g4gertrude
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Gertrude Alden wasnβt supposed to be a designer. Raised in a small industrial town where practicality ruled over passion, she was expected to take over her fatherβs textile factory, not reinvent the fabrics themselves. But Gertrude had other ideas.She worked in the factory by day, her hands moving through spools of thread and heavy machinery, but by night, she was someone else entirely. In the dim glow of her attic room, she sketched gowns with unconventional silhouettes, coats with impossible folds, and dresses that seemed to float like mist. She wasn't just designing clothesβshe was sculpting emotions into fabric.One evening, after an exhausting shift, she found an envelope slipped beneath her door. It was from the famed Parisian fashion house, Maison Rousseau. They had seen one of her designsβleaked by a friend who believed in her more than she believed in herselfβand they wanted to meet.Gertrude's world spun. Could she leave everything behind? Could she risk failure in a city where genius and obscurity lived side by side?She chose risk.Paris was overwhelming. The city breathed art, but the fashion world was ruthless. Her first collection was dismissed as "too ambitious." The second was "too safe." It was her third attempt, a fusion of the industrial world she came from and the elegance she dreamed of, that changed everything. Steel-gray fabrics with delicate embroidery, corsets shaped like machinery, gowns that shimmered like molten metalβshe had found her voice.Now, years later, her name was whispered in fashion circles. βGertrude works,β they saidβnot just in the sense that she toiled endlessly, but in the way that true artists do.Her designs worked. Her vision worked.She had made it.β¦