A Dress of Violet Taffeta by Tessa Arlen

Publishes July 5, 2022

Tessa Arlen is the author of the Woman of World War II Mysteries and the novel In Royal Service to the Queen. Born in Singapore, the daughter of a British diplomat, she has lived in Egypt, Germany, the Persian Gulf, China, and India. She now lives with her husband in historic Santa Fe, where she gardens in summer and writes in winter.

The Grateful Reader Review by Dorothy Schwab

This is an inspirational novel based on the true story of Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, and the design house she created, Lucille Ltd. In 1893, Lucy finds herself divorced from an alcoholic, spendthrift husband, needing to support herself and her five-year-old daughter. Lucy’s one skill is dress design and a natural vision for color and line.

Tessa Arlen’s characters are developed from deep research into Lucy’s background, the history of her designs, her sister Elinor’s support through her influential friend circle, and despite Lucy’s pretentious, overbearing mother. Arlen highlights Lucy’s business acumen in discovering, hiring, and depending on Celia and the ensuing staff required. From the beginning when Lucy designs her first dress of violet taffeta, named “A Dream of Endless Summer,” readers will be enthralled with the “fairy-tale dress” described by Celia as “all light and shadows and as ethereal as gossamer.” Overcoming the fact that only men were designers in haute couture, Lucy was driven to succeed as the first woman known for her original gowns and creative ideas for presenting the first fashion shows. In this “designer’s dream,” Tessa Arlen laces together strands of women’s independence, ingenuity, and trust with the real world of turn of the century couture, presentation to royalty, Warwick Castle, and even the sailing of the Titanic. Readers will want a gossamer ball gown and a glittering gala to attend when the last model dons A Dress of Violet Taffeta.