Chapter 3 - The Labels They Wanted Removed

June could not stay on the phone long. She was standing in a workroom behind the fashion venue, where assistants were still checking seams and preparing garments for the evening presentation. Nora listened as she described what she had seen. Each dress made with the blue-and-silver textile had arrived from the sample workshop bearing a small internal tag. The tag identified the print as artwork supplied by Nora Vale. Someone from Victoria's team had circulated a last-minute instruction to remove it.

“Did you cut them out?” Nora asked.

“No. I asked who had authorized the change. They told me I could leave if I didn't want to follow instructions.”

June had remained because other garments still needed finishing and because she wanted to know whether the tags would actually disappear. Nora understood the risk. A freelancer's refusal could cost future commissions without anyone formally saying so.

“Don't confront anybody for me,” Nora said. “Photograph what you're allowed to photograph. Then leave it alone.”

June agreed to send an image of a tag still attached to a garment, together with the message instructing finishers to remove the labels. She had not signed a confidentiality agreement forbidding her from documenting her own work, but Nora advised her not to enter restricted accounts or take materials belonging to the label. They needed records they could explain honestly, not a dramatic discovery that would unravel as soon as someone asked how they obtained it.

Nora walked to a quieter corner of the block. She had worked enough evenings in New York to recognize the rhythm of the city after dark, when expensive restaurants filled while their employees calculated the remaining train schedule. Ordinarily she would have been returning to the kitchen for another round of service. Instead, she was standing outside with no job and a painful arm, searching for the number of the attorney who had once reviewed her freelance agreement.

The lawyer, Amara Chen, answered after Nora left a brief message. They had met months earlier when Nora questioned a clause in a sample-development contract. Amara worked with independent artists and small businesses. She had warned Nora not to surrender the underlying artwork for a temporary sampling fee.

“I remember the agreement,” Amara said when she called back. “It allowed evaluation and prototype construction. It did not grant a production license.”

“That's what I thought.”

“Thinking isn't enough. Send me the signed version and the entire email chain. I don't want excerpts.”

Nora went home and did exactly that. Her apartment was small, with a drafting table beside the window and shelves holding paper, paint, and rolled fabric. She opened the folder where she kept the original files. The blue print had begun as a hand-painted illustration made from overlapping branches and white blossoms. The broken branch Victoria had just seen on her phone came from a brushstroke Nora had decided not to correct. It was part of a larger repeating textile artwork she had registered before submitting it for commercial use.

She located the correspondence with Victoria's sample department. Eight months earlier, the department had requested permission to examine three patterns for a possible collection. Nora agreed to a modest sampling fee and a written evaluation license. The signed document permitted a limited number of test pieces. It expressly required a separate written production agreement before any design could appear in clothing for sale or public promotion. Nora had read that sentence more than once, because she knew how easily a freelancer could lose control of original work.

There had been promising discussions at first. A sample coordinator had praised the print's distinctive broken lines. Then the messages slowed. Eventually the label's legal office told her that none of her patterns would be used. Nora saved the emails and returned to restaurant shifts to cover rent. She had no reason to assume the original artwork was in production until June contacted her.

The new photograph arrived while Nora was attaching documents for Amara. June had photographed a small cream tag sewn inside a garment. The print name appeared beneath Nora's name. The tag was not evidence of theft by itself; it might have meant the supplier credit had remained in a prototype by mistake. But it showed that the workshop had handled the artwork as hers, even as the company now prepared to present it under Victoria's creative direction.

A second image showed a message from a production supervisor. The instruction was concise: replace internal artwork supplier labels before final fitting. It did not name Victoria as the author. Nora was careful not to make that leap.

Amara called again. “You need to separate what you know from what you suspect,” she said. “You know your art was supplied for testing. You know a matching print is on a backstage sample. You know someone ordered the original tags removed. We still don't know what the company believes it has permission to use.”

Nora appreciated the distinction. She had spent the evening being treated as though any objection from her was unreasonable. Amara was taking the objection seriously enough to challenge its weak points.

“What can we do before the presentation?” Nora asked.

“Send an evidence-preservation notice and a demand for clarification. We can ask the company to hold the pieces while we review the rights. The immediate goal is to prevent an irreversible rollout, not to win a lawsuit in the next hour.”

They prepared a short letter attaching the evaluation agreement and the original registration information. Amara addressed it to the label's general counsel, the production director, and the event organizer. It did not accuse anyone of forging documents or committing a crime. It identified the artwork, stated the limits of the known license, and asked that the disputed pieces not be publicly presented or distributed until the rights could be confirmed.

Meanwhile, Nora sent her restaurant's general office another request to preserve footage from Victoria's table. This time she also described the manager's physical contact and gave the approximate time. The reply was automatic. No human being had confirmed that the recording would be retained. Nora kept the message because she had learned how important it was to distinguish sending a warning from knowing it had been received.

June called again. Production had stopped removing the tags while someone higher up checked the instruction. It was only a temporary pause, but it gave Nora a little room to think. She went through the original photographs, checking that every file existed in more than one location. The design files contained dated layers showing the illustration developing over several weeks. Their metadata alone could be challenged, but the dated emails, invoice, and signed agreement created a consistent record.

At nearly ten, the label's attorney replied to Amara. The response was polite and surprisingly quick. Victoria's company, it said, had reviewed Nora's artwork and obtained all necessary rights through a subsequent assignment. The letter attached a copy of a document that appeared to bear Nora's signature.

Amara forwarded it with a short instruction not to respond directly. Around the same time, the event organizer confirmed that the disputed garments would be kept off the late-evening runway. The rest of Victoria’s collection could still be presented. That temporary decision came from the earlier legal notice, not from any finding about the disputed signature.

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Nora opened the attachment. The title at the top read Assignment of Artwork Rights. The signature at the bottom looked like her name. She had never seen the document before.

She scrolled to the date, then sat very still. The assignment had supposedly been executed on a night when she was working a double shift at the restaurant. Someone had prepared paperwork transferring her work away, and the first time she had seen it was after she challenged Victoria beside the dining-room table.