Scrappy Little Nobody(37)
The first time I went to my stylist’s house and pawed through a rack of dresses, it felt like Christmas. When I tried them all on, it felt more like Christmas without presents, food, or alcohol. Her distinctly unfamous client was not a big selling point for designers to give up their best stuff. You can only try on so many olive-green paisley numbers before you seriously consider creating a dress from toilet paper and bedsheets. But buried in this mountain of lamé and brocade, there was one gorgeous soft-pink Marchesa. I still don’t know how she got it. I don’t know if the dress was lined with asbestos, or if they owed her a favor, or if she stole it out of a pile reserved for Anne Hathaway. I had no credits but we got a Marchesa. And the f*cker fit. (Also, I learned that things which I thought fit didn’t fit. “Fit” to me now means: it looks more like a piece of clothing than a garbage bag, and it can be made to “fit” with extensive tailoring.)
We decided to go with the pink dress, and after we got it tailored and found a bra that didn’t show, my stylist asked me about shoes. She thought it was important that I wear a pair of expensive shoes—not just dressy-looking shoes, actual expensive shoes. It turned out magazines were going to decide how seriously to take me based on whether I wore designer shoes or shoes that looked nice but didn’t cost enough to feed a family for a month, like some kind of phony. She came to my apartment with three pairs of shoes in a shopping bag and said we should pick one pair and she’d return the rest.
“The Louboutins are a little pricier than the others, but it’s your first big premiere, and I think they’re really special.”
“Okay, how much are those?”
“One thousand ninety-nine.”
Dollars? A thousand dollars?! That’s more than my rent! Like, a lot more! Maybe you’ve noticed that I live with two dudes and sleep in an Ikea twin bed. Or has living in a world of luxury for so long left you unable to recognize the signature lines and craftsmanship of the Malm collection? (For context: my stylist was earning more to dress me for Up in the Air–related events than I did for making the actual movie.) There was a feeling from the people around me at that time that although I hadn’t made much money yet, things were about to start going so well that huge checks were right around the corner! I should spend whatever I had to, even if it seemed imprudent, because I’d have tons of money in just a few months! I’m glad I was such a tightfisted bitch, because the money didn’t follow for about two years. In fact, Twilight was the only thing keeping me above water. I’ve said in the past that without that series I would have been evicted, and people think I’m joking. Nope. Me and my Oscar nom would have been living in my car. Which is a charming story now, but at the time, I did not find it funny.
The shoe situation, though, seemed like a necessary evil. Apparently, I was now trying to convince the world that I was a movie star, and movie stars had companies like Louboutin begging them to wear their shoes! And to pretend that that was happening, I would have to buy a pair. I paid a thousand dollars to trick people into thinking I got free shoes.
I wore the shoes in Toronto with my awesome and inexplicable Marchesa dress. No one seemed to care one way or the other about what was on my feet, but maybe it’s one of those “you only notice it if it’s Aldo” kind of things. I still have those shoes. I don’t think I’ve worn them since. If they go out of style, or I join a cult that eschews material goods, or if both my feet are eaten off by the army of cats I’ll eventually own, I’ll never get rid of those shoes. Yes, it’s the ultimate irony that I can now afford a pair of shoes like that, but designers let me borrow them for free. When you think about it, all these celebrities are borrowing shoes that have been worn by someone else before them. Like bowling shoes. So the joke’s on us.
Yep. Two inanimate objects. Truly the stuff of nightmares.
That story makes my stylist sound crazy, which she wasn’t; she was just used to the fashion world. I’d encountered this behavior before when I did a photo shoot for Teen Vogue with the cast of Rocket Science. I loved the shoes they put me in, and the magazine’s stylist said, “Oh, they’re actually from that designer’s diffusion line, so they’re not that expensive—I think they’re like six or seven hundred.” Cool. That’s when I started cutting the labels out of the clothes I wore to fashion shoots, lest they see an Old Navy tag as I undress and kick me out of their studio.
A Good Sport
A few nights before the Oscars I was invited to a party thrown by Louis Vuitton. When a fashion house throws a party, they send clothing options to the invitees so that no one shows up in Chanel and rips apart the space-time continuum. My stylist was beaming as she showed me a beautiful white coat and a pleated tartan minidress. I put it on and immediately said, “Oh my god, it’s like a high-end slutty schoolgirl costume. It’s f*cking amazing.” It was weird but it was cool and I liked it. I looked like a luxury tramp and it was a nice change of pace from what I’d been wearing during all the Oscars press. When I got to the party and started to take off my coat, the woman next to me looked at my dress and said, “Is that what they sent you to wear? Aw. You’re a good sport.”
I put down my drink; I needed both hands to tie my coat back up tight enough that it wouldn’t show a square centimeter of my dress. I spent the rest of the night readjusting my collar higher on my neck, and only when the house photographer stopped me in the hallway on my way out did I take the coat off, praying that no one would pass by.