TRCT_34

Chapter 34: Lavish

It was morning, with warm, gentle sunshine and a light breeze stirring.

At the intersection of Love Lane, beneath the green shade of the parasol trees with their tender branches, a woman dressed in an elegant, fitted qipao, draped with a light gray wool shawl, a Western-style parasol tucked under her arm, made her way unhurriedly through the bustling traffic and crossed over to stand before the open door of the café on the other side.

At that moment, a young man of rather fine appearance and bearing, wearing a dark green shirt, was just coming out from inside, holding a lidded white porcelain teacup.

Seeing that she was about to enter, he quickly stepped aside to make way.

"Thank you." The woman said her thanks quickly in the local dialect, then, lowering her eyes slightly, walked inside without glancing to either side.

Only after the woman had gone in did Zhu Renqing, holding his teacup, step outside, thinking idly to himself that the qipao the woman was wearing must surely be the new-style qipao that the gentleman had been sewing lately.

This seemed to be the third woman he'd seen in the past few days within the foreign concession wearing a similar style of qipao.

Perhaps before long, this would become the everyday attire of Shanghai women too, who could say.

It really was remarkable—in just these few short days, he had actually witnessed a new style of clothing come into vogue.

Had it not been for the knowledge he'd absorbed in his daily life from the gentleman's teaching all this time, and had it not been for being in this trade himself, which made it inevitable that he'd pay more attention to the clothing on other people's bodies, he would never have noticed this at all.

Perhaps it would take a long while yet, until this new style of qipao also became popular in the Chinese-administered districts where he lived, and in the areas surrounding Shanghai, before he would suddenly, in some unexpected moment, recall that the women of before hadn't worn robes like this at all.

Carrying his cup with a touch of wistful feeling, Zhu Renqing crossed the bustling road and walked into the alley diagonally opposite.

"Sir, I've brought your coffee back for you," he said as he entered.

The word 'brought' was an odd choice, but Zhu Renqing felt there was no more fitting word for it than that.

Before working for the gentleman, he had never once set foot in a coffee shop, and hadn't even known what kind of place that sort of establishment was or what it sold.

For someone like him, never mind a café filled with foreigners sitting about—even the Western-suited doormen at the entrances of Western restaurants calling out "Welcome" belonged to a class entirely out of his reach.

It wasn't until recently that the gentleman had assigned him a new task: every morning, after the gentleman arrived at the shop, he was to take his ceramic teacup over to the "Renaissance" café on the road diagonally across, buy a cup of hot coffee, and have the staff pour the coffee into this ceramic cup.

To be honest, the first time he walked into that elegantly decorated, bright and spotless café, Zhu Renqing's heart had nearly leapt out of his chest; he'd been so nervous his face turned bright red, with no idea at all how he should even open his mouth to the staff.

Fortunately, that staff member happened to know the gentleman; the moment he heard Zhu Renqing was the assistant from the tailor shop across the way, without needing him to say much else, he quickly poured the brewed coffee into the cup he'd brought.

After a few more visits, Zhu Renqing gradually grew accustomed to this errand, and even found the leisure, while waiting for his order, to observe the other customers.

Just as he'd imagined, the gentlemen and ladies who came to spend money at this establishment were, aside from the foreigners, all the sort of wealthy young ladies and gentlemen with both money and idle time to spare.

Whether seated inside the shop or beneath the sun umbrellas at the entrance, every one of them was eating, drinking, and chatting leisurely, or discussing business—this activity seemed, to them, to be a kind of refined pastime.

He alone, his gentleman, was truly one of a kind.

This way of going about it like fetching soy sauce on an errand—carrying an entirely unremarkable teacup over to the café to have it filled right to the brim, then bringing it back to the shop and pouring it down his throat as though it were plain water—Zhu Renqing had only ever seen his gentleman do such a thing.

What's more, the gentleman had even taken out a monthly subscription at that café, which truly left Zhu Renqing unable to comprehend it, yet he also faintly felt that the gentleman's behavior carried a certain free and easy individuality to it, which he admired greatly.

In truth, Ji Qingzhou, who simply thought of himself as a workhorse, took the teacup from Zhu Renqing's hands, tilted his head back and gulped down several mouthfuls, then put the lid back on and set it aside, continuing on with his work.

Today's task was still the making of Shi Xuanman's qipao.

Over the previous two days, the fabric pieces had been cut according to the pattern; after the darts were stitched and pressed, and the pieces shaped and set through steam-blocking, the shoulder seams of the front and back bodice panels had been sewn together.

So this morning's work was to apply stay tape to the qipao, followed by making the front and back lining panels, with the collar to be attached the next day.

The stay tape was applied to stabilize the structure of the qipao—since the cut pieces at the front opening, armholes, and similar areas all ran along the bias grain, they were extremely prone to stretching and warping during the construction process.

Once the straight-grain stay tape was applied, the structure became far more stable, both less prone to deformation and more three-dimensional and aesthetically refined.

Meanwhile, Zhu Renqing, after simply tidying up the tools and fabric scraps on the cutting table, set about starching the bias binding strips as Ji Qingzhou had instructed.

This too was work he was capable of doing—a somewhat simpler task.

All he needed to do was take the scraper, dip it into some paste made from wheat starch, and, applying even pressure, scrape a thin layer of the starch paste along the straight-grain direction on the reverse side of the binding fabric.

Stroke after stroke, he scraped across the whole surface, scraping away the excess paste, and once it had dried naturally, he would press it flat with an iron, after which it could be cut into bias binding strips.

Time slipped by quickly amid the busy work, and by around half past eleven, Ji Qingzhou had finally finished his morning's tasks.

He casually set the half-finished qipao, lining pieces, and the like down on the sewing machine table, then stood up and stretched his shoulders, leaving Zhu Renqing two jiao and telling him to find a place nearby to sort out lunch on his own.

He then slung his cross-body bag over his shoulder, walked to the mouth of the lane, and took the tram back to the Jie residence to have lunch.

These past few days, due to the busy workload, Ji Qingzhou had rarely gone back to eat; the reason he was going back to the Jie household to eat today was simply so that, after finishing, he could head straight to the Fang residence.

As for going to the Fang family's estate, it wasn't because Miss Fang had placed another new order, but because yesterday, after Ji Qingzhou had called the Lu family using the contact information Lu Xueying had left him, the other party had instead arranged to meet him at the Fang residence.

Listening to Lu Xueying's furtive tone on the phone, it seemed as though she was afraid someone would find out if they met directly.

Ji Qingzhou suspected that this order for the formal dress might have been something Miss Lu had decided on entirely on her own, and that in truth, her family didn't approve of her having clothes custom-made by some other tailor.

This was hardly a good sign.

It wasn't that he was worried about the effort he'd put so much thought into—designing a birthday banquet dress for someone, only to have it go unworn, his effort wasted, and losing a chance to showcase his work at a high-end banquet.

Rather, what concerned him was that if Lu Xueying didn't end up wearing the dress he'd designed, then when Shen Nanqi showed up to the evening banquet that day wearing that white pear-blossom dress, she might well end up overshadowing the very person whose banquet it was.

If that ended up putting Madam Shen in an awkward position, that would be a failure on his part as the designer.

For this reason, Ji Qingzhou felt it was still necessary to ask Lu Xueying about this matter directly, in person.

.

That afternoon, at the Fang family's estate.

The group met once again in that spacious, exquisitely furnished parlor inside the red-brick Western-style building.

What was different from last time was that the one seated on the velvet sofa this time was not Miss Shi, but Madam Fang, Fang Birong's mother.

And seated beside Madam Fang was an unfamiliar lady with a mature air about her.

She wore a finely tailored brown wool dress, with a dark brown lambskin belt cinched at her waist; her skin was fair, her facial features soft, and at first glance she appeared plain and cool in demeanor, but her eyes carried an air of arrogance, her chin lifted, exuding a domineering, condescending bearing.

Ji Qingzhou, attended to by Madam Fang, took a seat on the single sofa. In the process, he cast a seemingly casual glance at Lu Xueying, sitting on the sofa opposite with a somewhat awkward expression, and dimly grasped what was going on.

"A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ji. I'm Xueying's mother, my name is Chen Yanzhu," the lady said, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly as she introduced herself to him, "You're Madam Jie's nephew, aren't you?"

Just as he'd suspected, it was Lu Xueying's mother...

Like mother, like daughter, one might say—the two of them spoke in practically identical tones.

"That's right." Ji Qingzhou accepted the hot tea handed to him by a servant, and asked with a composed manner: "I hadn't expected Madam Chen to come by today. Is there something you needed to see me about?"

"My daughter tells me she's had a birthday banquet dress custom-made with you?" she asked, clearly already knowing the answer.

Hearing this, Ji Qingzhou took the opportunity to glance over at Lu Xueying, thinking that if she wanted to signal something to him through eye contact, now was the best chance.

As it turned out, the girl's eyes kept darting about, simply not daring to look at him—her expression was the very picture of a guilty conscience.

Very good. It seemed that dress really had been ordered with him behind her family's back.

"Mm... it isn't settled yet. Miss Lu had simply heard that I'm skilled at making Western-style dresses, so she asked me to design a couple of options for her to try out."

Since Lu Xueying hadn't given him any hint, Ji Qingzhou chose to simply tell the truth, "As for whether she'll have it custom-made with me, that depends on whether the two of you are satisfied with my design."

As he spoke, he took the sketchbook out of his bag, and before the other woman could say anything more, flipped it open to the page with the gray dress, smiling as he extended it forward: "Madam Chen, would you like to take a look?"

Chen Yanzhu had indeed come with an attitude of suspicion and displeasure, but it wasn't that she doubted Ji Qingzhou's skill as a tailor—rather, she suspected he wasn't a tailor at all.

Ever since discovering the day before that her daughter had been on the phone with some unfamiliar man, she'd been on edge, with countless plotlines from the romance novels and dramas she'd read surfacing in her mind, suspecting that her daughter might have caught the eye of some penniless young man scheming to marry into a wealthy family.

So today, the moment her daughter stepped out the door, she'd followed right behind her, and once the two of them encountered each other at the Fang residence, she'd gone straight to asking the man what exactly was going on.

As for Lu Xueying, she had presumably panicked at the fear of being found out, and had hastily fabricated some excuse about finding a tailor to have clothes made, in order to deceive her mother.

Young as she was, the moment trouble arose she'd lost her composure, and in order to keep her mother from suspecting further, she'd even fabricated the man's identity, claiming he was Shen Nanqi's nephew...

Heh. She and Shen Nanqi had known each other for over twenty years; though the two of them weren't especially close, they had, after all, once studied together at St. Mary's Hall for girls. How could she not know whether the woman had a nephew who worked as a tailor?

This lie was simply too clumsy to hold up.

For this reason, right up until Ji Qingzhou walked through the door, Chen Yanzhu had remained utterly convinced of her own suspicions, thinking to herself that she absolutely had to teach this presumptuous, penniless young upstart a lesson.

Yet who would have expected that after waiting more than ten minutes, the person who arrived was not at all the sort of young man she'd imagined—slicked-back hair, dressed in a Western suit, looking the part on the outside while in truth being utterly hollow-headed, the kind who knew nothing but smooth talk to deceive young girls.

Though he too was dressed in a shirt and Western trousers, his appearance was rather refined and handsome, his whole bearing fresh and composed, his manners proper—he genuinely looked like someone from a scholarly, well-bred family.

This left her somewhat torn between believing and doubting her daughter's words. Just then, Ji Qingzhou extended the sketchbook toward her; she glanced at him, then accepted it accordingly.

She intended to see for herself, after all, just what exactly was going on here.

And the moment she lowered her eyes to look, Chen Yanzhu's brow rose slightly at the corner.

On the snow-white page, the model was shown from behind, glancing back over her shoulder, her figure slender and graceful.

The skirt, trailing slightly at the hem, layered and overlapping like flower petals, its color seeming to bloom like ink wash, scattered with pinpoints of silvery light—it blended understated elegance with extravagance to the fullest degree.

So he really had prepared a beautiful formal dress after all...

"Oh my, how beautiful..."

Beside her, a soft exclamation from the girl suddenly drifted over; Chen Yanzhu turned her head and saw that Lu Xueying had at some point leaned in close beside her, cupping her cheeks, eyes shining as she stared at the design, looking thoroughly delighted with how the dress turned out in the sketch.

With matters having reached this point, Chen Yanzhu had already begun to realize she might genuinely have misjudged Lu Xueying, but she couldn't quite bring herself to soften her attitude all at once, so she put on a show of dissatisfaction instead: "This color is far too aged-looking. You're only eighteen, this dress would make you look thirty."

What she actually thought, however, was that this was precisely the sort of outfit suited for her to wear to a banquet.

This was what one might call understated luxury...

Ji Qingzhou, having his color choice criticized as too aged, grumbled inwardly, though he kept a polite smile on his face and said: "If you don't like it, there's another one on the next page."

Chen Yanzhu smoothed back a strand of hair at her temple and, with an air of indifference, turned to the next page.

As the gray-toned dress disappeared from view, what appeared next was a swath of interwoven dark gold and pale lavender.

"Oh, wow..." Perhaps because of the contrast with the darker tones that came before, Lu Xueying was instantly dazzled by the color scheme before her, for a moment able only to express her amazement through wordless exclamations.

The previous dress had struck her as beautiful, yet not quite enough to truly dazzle her—but upon seeing this dress, Lu Xueying felt goosebumps rise across her entire body.

In the sketch, the model stood with one arm akimbo; the dress as a whole was composed of multiple layers of pale, smoky lavender sheer gauze. The bodice featured a halter-neck, off-shoulder design, and for the sake of modesty, a dark gold silk shawl had been drawn draped over it, covering the shoulders and arms.

The skirt itself was front-short and back-long, revealing part of the calf at the front, while the swallowtail hem at the back trailed all the way down to the floor.

The skirt was gathered into multiple soft pleats, making use of the drape and elasticity of the bias-cut fabric to create a flowing sense of movement in the lines.

The wave-like, overlapping edges of the hem were trimmed with sandy gold ribbon; the tightly-woven hem fabric, pieced together with the lightweight, airy skirt body, allowed the curve of the skirt to be held full and three-dimensionally dynamic, while also making the waist and calves appear all the more slender, and the figure all the more statuesque.

Though it was only a design sketch, thanks to the excellence of the draftsmanship, Lu Xueying needed only to look at the drawing to imagine just how the skirt would shimmer and flow with light as it moved and swayed while walking or dancing.

"This one isn't bad at all." Even Chen Yanzhu, who had been viewing the sketches through a critical lens, found it difficult to come up with anything harsh to say upon seeing this dress.

"The Iris Dress..." Lu Xueying murmured to herself the name written beneath the sketch, feeling it was remarkably fitting.

The irregular soft pleats of the skirt, the gentle curling arc of the hem, this color pairing of pale lavender and sandy gold—wasn't it just like an iris flower slowly blooming open?

At this thought, a sudden curiosity welled up in her, and she reached out to flip the page back to the one before.

As it turned out, there was no name written beneath that earlier dress.

She then looked at Ji Qingzhou and asked: "Mr. Ji, what's the name of this one?"

"...Uh," Ji Qingzhou paused for a moment, then said, "This one doesn't have a name. If I had to give it one, it might be Black Lotus."

Since it didn't sound like a particularly good name, he hadn't originally intended to bring it up.

Yet to his surprise, upon hearing it, the girl's expression turned rather pleased.

"Black Lotus—that carries quite a mysterious, secluded sort of feeling to it."

Listening to their exchange, Chen Yanzhu came back to herself and said: "To be honest with you, Mr. Ji, I'd actually already prepared a dress for Xueying's birthday banquet beforehand. But having just seen this one, I find it more beautiful than the one I'd chosen, and also better suited for my daughter to wear at her coming-of-age celebration. So, I'd like to place an order for this dress with you, would that be all right?"

"Of course it would. It was designed for Miss Lu in the first place," Ji Qingzhou replied.

"Mm." Chen Yanzhu hesitated for a few seconds, then looked again at the gray dress in the sketchbook and said, "And as for this Black Lotus dress, since you went to the trouble of designing it, it wouldn't do to let your effort go to waste. So I'll take this gray one as well."

——I knew it...

Hearing this, Lu Xueying turned and mouthed something silently to her friend Fang Birong, secretly pursing her lips.

Ji Qingzhou hadn't expected things to turn out this way either. The other woman had arrived with a face full of accusatory intent, yet in the end, not only did she find no fault with him at all, she'd ended up placing an order for an extra dress herself.

He asked, as if to confirm: "Is the dress you've ordered meant to be worn at your daughter's birthday banquet? If so, I'm afraid I may not have enough time to finish it."

"No, I have a ball to attend sometime around July or August. Your Jie family ought to be receiving an invitation as well."

As an unofficial member of the Jie household, Ji Qingzhou wasn't aware of this yet, but it didn't much matter either way, so he simply nodded and said: "All right, let's settle on that for now then. Once I've finished Miss Lu's dress, you can give me your measurements at that time."

Chen Yanzhu raised an eyebrow slightly: "No problem at all."

"In that case, please go ahead and pay the deposit first." Ji Qingzhou's gaze swept over to Lu Xueying. "The custom-order fee for this dress includes the gown, the shawl, and the gloves—the total comes to sixty-eight yuan, with a ten-yuan deposit. Is that all right?"

Sixty-eight yuan... that's really not cheap at all... the Fang mother and son silently marveled to themselves upon hearing the quoted price.

A single outfit was worth a full month's salary for a hotel manager.

Chen Yanzhu and her daughter, however, showed no sign of displeasure at the price—perhaps, in their eyes, a dress priced any lower simply wouldn't have matched their standing.

"That's fine." Chen Yanzhu agreed without hesitation, taking ten silver dollars out of her handbag and handing them to Ji Qingzhou: "Tomorrow, I'll have a servant take Xueying's measurements and send them to your shop. Mr. Ji is a young man with real vision. I do hope we'll have more occasions to interact in the future."

Toward a customer so generous with her spending, it was hard for Ji Qingzhou not to maintain a warm attitude; hearing this, he smiled: "I'm delighted as well, to make Madam Chen's acquaintance."

T/N;

1). 'a swath of interwoven dark gold and pale lavender', 'In the sketch, the model stood with one arm akimbo; the dress as a whole was composed of multiple layers of pale, smoky lavender sheer gauze. The bodice featured a halter-neck, off-shoulder design, and for the sake of modesty, a dark gold silk shawl had been drawn draped over it, covering the shoulders and arms', 'The skirt itself was front-short and back-long, revealing part of the calf at the front, while the swallowtail hem at the back trailed all the way down to the floor', 'The skirt was gathered into multiple soft pleats, making use of the drape and elasticity of the bias-cut fabric to create a flowing sense of movement in the lines', and 'The wave-like, overlapping edges of the hem were trimmed with sandy gold ribbon; the tightly-woven hem fabric, pieced together with the lightweight, airy skirt body, allowed the curve of the skirt to be held full and three-dimensionally dynamic, while also making the waist and calves appear all the more slender, and the figure all the more statuesque'. The following are sketch and dress generated by AI based on the description for reference:

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