Before she could finish her self-serving lie, Laurent did something that silenced the entire fashion world, something that would be replayed on a thousand social media feeds for the next week. He slapped her. A single, sharp, resounding crack that echoed in the stunned, cavernous hall.
“IMBÉCILE!” he thundered, his voice trembling with a rage that went beyond mere anger. It was the rage of a true artist whose masterpiece had been defiled. “You… you have no idea what you have done!”
Serena stood frozen, her hand clutching her reddening cheek, her face a mask of shocked, humiliated disbelief. No one had ever dared to touch her, let alone strike her, in her entire privileged life.
“You think this is a ‘cheap dress’?” Laurent shrieked, grabbing the torn fabric of my sleeve with a touch so gentle it was almost reverent, his fury warring with his grief. “You brainless, narcissistic, entitled child! Do you know what you just ripped? This is not ‘a’ dress! This is THE ORIGINAL PROTOTYPE! The only one in existence! It is made from a hand-woven silk from a single village in Lyon, a technique that has been lost for fifty years! This sample,” he spat the words at her as if they were poison, “is worth, in materials and archival value alone, easily two million euros!”
A new, more profound gasp swept through the crowd, the number “two million” ricocheting around the room like a stray bullet.
Serena was now hyperventilating, the color completely drained from her face. The reality of the two-million-euro “accident” was crashing down on her with the force of a tidal wave. This was not a bill her father could simply pay. This was a public, career-ending, legacy-destroying catastrophe.
“I… I’m sorry,” she stammered, tears of genuine panic now welling in her eyes, her carefully constructed facade crumbling into dust. “I didn’t know… I swear, I didn’t know… I thought she was just… just some nobody…”
“Nobody?” Laurent bellowed, his face turning a dangerous shade of purple. He finally turned and looked at me, at Clara Vance, standing there calmly in my ruined, priceless dress. A flicker of recognition, and then dawning comprehension, crossed his face. He turned back to Serena and pointed at me, his finger trembling with rage, and he delivered the final, career-ending execution.
“You ignorant fool! You didn’t just rip a dress! You just assaulted… THE NEW CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF THE ENTIRE LVMH GROUP! The woman who signs the checks that allow vapid, talentless children like you to even attend these shows!”
