THE PHILADELPHIA POST
Fashion and Style
Fashion World Takes Note of Tween Philly Blogger
by Uta Bradford
“I’m tall for my age,” says middle school student Rose Ashley.
Indeed she is. At five feet, six and a half inches tall, the suburban sixth grader does appear somewhat older than her eleven years. But don’t let that fool you. Through years of scouring thrift stores—or “thrifting,” as she calls it—she has discovered fashion treasures that she adapts to her own style, which Rose describes as funk meets vintage. Thrifting, she is careful to note, is not yet an Olympic sport, but should be. “Much less expensive than all those gymnastic and ice-skating coaches.” She pulls out a boxy jacket she picked up for five dollars. “Christian Dior—so it had a few moth holes. I thought, you know, I can work around that.”
And she certainly can. A self-taught expert seamstress, she has yet to find anything she can’t fix or sew from scratch. Her mom, real estate agent Rosemary Ashley, bought her an electronic sewing machine that Rose calls the Millennium Falcon of sewing machines.
On her blog, Threads, she shares snappy observations on fashion, pop culture, and sewing. The site is peppered with photos of herself and her friends wearing some of her more outlandish getups. Rose’s following is building, with 20,000 readers each day.
* * *
The Greenhouse
Chapter 1
Bow Ties and Truth
Rose Ashley stood in the middle of the circle as the three girls spun around her. She clamped her eyes shut and tried to block out their jeering faces. The girls took turns picking apart Rose’s carefully composed outfit.
“What’s with the bow tie?”
“And the shirt! My little brother wears a shirt like that.”
“Are you a man or something?”
“Maybe a Cub Scout. The shirt has those flap pockets with the snap buttons. Any badges?” hooted the one with the little brother.
Rose cringed. Did this have something to do with her fashion blog? But she hadn’t posted anything in over a month. How would they have found out about Threads? Of course the article had come out in the Philadelphia newspaper, but who read that paper in Indianapolis? Oh! And she’d forgotten the YouTube thing. “How to Raid Your Mom’s Closet, or 75 Scarves She Never Wears and What to Do with Them.” That had led into a mess of crafty projects, including the bow ties.
That scarf video had received more hits than anything she’d ever done. Following that, the bow tie of the month club on her blog really took off. Everyone was emailing wanting the instructions for how to make one. She even wrote an essay for school: “Not Just for Guys—Bow Ties.” Within a month, the entire girl population of her middle school was wearing them. But that was in Haverford, near Philadelphia, on the East Coast. This was Indiana, smack-dab in the middle of the country. And these girls had somehow targeted her.
The girl with a bright neon-blue streak in her hair took a step closer. Her name was Carrie. She was short, squat really, and reminded Rose of a pug with a bad personality. Narrowing her eyes, Carrie took a deep breath.
“I know! Let’s play the truth game with her. Find out who or what she really is!”
“Yeah, think of this as the Circle of Truth—we get the facts!” Rose thought this one’s name was Brianna.
Rose touched the bow tie nervously. She loved it. It was pale blue with little white daisies. She had made it herself from some scraps of material and tied it bat-wing style.
“Oh, bow ties not for guys—we get it!” Carrie said in the snarkiest voice imaginable. So they had seen the blog! “What else did you find in your mama’s closet?”
But before she could answer, the third girl spoke up. “Never mind. Enough about the blog and the stupid YouTube videos.” This was Lisa. Very pretty. She had a sequin pasted onto her left eyebrow that pranced up to her hairline as spoke. She also had the deepest dimples Rose had ever seen. Flashing them constantly, she took a step closer. “You’re not exactly Mia Ryles.”
Mia Ryles! Rose nearly gagged. Mia was the thirteen-year-old YouTube sensation who was the complete creation of her fanatical mom, Monica Ryles. Talk about glitter! Mia was obviously Lisa’s inspiration. Her mom had rocketed Mia into multiplatform deals with everything from social media to hair products to fashion. The fashion was ghastly in Rose’s mind. She called it the baby-doll-cheerleader look.
“Okay, Rose, are you ready?” Carrie growled. Rose said nothing. It was as if her voice had taken a deep dive inside her. Her mouth was quivering. She felt a hot blister of tears behind her eyelids ready to boil over.
“For example,” Carrie continued, “when I was little, I peed in the swimming pool and the water turned this color blue.” She pointed to the streak in her hair. Some inspiration, Rose thought. Pee and chlorine! The other two girls were giggling madly.
“Guess what I did,” Lisa of the glitter said.
“I don’t know?” Rose croaked.
“I had a zit once. Once upon a time . . . a long time ago.” She made it sound like a fairy tale. A fairy-tale zit that had escaped from a troll and accidentally landed on a princess’s face.
“I did too!” Rose blurted out. “And yeah, I peed in a swimming pool once. It was at the Meadow Lark Community Swimming Pool and . . .”
“Don’t talk!” Brianna roared. Rose knew that some might think that Brianna was beautiful in that skinny fashion-model way, but her eyes were too small and it gave her, in Rose’s opinion, a kind of rodenty appearance. It looked as if she were always seeking out crumbs or the tiniest bits of food, or more likely gossip. What kind of rodent? Rose didn’t ponder this too long. But definitely a rodent—rat, mouse, vole, whatever. A creature of the underground. Her hair was skinned back in a ponytail that made her tiny face look so sharp it might cut something. Like blades! Rose thought. She had heard that Brianna was a champion ice-skater.
She leaned in toward Rose. Something toxic seemed to leak from her eyes. “Carrie does the talking. Asks the questions,” she snapped.
“Right, Brianna. Thank you for recognizing that. I am the questioner.”
Inquisitor is more like it, Rose thought.
“So what happened to your mom?” asked Carrie.
“She died.”
“Your dad?”
“I don’t know.”
Carrie stuck her head forward as if she was trying to ferret out every tidbit of information. She was still shorter, much shorter than Rose. “Divorced? He abandoned you? Ran off with a prettier lady than your mom? Or dead too?”
Rose gasped. This was too awful. It was only her second day of school. They had obviously done their homework on her, finding Threads and then her YouTube stuff. She could never have imagined such a start to the school year. This was one for Guinness World Records. Rose was no stranger to first days in a new school. She and her mom had moved around so much she was practically a professional at first days! Her mom had been a real estate agent in Philadelphia. And for her mother, new houses were investments. After she moved into them, she would fix them up and sell them. She was a serial renovator. New houses in new neighborhoods had never really bothered Rose. Her mom always said, “I don’t sell homes. I sell houses. Home isn’t four walls and a roof. Home is you and me.”