Chapter 151

• The day the archive officially changed felt quieter than I expected. There were no speeches, no photographers, no glittering launch banners across the boutique windows. The announcement went up on our small corner of the website the night before, a single paragraph stating that the student archive was now a formal learning program. It carried my name, but in truth, it belonged to all the hands that had passed through here.
• We opened early that morning. Claudia was already in the back when I arrived, leaning over a table with a neat row of folded muslin and a stack of labeled boxes. The smell of fresh coffee drifted through the air, and somewhere behind the fabric shelves, I could hear the muffled hum of the small heater we had pulled out for winter mornings.
• I set my bag down and walked toward the archive room. It had always been small, tucked away at the far end of the boutique, past the workstations and the racks of finished garments. For years, it had been little more than a storage space for pieces we could not bear to part with. Early samples. Test fabrics. A skirt with a stitch line so clean I kept it to remind myself what steady hands could do on a long, quiet afternoon.