"Annabelle!"
The young redhead flinched at the grating voice of her head seamstress, who hated her so much she couldn't even bother to learn her actual name. Her name was Anna Bell. Anna. Bell. First name Anna, last name Bell. Was that really so hard to get?
"Yes, Madam Frosk?"
The head seamstress was standing over her, staring down at her in a way she must have thought was intimidating but Anna only found comical. She had a face that reminded her of a frog, with bulging eyes and a wide-set mouth permanently set in a frown. Madam Frosk grabbed the fabric Anna was stitching up out of her hands, dangling it in the air in front of her. "What is this?"
"A pair of trousers," Anna replied evenly.
"What have I told you about taking on tailoring work?" she scolded.
"But the ball is tomorrow night! Mr Bunn said he needed all hands on deck. His tailors are all overworked by the number of orders coming in. Micah especially was up to his eyeballs in suits he needed to make, so I offered to help him with small stuff. I was just fixing a tear!"
"I don't like your attitude," Madam Frosk said coldly. "Young women are attending the ball too, you know?"
"Not nearly as many as all the men who are going to be there," Anna retorted. "Everyone's saying that Queen Iduna is trying to find suitors for the princess. So many men are trying to find the perfect outfit to win her favour. The seamstresses here are just twiddling their thumbs doing nothing while the tailors work late into the night. Why can't we just help them out?"
"Because you are a seamstress." She bunched up the trousers in her hands. "You are not a tailor. You do not work on male garments. Mr Bunn does not need the help of a seamstress, nor do any of his tailors. You are to stop this buffoonery and get on with the job I pay you to do. Is that understood?"
Anna glared at her employer, the mutual hatred they held towards each other palpable in the air. "Understood," she practically growled through gritted teeth.
Madam Frosk turned on her heel and left, probably to go find Micah downstairs and yell at him for giving Anna that pair of trousers to mend, because God forbid she actually do work at her place of employment. She glanced around the rest of the women's floor at the other seamstresses, many of whom were just doing busywork like sniffing out broken clothespins from the communal chest or categorising spare fabrics by colour. "Anyone have any work they need help with?" she asked.
"Are you kidding?" one of her coworkers replied. "Women in Arendelle aren't looking for magnificent gowns to wear to this ball. It's all about the bachelors who can sweep the princess off her feet. The most I've done this week is give a girl her first corset fitting."
"Great," Anna muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes before rising from her seat. "If Madam Frosk asks for me, I'm on break," she announced to the other girls before making her way upstairs.
Anna lived in a room upstairs from the shop by courtesy of her employer. She'd been a seamstress for over four years, since her parents passed from sickness when she was fourteen. Madam Frosk was a family friend of the Bells and she had made a promise to Anna's mother that she would give Anna a stable job and a roof over her head.
So by that logic, she should have definitely gotten the hang of Anna's name by now.
The stairway to her room was narrow and musky, with barely any light to see your way even during the day, so the young woman had gotten into the habit of counting each step in her head so she wouldn't trip and miss one. She felt her way along the dusty wall, avoiding the patches of splitting wood that would give her splinters. Her door often got stuck so Anna had to throw her shoulder against it, and it creaked every time it opened. This would be a good way of letting her know when she was getting company, not that anyone went up there much. Madam Frosk hadn't been in Anna's room since she moved in. Which was good considering how she would blow a fuse if she knew what Anna was really doing up there.
Anna blinked a few times for her eyes to adjust to the sudden abundance of light coming through the attic windows. There were so many, the number of windows felt disproportionate to the size of the small room. It was cramped but Anna made it her own. Her cot was tucked away in a corner, next to a small dresser housing her few personal possessions. Technically, everything else in her room was nicked from the shop.
Spare fabrics, threads, lace, ribbons, buttons, clasps, even a male mannequin that she had to keep dressing and stripping because she only had one. What Madam Frosk couldn't or wouldn't understand was that Anna longed to be a tailor. Don't get her wrong, she enjoyed making dresses and fitting corsets, but she also wanted to mend trousers and stitch up waistcoats. She wanted to design clothes worn by dukes and princes like her fashion icon did. She wanted to be anything but the lowly seamstress her employer had confined her to be.
And so she worked in secret.
The work of Anna Bell was inconspicuous. Plain clothes for plain men, and nothing that would give away her position. Her prices were cheap, at only two hundred kroner for a full tailored suit. That was less than half of what Mr Bunn was charging downstairs, and yet it was more than Anna could make in two weeks under Madam Frosk.
Her coworkers knew of her secret and helped keep it, much to Anna's relief and delight. She was grateful for them. It was hard to get work in secret without publicity being spread through word of mouth. She had a few orders for suits for the upcoming ball which she'd finished and delivered, but there was one more she still had to pack up to be ready for collection.
"I'm looking for something memorable," her client had said as he stood over a week ago in her small attic bedroom, arms held out so she could properly take his measurements. "Something that will make me stand out against all the plain clothed men at the ball."
"Don't worry, Ronaldo." Anna's voice was slightly mumbly on account of the pencil between her lips which she used to jot down numbers onto a scrap piece of paper. "I've been designing suits for as long as I've been able to hold a pencil. I'll make sure to make something Princess Elsa will definitely notice."
"Pfttt," Ronaldo replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I couldn't give two hoots about the princess."
The seamstress looked on in curiosity. "Really?"
"She's of no concern to me," he continued. "I wouldn't want to marry that recluse and spend the rest of my life holed up in the palace anyway. No, darling, I want to be noticed by the people I want to be noticed by. Who will see an eccentric garment and know what I'm after, you know?"
"Okay…" She didn't know. She didn't have the slightest clue what he was talking about. "What kind of look are you after then?"
Ronaldo pondered for a moment. "I want something that screams summer. An outfit perfectly fit for the season."
Anna finished taking the last measurement she needed — the ankle; very important when fitting a pant leg — and reached for her massive sketchbook on the top of her dresser, passing it to her client. "Here. Flip through these and tell me if there are any parts of my designs that you like. It doesn't even have to be a whole suit, just bits and pieces that I can piece together in a new sketch later."
Ronaldo took the book in his hands, his thin frame stumbling slightly under the weight of it. He opened the first page expecting to see a masculine silhouette but surprisingly saw a sketch of an elaborate ball gown. "Hey, I thought you didn't do dresses? My sister was looking for a designer and I could have pointed her to you."
"Oh, those were my mother's," Anna said quickly. "Ignore them. Skip the first few pages and you'll find my stuff. The difference should be obvious; she sketched in charcoal so all her designs have gotten kinda smudged, but my drawings are done with graphite so they stick a little better."
"Ah, alright." He followed her instructions and then took his time pouring over pages of her work, amber eyes scanning every sketch, picking out every detail. "I really like the look of this dress shirt," he commented. "Ooh, and the sleeves of this jacket are lovely." Anna had him write down the parts that he wanted for his own suit on pieces of paper he slipped between the pages, all the while she busied herself with pulling out swatches of patchy fabric from previous projects. Ronaldo glanced up from the book to see the colours she was picking out and wrinkled his nose in disdain. "Oh no, darling, those won't do at all."
Anna looked down at the fabrics she'd picked, an array of deep blues and stormy greys. "Why not?"
"How do these colours scream summer?"
"They're the epitome of men's fashion right now," she explained. "All the rage if you take a look at the high street. I'm just following the trends."
"Did you forget the part where I said I'm looking to stand out?" he questioned, standing up and pacing the room. "Every man at the ball is going to be wearing blue or grey or black. So drab. I won't stand out if I just 'follow the trends'." He scanned the small room before his eyes settled on a lone splash of colour. "Now this screams summer," he said, picking off one of the womens' cardigans Anna was working on from her rack.
"This?" She held the coral scarf up to the light, looking between the shimmery fabric and her client. "I guess it could work. It matches your eyes. But I'd need to raise the price if you'd be okay with that. I can't afford to take this from the store and the original quote wouldn't cover it."
"Sure," he said without a second thought, as if money was of no concern to him. Maybe her starting prices were really just that cheap. Still, it was a surprise to Anna since many of her clients were more budget-conscious considering their working class backgrounds. It was rare that someone who could be so frivolous with spending came to her. Perhaps all the other tailors in the town were just full.
"I'll send you the new price once I get more material from the market," she told him, wrenching open the door that creaked so he could slip out. "Ingrid will help let you know when it's ready for you to collect."
And a week later, the suit was ready. Now Anna was folding it up and putting it in its box right as there was a knock on the door. Her secret knock she taught to all her clients that went dum dum da dum dum to especially alert her of their presence as opposed to her employer's. "Come in! Is that Ronaldo?"
"Indeed it is," Ronaldo answered happily, throwing his shoulder hard against the door so that it would open. "You really need someone to fix that."
Anna shrugged. "I work on a tight budget."
"I have people who could help you out with that," he offered, glancing over her shoulder as she was closing the lid of the box. "Oh, that is gorgeous."
"It's really not necessary, Ronaldo," she insisted, handing him his order. "Just take the shitty door as a… security measure."
"Well okay then," he said, still not sounding totally convinced. Ronaldo pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket. "Three hundred and twenty five kroner as agreed."
"Pleasure doing business with you." She took the money from him with a confident smile. "And remember: if anyone asks you who your designer is—"
"—I tell them it's your Madam Frosk's business rival, I know, I know," he droned, already bored of her paranoia. "You should just take credit for your genius, darling. You're practically a visionary. You could be a real sensation if you just put yourself out there."
Anna sighed sadly. "Maybe, but… no, I couldn't. I need the stability that Madam Frosk gives me. I can't just run off being a freelancer and expecting work to come to me. All the people who order from me pick the plainest designs I have to offer. You know, the stuff I make that I don't really like. You're the only person who's really appreciated the work I'm actually proud of."
Ronaldo frowned but gave her a comforting nudge. "Hey, chin up, red. You're still young. You've got loads of time to figure out what you want to do and how you want to live. If you want, I could tell my friends about you. To get you more business."
"That's a kind offer. If you could keep everything on the down low, I'd appreciate any publicity you can get me."
After Ronaldo left, Anna slumped back in her lumpy cot, staring at the now bare mannequin in the corner of the room. That project was a risky one. She knew that. She had intended for her more elaborate designs to remain a secret, something only for her eyes, but something about Ronaldo and his longing to be seen, to stand out, made it difficult for her to say no when he showed such interest. She wanted to promise herself that that would be the last eccentric suit she made, but if Ronaldo's friends were anything like him, she knew that the possible profits would make it increasingly difficult to say no. A steady income was important, wasn't it? That was all she needed from the exchange. Anna trusted that Ronaldo could become a regular customer, giving her enough kroner to keep her afloat for the foreseeable future.
More importantly, Anna trusted that he'd keep his word and make sure Madam Frosk never found out about what was going on right above her head.
This story is also available on AO3. I also have a Twitter where I post behind the scenes content, polls, writing updates and more. Both are under the same username kalesalad003 and the links are in my bio!
