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Summary: Sora, an amateur fashion designer, lacks the confidence that his designs are anything special. His best friend/sometimes partner, Kairi, secretly enters him into a contest that he was too afraid to enter: Ultima's Designer Discovery. The winner will have a line of their designs produced, and a professional ad campaign with one of the company's most famous models.
Riku, one of the most successful models that Ultima has ever had, gets to make the final decision on which of the entered designs will win. He chooses his winner without knowing any identifying information. When he finds out that the designer he chose lives on the same island Riku was born on, he hopes it won't create suspicion around how deserving the designer is.
Day 28 of AU-gust: Fashion and Models AU
This is a particular AU type that I can't remember ever actually reading, but I REALLY enjoyed plotting and writing! I did it to myself yet again, where this could definitely continue (and I find I'd love to see what happens when they finally meet up. The answer is OT3 endgame, because that's my answer to everything.) Unfortunately, I know almost exactly nothing about fashion, so whether I could write a full fic and keep it within a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief, I have no idea, haha.
“So, they should be letting the winners of that contest know soon, right?” Kairi asked.
Sora glanced over. She was reclined on his bed, flipping through a magazine, not looking at him.
“What contest?” he asked.
“The Ultima one?” She said, voice ticking it up into a question. “‘Designer discovery’ is what they called it, I think. Send in some of your portfolio, and win a contract with Ultima to produce some of your designs, complete with professional ad campaign and modeling?”
She kept paging through the magazine, and Sora was starting to find her carefully casual tone highly suspicious.
“You’re probably right,” he said slowly. No ‘probably’ about it; he’d had the deadline and the announcement dates memorized for months. “But I didn’t enter that contest, remember? I decided that my designs weren’t ready yet.”
“And I told you that they were absolutely ready. You’ve even got prototypes of half of them!”
Sora jerked his head toward her so quickly he thought he might wind up with whiplash. His eyes widened in horror. “You didn’t.”
She had the grace to look slightly sheepish as she said, “Maybe?”
Sora fell forward and hid his face in his hands. “My stuff is going to look so amateur compared to most of what I’m sure was sent in.”
Kairi flipped to a two-page spread and turned it toward Sora. “The winner gets to have Riku Miyano model their designs. I think you’d regret it forever if you didn’t even try for the chance to work with him.”
Sora glanced between his fingers at the ad she was showing him. Riku was stunning as always in the pictures. He managed to capture an air of impossible fantasy beauty, while having such a strong presence it paradoxically became hyper-real. If someone had told Sora that Riku was secretly some sort of magical creature trapped in the real world, Sora would probably have believed it without question.
He groaned again, this time burying his whole head in his arms.
Riku flipped through the file folder on his desk for the fifth or sixth time since he’d sat down. He’d had many more to start with, each containing the highlights from a young hopeful designer’s portfolio. The company had other people sift through the bulk of them, weeding out the ones that were truly terrible, or clear copyright infringement, or a poor fit for the brand. They’d narrowed it down to ten finalists, and then stripped all identifying information from the files, before handing them to Riku to make a final determination.
The removal of identifying info, like the designer name, location, and demographic information, was meant to hopefully remove any concerns of favoritism or bias. He was sure that there would be plenty of accusations of that very thing as soon as the winner he’d selected was announced.
He’d shared his choice the day before, and it had been difficult to make. All the designs he’d been shown had been wonderful, and all could have been highly successful. The one he’d ultimately chosen didn’t have the most professional images; the company in general, and Riku specifically, had been clear that this was a design contest. The images had to be enough to get the sense of the design across, but a pixel-perfect photoshopped design that looked like a photograph wasn’t better or worse than a hand-drawn sketch in colored pencil.
What had ultimately drawn Riku to the entry he’d chosen was how sincere it felt. Some of the other top tens felt like they were striving for fashion elements that they didn’t necessarily like, so much as they thought they should include. Others were unique, but in a way that felt like they were trying too hard to be anti-fashion, trying to codify and sell irony. Which definitely meant it won the irony game, but that wasn’t what he was interested in.
After making his choice, he was given the rest of the information about the designer.
Sora Irino. 23 years old, and a citizen of Destiny Islands.
And that was the part that would get Riku in trouble. Riku had been born on Destiny Islands. Not that he remembered it much; his father had gotten a promotion that moved them to the mainland when Riku was still very young. But plenty of profiles on Riku’s very successful modeling career had focused on his “humble beginnings” on a small island, despite the fact that he’d been raised in the city and started modeling years after the move. But it always sounded nice to pretend that a star had come from nothing.
Riku had never met Sora, as far as he knew. If he had it had been twenty years ago or more, when they were toddlers, and he didn’t really think that counted. But there was sure to be plenty of speculation that Sora’s designs had won due to coming from the same island Riku had been born on. The poor man didn’t deserve that kind of thing hovering over him. But he’d won honestly, and Riku hoped the strength of the designs would speak for themselves.
“Make sure you keep your phone on!” Kairi had reminded him a good dozen times.
Sora humored her, but there was literally no way he’d be getting the phone call she was hoping for. His designs would never stand up to real designers’ work. And yeah, this was supposed to be a contest for amateurs, only open to designers who’d never had a professional contract before, but even so. It could be an incredibly cutthroat industry, and Sora wasn’t up to that.
He wasn’t angry at Kairi for entering him into the contest. He really had been prepared to, and then just… hadn’t. He’d chickened out at the last minute, just refusing to send in the form. And she’d always been his biggest cheerleader: helping with the designs themselves sometimes, working out prototyping issues, modeling the clothing for him when he wanted to see it on a real person. She believed in him so much, of course she wanted him to enter, and believed he could win. He thought maybe he’d avoided entering just because he didn’t want to disappoint her as much as he didn’t want to disappoint himself.
A cheery tone sounded from his phone. He just stared at it. Unknown number read the caller ID. The bright little tune ended, and started again.
“Pick it up!” Kairi hissed.
His hand was shaking when he thumbed the icon to answer the call. He lifted it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hello, is this Sora Irino?” The voice was warm and rich.
“Yes,” Sora said. “Speaking.” His voice didn’t shake.
“Hi Sora. My name is Riku Miyano. Congratulations! You won Ultima’s Designer Discovery contest!”
