Chapter 14 ■ Hothouse Flower
I remember following my mom out to the sewing floor through the front offices, past Father’s secretary, Evelyn Campbell, then in and out of a labyrinth of boxed-in rooms housing advertising, accounting, and customer service.
I see Olga waltzing like a celebrity through the stadium-sized sewing floor, her full round face, high cheekbones, and shapely physique the only things giving weight to this incongruous reality. By her side I am shy and look down often. Still, I can’t help but notice the gracious glances she receives from some of the workers.
As we approach the sewing operators, I see a chorus of seated bodies hovering in position. A boisterous pitch of furious power machines envelopes us. A whiff of oil from freshly basted machine portholes drifts past from Dave, the gangly mechanic, who reminded me of a coal miner with his face, hair and neck covered in grime and grease. His mechanic’s jumpsuit, once blue, is saturated in dark grease stains. Dave liked to whistle through the drumming roar of surging machines while sewing operators curled over Singers and Berninas, each manipulating their machines like an Indy 500 racer, so precise, so skilled, not wasting a moment or motion, a second of time. Overlock daisy chains of braided thread link one garment to the other like a string of prayer flags. Each garment falls in folds into canvas carts to the right of the machines. Eager line supervisors collect the carts, pushing them to finishing, where the braided umbilical cords are cut. Next, bar-tack operators attach satin cloth labels in endless repetition, while quality-control inspectors stand over long tables. Measuring, stretching, pulling. Snip snipping. The tags featuring images of my mother’s face are secured at the left side of each piece before they are wrapped in glossy fuchsia boxes with white lettering.
The lunch bell rings, loud and steady. Robotic bodies unfurl, rising in unison from a collective dream, awakening to the world beyond the cloister of their stations. Like magic, they all vanish. The sound of piped-in music plays overhead as purring motors settle down.
Both my parents know these workers by name—some young, some stooped over from years of repetition. One Greek lady named Lydia was so bent over that her nose pointed down to her feet as she walked. Some years later my parents paid for an operation to straighten Lydia’s spine. Afterward, she was so grateful to look straight into people’s eyes again. “For so many years,” Lydia told my parents through tears of joy, “all I ever saw when I walked across a room or down a street were my toes.”
When we get back to the design room, Rosa has finished sewing up my bra, made from little pieces of French lace: two small doilies attached to stretchy side bands that hooked together in the back, tiny pink and green satin buds placed at the center front and at the top of the flat discs where the shoulder straps attached. The straps and back band are elasticized and substantial enough to show under my blouse; that is a must. If a boy tries to snap my bra band, I won’t be ashamed: I’ve become a viable candidate for the boys to chase around the asphalt playground, even though that may never happen.
The First Lady of Underfashions is a nonfiction saga-like memoir written by Christina Erteszek and includes excerpts from her parents' unpublished memoirs. It is a complex, layered, and nuanced story that bridges the violence of war, the innovation of thought, the singularity of religion, the quest for identity, and the intrigues and intricacies of family life. Jan and Olga escape from World War II Europe and arrive in the US with just a few dollars. They turn their paltry savings into a multi-million-dollar fashion business. Olga becomes a leading patent holder of female lingerie, a trendsetter in the industry, and is widely known for her innovative business tactics. But as this husband-and-wife team think of retiring, they decide to merge with another fashion company, which proves to be a fatal move when a loophole in the agreement allows for a hostile takeover. This is also a story of a daughter's need to find herself. Along her path to self-discovery, she discovers her parents have many secrets, some of which will never be revealed.
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