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// Prompt #543-Fashionable Employment 
// Story: Ponywatching 
// by ThunderTempest 
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My name is Coco Pommel. I’m an assistant to Suri Polomare in Manehatten. Though, ‘assistant’ might be the wrong word. Miss Polomare treats me more like a slave, but that’s how this business is, right? Every designer has to do their time on the bottom rung, but they eventually get noticed and moved up. I was sure that soon, Miss Polomare would hopefully start giving me credit for my work on the dresses she sold to the ponies in Manehatten. Even if it was just a small ‘Sewed by Coco Pommel’ somewhere.

Fashion Week is always a bit of a nightmare for me. Between Miss Polomares’ increasingly outrageous ‘requests’ and all the work she gives me, it’s a wonder I actually get any sleep. But this Fashion week, I was greeted after Miss Polomare’s meeting with Prim Hemline with a bolt of fabric flying at my face.

“I want you to enhance all of my dresses as you can with that fabric,” she had demanded, “by the time we turn up tomorrow, I want my entire collection to be featuring that fabric. It’s sure to get me first place.” I remember simply sighing, and getting to work. The fabric itself was incredible. I’d never worked with anything like it, and incorporating it into the dresses that I had previously made was a lot simpler than I thought it would be.

Even so, I had to be careful. Incorporating an entirely new fabric into an existing dress line was no easy task, even when the fabric was as wonderful as this one. Stitching had to be matched, and I had to work out by trial and error how tight or loose I could have this mysterious new fabric for the best effect in the dresses. I did try to ask how Miss Polomare had come across this fabric, but all she said was that ‘some mares don’t know how this town really works,’ with a smile on her face, so I went back to sewing.

“Fast? Hah! Coco Pommel here took practically forever. Nearly got me completely disqualified.” While I tried to defend taking my time for quality of work, I looked at Rarity, who the fabric had apparently come from. Who had given Miss Polomare the fabric, not expecting immediate repayment. And whose line I had now completely destroyed with my work. Not for the first time, I wondered if I was working for the right pony. The outrageous demands, the blatant theft of ideas and Suri Polomare’s attitude to both my work and other ponies was finally getting to me.

[Time]

No, it was just the stress of the impending Fashion Show coming up. With the new dresses, Miss Polomare’s line was sure to win, and she’d be more bearable for a few months, and I could ask about maybe putting my name on a product.

I stared, slack-jawed and wide-eyed at Miss Rarity’s new line. She had made that in one night? Out of hotel curtains? For the first time in my fashion ‘career’, I felt like I was truly out of my league. I had liked to believe that I was about the same level of skill as the other designers, despite whatever Suri Polomare said. But Miss Rarity was on another level entirely and I knew that she was going to win. And it seemed that Suri Polomare seemed to recognise that as well, because she did everything in her power to stop Miss Rarity from claiming her rightly deserved prize. Faced now with Rarity’s generosity and actual talent, and comparing it to Suri Polomare’s positively vile personality and utter lack of talent, I knew that I didn’t have long to act before my chance passed me by.

And act I did.