old wedding gowns and occasionally a really spectacular couture dress, picked up from some Upper East Side estate sale.
    I couldn’t stay away from the place.
    I once bought the most vividly violet-colored Edwardian dress for Celia at Lowtsky’s. It was the homeliest looking rag you ever saw, and Celia recoiled when I first showed it to her. But when I pulled off the sleeves, cuta deep V in the back, lowered the neckline, and belted it with a thick, black satin sash, I transformed this ancient beast of a dress into an evening gown that made my friend look like a millionaire’s mistress. Every woman in the room would gasp with envy when Celia walked in wearing that gown—and all that for only two dollars!
    When the other girls saw what I could make for Celia, they all wantedme to create special dresses for them, as well. And so, just as at boarding school, I was soon given a portal to popularity through the auspices of my trusty old Singer 201. The girls at the Lily were always handing me bits of things that needed to be mended—dresses without zippers, or zippers without dresses—and asking me if I could do something to fix it. (I remember Gladys once saying to me,“I need a whole new rig, Vivvie! I look like somebody’s uncle!”)
    Maybe it sounds as if I was playing the role of the tragic stepsister in a fairy tale here—constantly working and spinning, while the more beautiful girls were all heading to the ball—but you must understand that I was so grateful just to be around these showgirls. If anything, this exchange was more beneficial for me than it wasfor them. Listening to their gossip was an education—the only education I had ever really longed for. And because somebody always needed my sewing talents for something, inevitably the showgirls started to coalesce around me and my powerful Singer. Soon, my apartment had turned into the company gathering place—for females, anyhow. (It helped that my rooms were nicer than the moldy old