Fake It Until You Make It

Chapter 22: The First Date

When I opened the door for her that night, her look had been of disappointment.

"...oh", Lisa said, the smiles she had started to show dying instant lying her face – not exactly the reaction I had been looking forward to as I overthought my entire outfit.

"I knew it", I said, frustrated with myself. "This isn't casual, is it? Dammit, I worked really hard on this, I know is a designer dress, but it's colorful and printed! And I'm wearing flats!"

"It's not that..." she sighed. "...it's great" she paused, understanding splashed through her face. "Oh, Jennie, you look beautiful! Don't get me wrong, you look incredible, as usual", I let a smile on my lips, as I blushed. "But, ahem, didn't you forget something?"

I stared and thought. Casual? Check. The Giambattista Valli white and green short dress with pink flowery print could be awesome with heels and a badass hairdo, but I was matching it with pink flats and down straightened hair, so casual. Comfortable shoes? Check, see flats! Jacket? Super check, jeans too, so even more casual. What's more casual than jeans?

That's when it hit me: Lisa wasn't wearing jeans. She was wearing black pants. Because she was wearing a tux.

"...Oh,"

"What happened to wearing your most fancy red carpet ball gown?", she asked. "I thought we changed the dress code!"

"I thought you were joking!"

"But you said you wanted to dress up, it made you feel more comfortable and feel your best. I even brought you diamonds!", she showed me the jewelry package in her hand, big enough to fit a necklace. My hand started itching for it.

"Yes, but it doesn't make any sense, if we're still going to the same place where it was appropriate to dress casual, how can we now dress up?"

"I told you, it doesn't matter."

"It can't not matter, Lisa."

"It doesn't, you'll understand, just go change,"

I sighed. "People will see us and speculate-"

"Jennie", Lisa held my shoulders and smiled. "Go change."

There were very simple reasons why I obeyed: I really like dressing up. I really wanted to leave already. I was really excited about going out with her and also about finding out what was in the jewelry package.

So I marched back to my closet and started to unzip my dress down, thinking of what to wear.

Back when I was still shooting the second season of The Mediator and people were still getting to know me as 'celebrity', going to premières, award ceremonies and after-parties were almost just as big a part of my job description as filming was. Yoojung used to say I had to 'build myself as a brand'. The list of people I employed then was as short as just Richard, Yoojung and Joshua – my lawyer. I still wasn't as busy to need Monica, whom I wouldn't hire for another two years, and I refused to pay for someone to tell me what to wear if I considered myself so much a fashion fan, so I had no stylist.

It was at an after-party for the Marc Jacobs fashion show in New York City that I met Rachel Zoe, the biggest stylist for celebrities at the time. When we met, as a fan of both her styling and reality show about her career and struggles, I had to do my best to keep it together, but, in the end, it was her who took me by surprise expressing how she was a 'fan of my style'(!). 'Who dresses you?', she asked, then. Proudly, I answered: 'I dress myself'. Rachel didn't really answer for almost a minute as she was stunned. 'But how do you get the dresses?', she asked, finally, 'do you know many designers?'. My answer was quite simple, for it was all I knew then: 'I buy them'.