Tatyana is at
Permavore_Risk!
Normally, when you get good at something, you move to the big city to ply your trade to a larger number of people. But when you become exceptional at something, you can live wherever the hell you feel like and expect people to come to you. Tatyana Orbach is a master dressmaker and tailor and as such, nobles and merchants and the wealthy alike come to the humble village of only two thousand or so that she resides in to have her make their finery.
There are few tailors in the land finer and each of Tatyana's dresses is an original, handcrafted work of art. Her docket fills quickly and actually managing to get one of her commissions makes one the envy of those that can't. Tatyana works at an artist's pace and is not overly concerned with wealth. Part of this is because she has more money then she'll ever need, much of it safely stored away in a bank in the capitol, but she lives a rather humble life for the means that her skills have afforded her. Her cottage on the outskirts of town is large, but by no means a mansion, and she does not want for red meat most days of the week, but she has never really adopted the ways of the wealthy, preferring quietude and simple comfort to the whirlwind lifestyle of the courts.
This is not, of course, to say that Tatyana is not without her pleasures. In fact, her chief pleasure is other women. More then once she has been accused of being too free with her hands during a fitting session with a client. There are even rumors that a few noble ladies have secured their commissions with Tatyana by doing things with her that they ought to only be doing with their husbands! However, Tatyana is girl of class and taste and treats such rumors with derisive contempt, which suggests that the rumors are and are not true, depending on who one asks.
Tatyana is of a normally reserved, demure temperament, but has a decided love of gossip from the city, particularly about the nobles and the dealings of the courts, and of the knights and their latest gallantry. She can (and often has) talked for hours on end of such things with her clients, all the while sewing away contentedly. She has a fondness for talking while she works, claiming that it helps to focus her mind and give her inspiration, and often keeps company for the sole purpose of making small talk. She vastly prefers small, intimate gatherings to large ones, and if she doesn't know the name of every individual in a room she feels compelled to find a room with a lesser occupancy. When she does attend a large social function, it is typically at the
strongly worded but polite request of a noble client for whom she has failed to meet a deadline because of her artistic sense of perfection. Coercing Tatyana to a party is seen in some circles as even better then wearing one of her dresses because of the simple rarity of her public appearances.
Still, Tatyana's sense of artistic perfection has bitten her in the ass on more then one occasion. She has hit the level of mastery where few can tell her 'no', she can charge whatever outlandish prices she wishes, and has earned the right to be more then a little arrogant where her tailoring is concerned. She has destroyed one of her nearly completed works on several occasions because she (not the commissioner, mind you) was dissatisfied with it, and has earned the ire of several noble women because of this. But because Tatyana always returns her commission fee (with a ten percent increase for the 'inconvenience'), none have been able to take any legal action against her yet. Though there's always petty,
illegal action, of course.
