Blake Griffin Imagines

Designing Fire

Kanani waltzed into the changing room for the GQ October issue shoot, a Starbucks coffee in one hand and her cellphone in the other. She’d been on the phone all day long with representatives from the magazine, and she’d literally just left a last minute meeting with the photographer and editors assigned to the shoot.

The cover ‘model’ for the issue was none other than Los Angeles Clippers power forward Blake Griffin. He’d been a part of GQ before, Kanani had been told, but this was his first outright cover. They were shooting with a backdrop of an abandoned looking carnival lights thing at a museum in Las Vegas, and it had very rusted, rich colors. She’d been given a very large budget, and essentially been told to pull together clothes that Blake would look hella good in and that also had personal touches—such as his basketball number, his initials, maybe the colors of the Clippers and/or Oklahoma.

“Kanani!” Her long-time assistant/best friend/do-absolutely-everything-for-her/numero dos Benjamin came hurrying forward. “The suit from Boss finally arrived.”

“Oh thank God,” she replied. “It took them long enough. I’m going to have a talk with their manager. Shipping out a custom suit two days late is not the way to continue business.”

She walked over to the clothes racks. Each article of clothing was allowed enough space to keep from touching anything next to it. The cheapest thing Blake would be wearing in this shoot would be his boxers. And she’d even bought them—Jordans, because he was an ambassador for the brand. He’s supplied a few pairs of his own sneakers beforehand, so that she could design the outfits to go with the right pair of sneakers.

“Okay, so they want the cover photo to be really simple. And we’re going to word on that first in the next room before we go out to the main setting. Where’s the suit? I want to pair it with the old-timey Clippers jersey with the soft blue and red.”

Life was always moving forward for Kanani. As an up-and-coming fashion designer, she was weeks away from launching her own brand. It had been a long time coming in her mind, but in all actuality she was one of the lucky ones. At twenty-four years young, to have this kind of opportunity was life-changing. But she’d left her home in Mississippi at the tender age of 18 and headed to New York City to chase her dreams.

Months of being the intern of the intern, years of grabbing coffee for everyone in the office with her own meager bank account, countless times of hearing the word no…And here she was.

“All right, Momma.” Kanani turned at the sound of a low voice that didn’t belong to a member of her team.

Blake Griffin’s measurements had not done this man justice.

Kanani’s eyes were drawn to the thing Jordan t-shirt that stretched over his chest. You could actually see his abs through the fabric. His long legs were wrapped in thick muscles. The behemoth of a man towered over everyone in the room, at a healthy six-nine—six-ten with shoes on his large feet. He wore a pair of light brown Ray Bans and a white hate backwards on his head from a brand she wasn’t familiar with. He held an iPhone to his ear—the cell phone looked like a child’s toy in his huge hand.

“Look, Mom, I gotta go. I’ll call you after the photo shoot.” He nodded his head a few times while simultaneously pulling his sunglasses off. “Yes ma’am. I love you too. And I’ll book the plane tickets. Don’t tell Dad. You know how he gets.”

He hung up the phone after another second and handed it to an older man with a bald head and slight facial hair. This man Kanani knew. It was Lorne Clark, Blake’s manager. In some cases, he doubled as a sort of publicist, but he mainly dealt with the business sides of Blake’s endeavors off the basketball court—such as his sponsorship with KIA, Jordan, and Red Bull. But also photo shoots and the people his most notable client would be working with.