The Knockoff Read online

  “Okay, so what should we say?”

  “Editor in chief of Glossy.”

  “Glossy-dot-com.”

  “Right, Glossy-dot-com. So what else do I need to say in it?”

  “Hmmm, this is mine….” Ashley clicked on her personal Twitter profile. “Top of the line, slim face, fair behind. Tweets are all ME! ROFL.” Ashley shook her head. “That probably won’t work for you. Let’s find someone more age appropriate.” She bit her lip, thinking, tapping her thumb anxiously on the side of the keyboard. “I’ve got it! Here is Hillary Clinton’s: Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD….”

  “I can’t beat that.” Imogen laughed. Hillary Clinton was preparing to run the free world and she still had time to tweet and compose a perfectly droll Twitter bio that made Imogen feel like a slacker. “How about this: ‘Editor in chief of Glossy-dot-com, mum, wife, daughter, a lover not a fighter in the mad, mad world of fashion.’ ”

  Ashley cocked her head to one side like a golden retriever thinking about where it has left its favorite ball.

  “I like it,” she said with her requisite clap. “Since you know what to do, I can just leave you to it. Once you start, you’re going to be completely addicted. I already followed everyone here at the magazine for you and we will tweet from our main account telling all of our two million followers to start following you ASAP. Fun!”

  Alone with her Twitter account, Imogen felt her palms leak sweat. How hard could it be? You put in a sentence or two and you just hit tweet. What a funny word, “tweet.” Every time she heard it she imagined a time traveler from the year 2000 desperately trying to understand all the world’s new verbs, like “tweet,” “Google,” “twerk.”

  She just put in a line and then. Oh no. That wasn’t what she wanted to say at all. No worries, she could go in and edit it. It wasn’t clear how to edit a tweet. Were they uneditable? She would just delete and start over. How do you delete? Imogen desperately didn’t want to ask Ashley for advice. She couldn’t see the old tweet so maybe she had already deleted it. She would try another.

  @GlossyImogen: Hello Twitter! Here I am twerking.

  @GlossyImogen: Hello Twitty! Here I am tweeting.

  @GlossyImogen: That isn’t what I wanted to say at all. Twitter not Twitty. Sorry, new followers.

  @GlossyImogen: I am new to Twitter. Still figuring it out.

  @GlossyImogen: I swear I am not drunk. Just learning.

  @GlossyImogen: Bugger. I give up.

  Slowly step away from the Twitter. No good could come of continuing this exercise. Twitter would still be here this afternoon and right now she had something like four followers, Ashley, Eve, and two people she didn’t know whose photos were still the light blue background with an ominous egg. At least no one saw her epic tweet fail. She would call Massimo after lunch and ask him how to delete the tweets. Massimo was a self-described rock star on Twitter, on a mission to gain more followers than Lady Gaga.

  “It’s shitty if you don’t follow back the guy in the wheelchair,” he always said.

  The next hour was overtaken by a conference call with the creative director for Carolina Herrera during which Imogen described the evolution of Glossy into Glossy.com and how they could get Carolina involved.

  “We’ll see” came the answer at the end of the call. Imogen had never received so many “We’ll see”s in her life. As she hung up the phone, an out-of-breath Ashley ran smack into the spotless glass door to her office, hardly letting it stop her from stumbling inside.

  “Stop tweeting.”

  “Ashley, I stopped tweeting more than forty-five minutes ago. I am still getting the hang of it.”

  “You’re. On. Tech. Blab.”

  “What is that?”

  “TechBlab-dot-com. It’s a techie site, gossipy, like Page Six but for people in tech. And your tweets are on it. We have to fix it before Eve sees it.”

  Imogen typed the name into her browser. What kind of a name was TechBlab anyway? It sounded made up.

  She emitted a small gasp. There was her picture, a lovely one of her on the red carpet at some event. With a closer look, she knew exactly what photo it had been cropped from. The larger picture showed her with Steven Spielberg at a benefit for Breast Cancer Awareness in March.

  WHEN OLDS TWEET

  by Astrid Parkerson

  Someone needs to hire a social media manager for Glossy.com’s Imogen Tate, 45 (what does she do there these days anyway?). It seems the former editor in chief has tried her hand at tweeting today, but no one explained any of the rules to her. It looks like something my mom would have done…four years ago. We’re going to assume she’s not drunk but you know how the olds like their martinis with lunch….

  To start with, she was forty-two, not forty-five.

  Ashley was suddenly joined by Alexis from the Public Relations department.

  “Imogen, we are so sorry. I have no idea how Astrid Parkerson would even have known to look at your Twitter account, but I assure you we will get to the bottom of it.”

  Imogen had two options. Act horrified, which she was, or laugh it off.

  She rolled her eyes and let out her best, slightly too loud, Joan Crawford full-throated laugh.

  “It could have been so much worse. At least I didn’t tweet something really embarrassing.” She clicked on her Twitter page. “And look how many followers the incident got me.” Imogen’s follower count was now topping 5,500, which she knew was 500 more than Eve. “I’m a little bit famous on the Internet now. Ashley, sit here with me while I compose a couple of tweets to all my new followers.”

  Both Ashley and Alexis visibly relaxed. If Imogen didn’t think this was a crisis, there was no one reason anyone else should think it was.

  GlossyImogen: Thanks to TechBlab for all my new followers. Welcome! I hope that I can delight you while I wobble about on here.

  GlossyImogen: I am trying to follow BlabAstrid’s mum. I hear she is an excellent tweeter! I need a mentor.

  In the course of the next hour, she was inundated with new followers and retweets. Someone created a hashtag: #GoImogen. She finally understood what all of the fuss over social media was about. This kind of validation was wonderful. She just needed to get a firm handle on how to tweet from her phone and she would be perfectly fine to start live-tweeting from her first fashion show tomorrow morning. She still dreaded the part where she had to seem wonderful and witty in every tweet. It was exhausting.

  Hours later, she nearly collided with Eve walking out of the office.

  “Easy there on the Twitter, Imogen.” Eve smirked. “We can’t have the investors thinking our editors are drinking on the job.”

  “I think the tweeting is going quite well. I’m starting to really enjoy it. Plus, I got nearly ten thousand followers today.” Imogen swelled with pride as she noticed Eve balk at the number.

  “Try not to embarrass us tomorrow when you tweet from the shows,” Eve said. She glanced down at the FitBoom on her wrist. “I think I’ll take the stairs. Got to get my ten thousand steps.”

  Ashley squeezed herself through the elevator doors just as they were closing. She looked anxious, like she needed to tell Imogen something. After the fourth time Ashley glanced sideways at her, made a small sound and then shut her mouth and looked sheepishly away, Imogen prompted her.

  “Ashley. Is something the matter?”

  “Ohhhhh, I don’t know if I should tell you this.”

  “Just tell me. If it’s about my tweeting, I can handle any criticism you lob at me after what I’ve endured today.”

  “It’s about your Twitter, but not about you. I really shouldn’t, but you should know. You’re my boss. I’m sorry, Imogen.”

  The girl looked like she was about to burst into tears. Imogen put on her most motherly look.

  “Ashley, please tell me whateve
r you need to tell me. I promise, whatever it is I won’t get mad.”

  “I’m not worried about you being upset with meeeeeeee.” Ashley kept opening and closing her palms as she wiggled her jaw back and forth with a click, click sound. “Okay. Here it is. See, I am friends with Astrid from TechBlab. Not friends, exactly. Maybe you could call us frenemies. We were in the same sorority and stuff and I felt so awful when I read her post. She doesn’t even know you. I didn’t understand why she would be so mean. Anyway, I emailed her to be, like, ‘Hey, what the hell?’ and she was all, like, ‘Hey, I didn’t think anyone over there would care what I posted since Eve sent it to me.’ ”

  Imogen didn’t grasp the connection at first, but by the time the doors opened to the lobby she realized what had happened. Eve had set out to sabotage her. Eve had planted a nasty item about her on TechBlab. Eve was a backstabbing cow. Imogen could feel the heat rising into her face, but it was important that to Ashley she appear unfazed.

  “I am sure Eve thought it would be amazing publicity for us and it was. Look how many Twitter followers I got today. She really is a marketing genius.” Ashley looked relieved and pleased that she had come to Imogen with the news.

  “So you aren’t mad? I thought you might not be mad. You’re always so calm and cool, not like Eve.” And then realizing she definitely said too much, Ashley dove in for a quick and awkward hug with Imogen and flew out the front doors.

  Who the hell was Eve Morton? Imogen still felt a tightening of rage in her chest. Spikes of adrenaline surged through her system. She wanted to call her, scream at her, rip those awful dangly earrings right out of her ears.

  Move forward. Breathe.

  Breathe. Move forward.

  —

  Imogen’s kitchen counter at home was strewn with fruit and veggies. Tilly, the family’s nanny and the little sister Imogen always wished she had, held up a hand as Imogen walked in to signal she should pause just outside the room and remain quiet. She was filming Annabel standing behind the counter as her daughter carefully explained the ingredients to make the perfect avocado, kale and mint smoothie. Annabel had her own sense of personal style. She wore a slightly shrunken version of her school’s uniform and restyled it with vintage menswear that made her look like a pint-sized Thom Browne model or a Dickensian orphan with an eye for fashion. Imogen loved it.

  In just the past year, her daughter had become obsessed with organic smoothie making and insisted on making videos of her “garden smoothie” recipes like a young Alice Waters.

  After much begging, cajoling and promising this was the start to an amazing culinary career (was she really only ten?), Alex and Imogen had agreed to let her put her videos up on YouTube. For a year, they tried to enforce screen time limits, something the other mommies at school talked about all the time—an hour a day on the various devices when Annabel wasn’t working on homework.

  That didn’t fly. “This is my passion. It will be my career. What if someone told you that you could only work on your magazine for an hour a day?” her daughter protested. Imogen caved.

  To Imogen’s surprise the videos were something of a small hit among tweenage girls. Other little girls around the country made different kinds of cooking videos and, as Annabel described it, they all linked to one another. It was a hobby that Imogen couldn’t quite wrap her head around, but in the pantheon of things daughters did, making videos of healthy smoothies was harmless enough.

  “And that’s all-vocado for today, everyone.” Her daughter waved cheerily into the camera.

  “All-vocado?” Imogen raised an eyebrow and smiled.

  So confident on camera, Annabel grew suddenly shy.

  “I thought it was funny,” she said sheepishly.

  Imogen felt guilty for mocking her daughter. “It was cute. I was kidding. I think it’s adorable.” Annabel rolled her eyes and stalked into the sitting room.

  Imogen fell into one of the kitchen chairs.

  “She’s sensitive today,” Tilly said.

  Imogen had long ago gotten used to her nanny knowing more about her children’s moods than she did. She looked at Tilly quizzically.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing, but there were some downright nasty comments on Ana’s YouTube page this morning.”

  She had known it was a terrible idea to let her daughter put herself out there on the Internet. Probably some old pervert in a dank basement somewhere was watching and rewatching her daughter make smoothies and then writing something disgusting to get his jollies off.

  Tilly shut her down before Imogen could work herself up. “I am sure it’s another little girl. It’s written in tween-speak. Here, look.” Tilly pulled the laptop across the counter to show Imogen. On the top of the screen was her daughter in an apron and a chef’s hat, a sunny smile on her face. Tilly scrolled down and clicked on one of the videos so Imogen could look at the comments. All of them were written in tween-speak, hybrids of bastardized words mixed with symbols and exclamation marks. The first few were pleasant enough:

  U r kewl and kewt! and make gud smoothies.

  We would be friendz if we lived in the same city. You have nice hair.

  Make something with mango. Mango munch. Mango munch. I mangos.

  Then there was this one:

  You R Ug-LEE. No smoothie will ev-ur mak you look gud. U r gross.

  It was signed: Candy Cool.

  Imogen gasped. What the hell? Who spells “ugly” like that?

  Tilly just shook her head. “Before you jump to conclusions, remember that little girls are the meanest creatures God put on this planet. They’ve been bullying one another since the dawn of time and will continue to do it until humanity’s dying day. This looks bad because it’s written right here for everyone to see, but it’s no worse in the long run than little girls passing notes about one another in class.”

  “I always said I didn’t want her on the Internet.”

  “Come on, Imogen. All the kids are online. This is what they do. They slag off. Ana loves making these smoothie videos. There are a hundred comments that are so sweet and nice. I probably shouldn’t show you the other one.”

  “Show me the other one.”

  “Bugger.”

  This one was a picture. It was her daughter’s head on the body of a morbidly obese person, one of those people that Dateline did specials on when they became too large to fit through their front door. Someone animated the picture to make Annabel’s pretty heart-shaped little mouth chomp up and down.

  Imogen felt useless. “I should talk to her.”

  “Not yet. Seriously. She didn’t even bring it up to me. I can just tell that she saw it and it raised her hackles. If it happens again, I’ll tell you.”

  Tilly, the voice of reason. Tilly, the one who could seamlessly juggle all of the emotional baggage of this entire family, switched gears and gave Imogen a sympathetic look.

  “You’ve been irritated since you walked in the front door. More Evil Evie? What’d she do now? Drown a sack of kittens in the Lincoln Center fountain?” One of the reasons Imogen loved Tilly was that she was saltier than a curbside pretzel.

  “Not just yet.”

  Tilly reached into the stainless-steel fridge.

  “Hold on. You need a glass of wine. You will be less irritated with a glass of wine in your hand.”

  It was true. Imogen felt her ever-percolating annoyance begin to lighten as she sipped her Sancerre and unloaded it all—the Twitter fiasco, Eve’s leak to TechBlab and finally how she found out about it from Ashley, which might have been the most embarrassing part of it all.

  “And it will only get worse tomorrow! I am still going to be crap on the Twitter and I am supposed to be live-tweeting throughout all of the shows. I am not spontaneous. I like to think about what I want to say. I’ve never been good at the spur of the moment. I need to let ideas marinate before they’re ready for an audience—an audience on Twitter that now outnumbers Eve’s, by the way.�
�� The two women exchanged a small high five.

  Tilly was pleasantly round all over, with a toothy grin and a smattering of freckles. She unleashed her incongruous fiery Irish temper against Eve for the better part of the next five minutes, using language that would have made a whore blush. The girl slurped at her glass of wine, twirling a piece of her strawberry-blond hair around her little finger, the gears in her head obviously turning.

  “Tell me again why you need to be tweeting all day?”

  Imogen allowed her lips to linger on the rim of the wineglass as she considered Tilly’s question.

  “Eve says that it’s good for the brand. It breeds intimacy, makes the reader out in Wisconsin feel like she is sitting next to us at the fashion shows.” Imogen used some of Eve’s words verbatim. “Everything is much more personal these days. I’m sure Eve will want me live-tweeting my selection of knickers in the morning.”

  “Mmm-hmmmm.” Tilly continued to mull. Imogen felt immense gratitude as Tilly poured them each another glass of wine. She swore that Tilly’s liver was made of coal. She had, at more than one dinner party, drunk Imogen and Alex right under the table. “I’ve got it!” Tilly slammed her hand so hard on the granite countertop that Imogen almost cried out in pain on the stonework’s behalf.

  “You are not a words person. You’re visual. That’s what makes you such a genius at creating a magazine. You can turn a photo shoot into a movie that just dances off the page.”

  Imogen smiled at the compliment.

  “And what is more intimate than photographs, especially the photographs you take with your wonderful eye?”

  “Can I put photographs on Twitter? That seems even more complicated than putting words on Twitter.”

  “No, no, you’re gonna to use Instagram. Have you tried it before? It’s wonderful.”

  Imogen knew a bit about Instagram since Karl Lagerfeld made a huge deal of joining and taking pictures of his imperious white kitten, Choupette, but, like with Twitter, she never bothered to create an account for herself. She didn’t get it.

  “This is going to be so easy. The brilliant thing about Insta is that you can link it to your Twitter account, so that everything you post there is immediately tweeted. Instagram is a lot easier and you really don’t have to worry about the words. You can focus on taking wonderful pictures and just write down your emotional reaction to a piece in the caption. That will go to Twitter and everyone will be happy. Your followers and Glossy.com’s readers really will feel like they have been sitting next to you at the show.”