Reflections in Rome
Reflections in Rome
The mirrors we fear are only windows we haven’t looked through yet—and when we dare to see clearly, we become the reflection we once dreamed of.
The bus wheezed into the city like it was exhaling the dreams of everyone aboard. Martina gripped the handle of her lavender suitcase with one hand and held her grandmother’s scarf tight around her curls with the other. Her reflection caught in the scratched bus window—a country girl with wide eyes and hopeful lips.
She had left her tiny village in southern Italy that morning with three things: a scholarship to a fashion design school in Rome, a secondhand phone that only worked on speaker, and her one luxury—shapewear her cousin had sent her from Milan, still wrapped in peach-colored tissue. “For confidence,” her cousin had written. “Not for your body—for your power.”
Martina wasn’t sure what that meant, but she liked how the fabric hugged her, as if her dreams had their own skeleton.
Rome was loud, chaotic, and beautiful. Her student housing was a fourth-floor walk-up with peeling yellow paint and windows that rattled when you coughed. But when she looked out at the skyline—domes and towers woven between construction cranes—her breath caught in her chest like a song she hadn’t finished humming.
At school, the girls wore designer bags like necklaces and rolled their eyes when Martina asked what “bias cut” meant. Still, she sketched. At night. On buses. In the courtyard, where a cracked mirror leaned against a wall. She used it to check the back of her designs, but sometimes, she just stared at herself and whispered: You’re here. You’re doing it.
It wasn’t easy. She failed her first draping assignment. Her Italian sounded like an accordion falling down stairs. Once, she accidentally submitted a design titled “La Morte della Moda”—The Death of Fashion—when she meant to write The Love of Fashion. The professor looked at her over wire-rimmed glasses and said, “Interesting interpretation.”
But slowly, Martina found allies. Elena, a fellow scholarship student from Naples, lent her fabric scraps. Luca, a quiet boy who always wore headphones, offered to digitize her sketches. “Your lines feel like movement,” he said once, almost blushing.
She started spending afternoons in the studio’s sunroom, where the light bounced off the wide windows and made every dress shimmer. One day, while adjusting a muslin toile on a mannequin, she caught sight of herself in the studio’s glass doors. She was laughing—genuinely. Her hands were calloused. Her hair was tied back with a measuring tape. Her shapewear peeked out under her blouse, but she didn’t mind. It was no longer about hiding. It was structure. Intent. Art.
Rome changed her, not by replacing who she was, but by revealing her angles—like glass turned just right under the sun.
At the year-end showcase, Martina presented a five-piece collection inspired by vista—viewpoints. Each look featured transparent fabrics, mirrored belts, and panels that reflected or refracted the wearer’s own silhouette. “It’s about how we see ourselves,” she told the judges. “Through windows. Through others. Through our own reflection.”
When the lights dimmed and her last model stepped onto the runway—wearing a sheer lavender dress structured by elegant, visible boning that resembled shapewear—Martina stood backstage, tears welling in her eyes. She hadn’t erased her roots. She had stitched them into something new.
She didn’t win first place. But a visiting designer handed her a card afterward and said, “I’d love to talk more.” Her heart thumped louder than the applause.
Later that night, she and Luca sat on the studio floor, eating gelato out of paper cups. The windows reflected the soft yellow glow of the room.
“You ever miss the countryside?” Luca asked.
“Every day,” Martina said. Then she smiled. “But I’m not looking back. Just... through.”
