I've been reading the latest volume in Loretta Chase’s Dressmakers series and enjoying the clothes. The three Noiret sisters run a high-class dressmaking establishment in 1830s London and the gowns play an active role in the stories – beyond being removed by the heroes. Readers of The TwoNerdyHistoryGirls blog know how devoted Chase and her cohort Isabella Bradford are to costume history.
It got me thinking about dress
designers as heroes: As a Project Runway aficionado I know there’s a token
straight guy in every season. A quick google of “straight fashion designers”
brought up Roberto Cavalli, Tommy Hilfinger, Ralph Lauren, Oscar De La Renta, and
Christian Lacroix, to name a few. To get historical (as you do), Charles Worth,
the father of haute couture, was married with children.
The point of this exercise is not
to make a point about stereotyping in the fashion industry, but rather to
wonder why designer isn’t a suitable job for a romance hero. I could remember
only one––a book by Mary Burchell I had read decades ago. An appeal to Twitter gave
me the name of the Burchell––Under the
Stars of Paris––and one other title, thanks to Fiona Marsden––the aptly
named Designing Man by Rachel
Lindsay. A quick trip to Amazon and a week later I had both volumes in hand for
an all-too-brief orgy of reading.
I’m glad I read
Designing Man first because it’s the
lesser book. Originally published by Mills & Boon in 1964, it was reissued
as a Harlequin Presents in 1979. I think some updating had taken place––I’m
fairly sure people weren’t drinking margaritas in London in the early 60s––but
the heroine’s situation is quite advanced. Alix Smith runs her own public
relations business and makes it very clear she enjoys her work and doesn’t long
to be married. She has a would-be boyfriend, who is a successful architect, and
a male assistant of whom she is very much the boss.
The title could just as well be
Designing Men because Alix is hired by the fashion house of Duval whose
founder, Henri Duval, is at loggerheads with his son Paul. Henri, who has
failed to move with the times, creates lavish mother-of-the-bride type outfits
for an aging clientele; Paul’s garments are innovative and modern. Alix gets
her actress friend Dina to wear Duval clothes in her new play but of course she
picks Paul’s designs. The rivalry between father and son is exacerbated when both
appear to be pursuing Dina. Someone steals the new Duval collection at the last
minute and private information about the family is sold to a gossip column.
Paul, who didn’t want his father to hire her, seems to blame Alix for the
problems.
 |
| Faun? |
I appreciate that Paul is not a
typical hero. Oddly, he is several times described as resembling a faun––I’m
not altogether sure what this means. Here is his first appearance:
“Where Henri Duval was a powerful
six-footer, his son was slight in build and only a few inches taller than
herself; where the father was blond, with a florid complexion and firm voice,
the son was pale and brown-haired, with a quiet voice and the faintest
suggestion of a stammer.”
Paul is no pushover, however and I
liked him a lot. I just wanted more of him. Things start to heat up when he
makes Alix a gorgeous gown for a big party. (There’s a hint, girl! He likes
you!) Then someone is killed and the story veers off into a whodunit.
 |
| Or faun? |
I enjoyed the book for the
characters, the setting, and quite a decent murder mystery, but the romance is
a little thin. While I’m all for a bit of plot in my romances, I want to see
the hero and heroine fall in love. They don’t spend enough time together for my
taste, and once it is clear they are attracted to each other, the obstacles
thrown in their way seem contrived.
In Mary Burchell’s enormously
entertaining book, our heroine Anthea Marlowe, stranded in Paris with only 50
francs to her name, falls into a job at Florian’s couture house. Anthea is
renamed Gabrielle for modeling purposes and she closes the show in the wedding
dress, designed by Monsieur Florian for a girl of her type who broke her leg.
Anthea is suffering from pride: her
father has remarried a woman called Millicent––“the type of good-looking,
sophisticated, slightly malicious person who always amused him”––and her fiancé
Michael has ditched her for another woman. She isn’t in danger of starvation
but neither does she wish to go home to London looking pathetic. The job at
Florian saves her and she finds she loves the work and the place: the
excitement of showing the Collection, the vendeuses, the sewing women, the
other models (except the bitchy Héloïse).
 |
| Dior gown, 1954, just because |
And then there’s Florian, the
creative genius behind the operation. Like Paul, he does not at first appear
typical hero material: “a slight, fair-haired man with beautiful hands,
thinning hair and the air of an exhausted and impatient schoolboy.” He is also
38 to Anthea’s 21, a fairly typical age difference in books of that era. Make
no mistake, Florian is a raging alpha. He is dictatorial, ruthless, and not
always very nice; the pages fairly crackle whenever he appears. He treats
Anthea well, protecting her from some of the salon politics, but initially his
kindness is almost whimsical. Anthea admires and respects her boss, but she’s
still getting over Michael and she has a new admirer in British diplomat Roger
(“solid, dependable, a darling––the stuff of which good husbands were made.” In
other words, a romance dead end.)
Anthea is a wonderful heroine, a
little bit naïve but never stupid or spineless. She prefers to think the best
of people and accepts Florian’s careless generosity at face value, until he
uses her in a malicious plot against his opera singer ex-mistress. This
involves her wearing a white mink cloak to a performance of Tosca. (Can you tell how much I love
this book?) When Anthea catches on to Florian’s attempt to upstage the diva,
she ruins the plot and tears a strip off him for his poor behavior.
After that, of course, Florian is a
goner. It takes Anthea a bit longer to realize her feelings: “In all the world
there was no other dress house where Florian would come in––worn and impatient,
smiling and indulgent, sardonic and amusing, arrogant and brilliant.”
But Florian, besides thinking he’s
too old and cynical for her, believes her in love with Roger. We don’t get his
point of view, but Burchell manages to convey the progress of his feelings to
the reader while concealing them from the despairing heroine:
Odette had once declared that he
could be a monster. She had also spoken of his occasional quick cruelty. But
Anthea felt she could have forgiven all those theoretical faults, if only he
had not been so coolly, monumentally indifferent.
 |
| Another 1954 Dior. Green! |
The declaration is beautiful.
Florian thinks she wants to go back to England with Roger; she thinks he wants
her to go. Terribly hurt, she asks why he wants to get rid of her and forces
him to admit his feelings. Finally, kisses.
I absolutely loved Under the Stars of Paris. Loved, loved,
loved. Originally published by M&B in 1954 (Harlequin 1978), the fashions
gave me delicious New Look vibes. I cannot tell you how much I want the “dress
of stiffened lace in an indescribably beautiful shade of iridescent green” that
plays a dramatic role in the plot. (Bitchy Héloïse misleads Anthea into
borrowing the gown for a party. Florian sees her in the illicitly borrowed
dress and someone spills red wine on it. Florian spirits her upstairs where he
rips away the stained lace, removes a panel from the skirt, and drapes a new
bodice on the gown in about five minutes. Now there’s a useful man.)
Burchell is a delightful writer
with a nicely acerbic turn of phrase that keeps me smiling throughout. Her
secondary character are well drawn and nuanced. Florian addresses Anthea as
“petite” and “mon enfant” which I usually dislike but, given the age difference
and the fact that she is his employee, I didn’t mind it here. I believe in their
HEA and know that Anthea will be no doormat. In the last scene, when a senior
employee disturbs the declared lovers, we get a sharp Burchell observation. “In
her bright, knowing, already respectful glance, Anthea suddenly saw herself
reflected, not as Gabrielle, but as Madame Florian.”
I am a definite convert to designing heroes. I am told that Rose Lerner's historical A Lily Among Thorns has a tailor hero; I look forward to the book's re-release in September. If you know of any other titles, please let me know.
%2Blow%2Bres%2B72%2Bdpi%2B%40%2B500%2Bpx.jpg)
