The Instagram post used a secret, humiliating photo of me in an ill-fitting suit, the caption smugly declaring my body a ‘difficult frame’ that required a miracle.
This wasn’t just any suit; it was meant to be my armor for the most important meeting of my career.
Viola, the boutique owner with a tongue like a silk-wrapped razor, had promised me confidence. Instead, she sold my humiliation for a handful of likes, conveniently forgetting that I had explicitly checked the box forbidding her from using my image for marketing.
A foolish oversight.
Little did she know that my signed receipt was a contract, my best friend was a media lawyer with zero remorse, and we were about to dismantle her entire business not in a courtroom, but right on the pristine, unforgiving floor of her own boutique.
The Armor and the Ambush: The Ten-Year Itch
The presentation deck glowed on my dual monitors, a fortress of data and projections I’d been building for six months. Each slide was a brick, each transition a carefully mortared joint. This wasn’t just a project update; it was my bid for the partnership panel, the once-in-a-decade opportunity that separates the lifers from the legends at OmniCore.
A knot the size of a fist tightened in my stomach. I’d been a senior director for five years, navigating corporate politics and market upheavals with what I thought was a decent amount of grace. But this panel was different. It was a judgment. They weren’t just evaluating my work; they were evaluating me. My presence, my gravitas, my ability to command a room of sharks without bleeding.
My husband, Mark, called it my “ten-year itch,” the same way he talked about our mortgage. A long-term commitment that required a periodic, soul-crushing review. He meant it to be funny, to deflate the pressure, but it just made it sound more permanent.
“Mom, are you done yet?” My daughter Lily, all of twelve years and ninety pounds of dramatic sighs, leaned against my home office doorframe. “Dad’s making that weird chicken thing again.”
“Five more minutes, sweetie,” I said, not looking away from a particularly stubborn pie chart. “And it’s called coq au vin.”
“It’s called anxiety chicken,” she muttered, and I heard her phone’s camera click. A picture of my stressed-out profile was probably already making the rounds on her group chat with a caption like, My mom pretending to be a CEO again.
I finally pushed back from my desk, the knot in my gut cinching tighter. I had the presentation. I had the numbers. What I didn’t have was the armor. All my suits felt… tired. They were relics of a pre-pandemic world, of a slightly younger, slightly less weary version of myself. For this panel, I needed something that said “inevitable,” not “hopeful.”
“I’m going shopping tomorrow,” I announced to Mark later, pushing the weird chicken around my plate.
He looked up, surprised. I hate shopping. “Everything okay?”
“I need a suit. A real one. For the panel.”
“A power suit,” he nodded, understanding immediately. “Good idea.”
That’s when I remembered the recommendation from a colleague. A new boutique in the high-end wing of the Northgate Galleria. “V’s Atelier,” she’d gushed. “It’s an experience. Viola is a genius. She’ll make you look like you were born to run the world.”
The name itself sounded pretentious, but I was out of time and options. I needed a genius. I needed armor. So I made the appointment.
A Calculated Risk
V’s Atelier was less a store and more an art installation about the color beige. The lighting was unforgiving, the racks were sparsely populated with severe-looking garments, and the air smelled faintly of money and judgment. A woman who could only be Viola glided out from behind a concrete counter. She was tall, rail-thin, and wore a black silk jumpsuit that looked like it had been spun by architecturally-minded spiders.
“You must be Vanessa,” she said, her voice a low, buttery purr. She didn’t offer to shake my hand. “Here for the partnership panel, I presume?”
I must have looked surprised.
“I get a lot of women from OmniCore,” she explained with a thin smile. “They all want the same thing. To look untouchable.”
Her confidence was both terrifying and exactly what I needed. She circled me once, her eyes cataloging every perceived flaw. “We have our work cut out for us,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “But the bone structure is good.”
I felt less like a client and more like a slab of marble she was considering carving. Still, I was on a mission. We spent the next hour in a whirlwind of fabrics and styles. Viola’s compliments were backhanded daggers wrapped in silk. “This color is wonderful for drawing attention away from your shoulders.” “This cut is very forgiving for a… mature figure.”
Finally, we landed on a deep charcoal wool suit with an impossibly sharp cut. It was perfect. It was also more than my first car. I swallowed hard and nodded.
“Now for the tailoring,” she announced, clapping her hands. “This is where the magic happens. I’ll need to take some reference photos. Just to document the process for my files. Angles, posture, how the fabric drapes before we work our miracles.”
A red flag, small but persistent, popped up in my mind. “Photos?”
“Purely for internal use,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. “Client confidentiality is everything, darling. It helps my tailors visualize the adjustments. Standard procedure.”
She handed me a tablet with a digital intake form. I scrolled through, my eyes scanning the fine print. Tucked at the very bottom, next to a field for my signature, were two checkboxes. One authorized the use of images for marketing. The other explicitly forbade it: Client declines permission for any and all images to be used for promotional, marketing, or public-facing purposes.
I tapped the second box. A definitive, satisfying little checkmark appeared. I signed my name and handed it back, feeling a small sense of victory. I was a professional, used to reading contracts. It was a simple, calculated risk, now mitigated.
“Perfect,” Viola said, not even glancing at my selection. She already had her phone out. “Now, let’s see what we’re working with.”
About the Author
