As AVERY became more successful, the mystery surrounding its designer grew.
Fashion journalists requested interviews.
Retailers wanted appearances.
Event organizers offered speaking fees.
Several influential people insisted the designer's anonymity was a marketing stunt.
Some guessed AVERY was an established fashion house using a secret label.
Others believed the designs came from a collective.
One magazine suggested AVERY was an artificial intelligence experiment.
I laughed so hard when I read that article that I nearly spilled coffee across an entire production schedule.
My employees loved the speculation.
The head pattern maker began collecting the most ridiculous theories.
Once, she arrived carrying a printed article.
"Apparently you're a retired French designer living in Switzerland."
I looked up.
"Really?"
She nodded solemnly.
"Seventy-two years old."
I laughed.
"That explains why my knees hurt."
She grinned.
Another employee claimed AVERY was secretly three brothers working in Milan.
Someone else suggested the label belonged to a famous actress.
The theories became part of our workshop's daily humor.
But my privacy was not merely a publicity strategy.
I had watched fame complicate the lives of designers whose work I admired.
Every outfit they wore became a statement.
Every relationship became public.
Every mistake became entertainment.
I wanted customers to focus on the garments.
I also wanted to protect my family.
My parents had already endured enough anxiety.
They didn't need strangers appearing at their house or asking questions about our finances.
So I built the company around a carefully managed public identity.
A small executive team knew my legal name.
My attorneys and accountants handled contracts properly.
Retail partners received the information necessary to verify the business.
But marketing used the AVERY label, and most public communications came through representatives.
I gave written interviews occasionally.
Sometimes my voice was used in short recordings.
I attended industry events quietly, often as a guest or junior employee from an affiliated company.
People saw me.
They simply didn't realize whom they were seeing.
There was something liberating about that.
I could walk through a boutique and hear honest opinions about the clothing.
I could listen to salespeople describe fit problems.
I could watch how customers responded to particular fabrics.
And sometimes I could see how retailers treated shoppers they didn't consider important.
Those experiences influenced the way I designed.
They also taught me that luxury brands often spent enormous amounts of money controlling their image while paying far less attention to how people experienced their stores.
Over time, that contradiction became impossible to ignore.
The wealthy investor entered my life through a business proposal.
By then, AVERY had been operating for almost six years.
Our annual revenue had grown substantially.
The label was profitable.
And several successful collections had created enough demand that we needed additional production capacity.
The investor controlled an international holding company with interests in fashion retail, hospitality, and luxury events.
She was sixty-one when we first began discussions.
Confident.
Experienced.
And known for negotiating aggressively.
Her company wanted to sponsor the launch of a new AVERY collection and distribute selected garments through its luxury retail network.
The proposed event would take place at an extraordinary Manhattan hotel.
Fashion editors would attend.
Buyers would view the collection.
And the investor's company would finance production commitments large enough to expand the label internationally.
The offer was attractive.
But I was cautious.