"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack" Chapter 8
Milan's Fashion Week buzz hung in the air like a charged perfume—equal parts excitement and cutthroat ambition. Su Yao stood backstage at the Kering showcase, her fingers brushing the sleeve of the collaborative cape. Its surface, woven from seaweed fibers and recycled aluminum, had been treated with Maria's beeswax technique, catching the runway lights like crushed starlight. Elena appeared beside her, adjusting the lace trim she'd added—a nod to 16th-century Venetian couture, reimagined with photovoltaic threads that glowed faintly.
"Nervous?" Elena asked, her voice steady despite the way her knee bounced. She'd swapped her usual indigo-streaked hair for a sleek bun, but kept the silver hoop earrings shaped like sewing needles—her signature. "The front row's full of monsters. Wintour, Talley, that vulture from WWD who called my last collection 'hippie nonsense.'"
Su Yao laughed, thinking of Pierre's sneers in Paris. "Monsters I can handle. It's the silence that scares me." She gestured to the cape. "What if they don't get it? The story behind the threads?"
Elena grabbed her hand, her palm warm against Su Yao's. "They will. Because it's true. My abuela's lace patterns, your seaweed from Shanghai, Giovanni's father's gold-thread secrets—this isn't just fabric. It's a love letter to the people who make fashion happen, not just wear it."
The lights dimmed. The first model stepped out in a dress woven from their collaborative fabric, its color shifting from terracotta (a nod to Tuscany's clay hills) to jade (for Su Yao's hometown) as she walked. The audience breathed as one. Then came the cape—worn by a 57-year-old former weaver named Lucia, whom Elena had discovered working as a cleaner at the Duomo. Her gray hair was styled in loose waves, her posture straight as a needle as she strode down the runway, the cape rippling like a living thing.
The applause wasn't just loud—it was feral. People stood, cameras flashing so rapidly the air seemed to shimmer. Su Yao spotted Giovanni in the balcony, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. Maria, sitting beside him, held up a tiny loom she'd brought from home, waving it like a flag.
Backstage, chaos erupted. A journalist from Vogue America cornered Su Yao, shoving a microphone in her face. "Is this the end of luxury as we know it?" she shouted over the noise.
"Luxury's just a word," Su Yao said, the system translating smoothly. "What matters is value—for the planet, for the hands that make it, for the person who wears it. This fabric? It has value."
Elena appeared at her side, grinning. "And we're not stopping here. The union's opening a school in Brera—teaching kids from immigrant families to weave. Kering's funding a factory in Shanghai, run by Maria's granddaughter. We're calling it 'Threads Without Borders.'"
That night, they celebrated at Elena's atelier in Chinatown, a converted noodle shop where the walls were lined with fabric swatches and vintage sewing machines. Marco brought a bottle of 1982 Barolo, which he'd been saving for "a revolution." Giovanni arrived with a stack of old family photos—his father weaving for Audrey Hepburn, his mother dyeing silk in copper pots over an open fire.
"Look," he said, pointing to a black-and-white image of a young woman with calloused hands, "that's my sister. She quit weaving to work in a plastics factory. Said it paid better. Tomorrow, I'm calling her. Telling her to come home."
Su Yao thought of her own mother, who'd worked three jobs to buy her first sketchbook. She pulled out her phone, scrolling to a photo Lise had sent that morning: the little girl in Shanghai, now wearing a coat made from their fabric, its hem lined with reflective tape. The caption read: "Her teacher says she draws designs during recess. Calls herself 'the next Su Yao.'"
The system's interface glowed softly: "Global impact achieved. New task: Launch 'Threads Without Borders' initiative at the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow. Deadline: 30 days."
Outside, rain began to fall, drumming on the atelier's tin roof. Elena put on a record—Dean Martin singing in Italian, scratchy but warm—and they danced between the worktables, their laughter mixing with the clink of glasses. Su Yao thought of all the threads that had brought them here: a blue light in a Shanghai apartment, a chance meeting in Paris, a stubborn belief that fashion could be better.
As the song ended, Giovanni raised his glass. "To the weavers," he said, his voice thick, "past, present, and future."
"To the threads," Su Yao echoed, raising hers. "May they always connect us."
The next morning, Su Yao found a package on her hotel bed: a small wooden box containing a single thread—gold, silk, and seaweed-metal twisted together. Attached was a note from Maria: "Every revolution starts with a single stitch."
She slipped it into her pocket, smiling as she headed to the airport. Glasgow was next. Then the world. And this time, she wasn't just carrying fabric samples—she was carrying a movement.