Articles liés à The Last Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and...
L'édition de cet ISBN n'est malheureusement plus disponible.
Afficher les exemplaires de cette édition ISBN
Extrait :
The Last Collection by Jeanne Mackin
A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel
Berkley
New York
Copyright © 2019 by Jeanne Mackin
Part 1
Blue
Of the three primary colors, blue is most suggestive of paradox: it is the color of longing and sadness, and yet it is also the color of joy and fulfillment. On a ship, at night, blue water merges into blue sky, so blue is the color of places with no borders, no edges.
If you throw salt into a fire, the flames will burn blue. Salt rubbed into a wound renews the pain, intensifies it. Seeing others kiss and embrace was salt in my wound, a blue flame burning the length of me.
Blue best represents the contradictions of the heart, the need to be loved and cherished at the same time that we wish for freedom.
Blue, the color of the Worth gown that the little girl Elsa Schiaparelli found in her Roman piazza attic, the color of the covers of the penny romances Coco Chanel found in the orphanage attic.
Blue is what made Elsa Schiaparelli’s daring color, shocking pink, so special: it is pink infused with blue, turning a demure blush into an electric surge. Schiaparelli turned girlish pink into the color of seduction by adding that touch of blue.
And always, there is the blue of the Paris sky on a June day.
Listen. I’m going to tell you a story about fashion, and politics. And of course, about love. The three primaries, like the primary colors.
1
New York, 1954
“For you.” Liz, the gallery assistant, handed me the telegram. Pale blue paper, bold blue lettering. I turned it over and over in my hands. During the war we had learned to dread telegrams. The war was over and whoever was coming home was already there, but dread remained, the fear of again reading those words, “We regret to inform you . . .”
“Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked.
“Of course.” I hesitated. The only people I loved, those still left to me, were just a few blocks away, downtown. No telegram would be needed, if something had happened to them; they were a local telephone call away. Open it, I ordered myself.
I sat on a packing crate and tore at the paper with my chipped fingernails, reminding myself that sometimes telegrams carried good news. It’s possible.
The message was brief. Come to Paris. Need to see you. Signed, Schiap.
Elsa Schiaparelli. Of course she would send a telegram instead of making a transatlantic phone call. It wasn’t the expense of the call but one of her many phobias and superstitions: she hated telephones. All the noise of the Madison Avenue gallery, the hammering, the whir of measuring tapes, the scraping of ladders being pushed across the floor, fell away. New York dissolved, and I was in Paris again.
I closed my eyes and remembered the accordion player on the corner of rue Saint-Honoré playing “Parlez-moi d’Amour,” the throaty laugh of Schiap as she shared a bit of gossip with her assistant, Bettina. Usually, it had been gossip about Coco Chanel, her archrival. Charlie, handsome in his tuxedo, blond bombshell Ania turning heads in the Ritz bar. The taste of strong café, the smell of yeasty bread, the colors, the gleam of the Eiffel Tower, the medieval miracles of rose windows in the churches.
How long had it been? I’d been twenty-five when I met Schiap in Paris. She’d been forty-eight, only nine years older than I was now. And I had thought of her as old, though she never had. “Women don’t age if their clothes stay new,” she had told me once. “Grown women must never dress childishly, but neither should they accept age as inevitable. It is not, not in fashion.”
After the war Schiap and I had gone separate ways, eager to get on with our lives, to return to what had been interrupted, to try to find what had been lost. Of course, there is no going back. Time is an arrow that flies forward, not back. I’d learned that particular lesson well. Too much looking over the shoulder turns you to salt, like Lot’s wife, salt which burns blue.
Even so, why did Schiap “need” to see me? Why not just “want” or even demand, as she was known to do? There had usually been a bit of drama in her messages, a bit of the self-importance and self-absorption often found in the personalities of the very driven, the very successful. She’d earned that drama, the very famous, some would say infamous, Elsa Schiaparelli, designer of the most beautiful, and sometimes most bizarre, women’s clothing ever worn.
“Bad news?” The assistant put down the wooden frame she was carrying.
“No. I don’t know what it’s about,” I said, folding up the telegram and putting it in my pocket. “Just from an old friend. In Paris.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. Mr. Rosenberg’s gallery employee was a caring person, likely to give you a hug for no reason, to hold your hand if she suspected you’d had bad news. I liked that quality in her, and I liked how her hands, pale and slender, reminded me of Ania.
“Paris. I’d love to go there some day. You’ve been, haven’t you?”
“Yes. I’ve been.” Oh, how I had been. “We’re just about done. Can we call it quits for today?” I needed to think about that telegram, to decide.
“But the show has to be hung by Monday.” She looked more worried than ever. It was my first show in the famous Rosenberg gallery, and not to be taken lightly. I had been in several group exhibits, and even sold some paintings, but if this show was well received . . . well. I’d be successfully on my way.
Liz looked at the telegram I was still holding. “Okay,” she agreed.
“We can finish tomorrow. Go. Go home.” And that was what Schiap had said to me once, years ago. Life was breaking into repetitive refrains, pulling me back.
The echo of her words didn’t startle me, though. It was the echoed action of opening a telegram and reading those words that had. Come to Paris. Need to see you. Exactly what my brother, Charlie, had written sixteen years ago.
Of course I would go. Impossible not to, in both cases. As Liz began to clean up, I found a scrap of paper and began the list-making needed for any complicated journey made during a busy time. I’d stay for my opening reception and then I’d take an airplane to Paris. An airplane! Before the war, the ocean had been busy with steamers to-ing and fro-ing; now, people traveled by air. It was cheaper. It was faster. Schiap had been one of the first to fly transatlantic, had loved the possibility of being in Paris for breakfast on Monday and New York for breakfast on Tuesday.
Liz folded the stepladder and gave me another concerned look over her spectacles, always worn low on her nose, the way Coco Chanel wore hers when she thought no one was looking. Outside the gallery window, Madison Avenue throbbed with life. New York had recovered from the war. The shelves in the neighborhood delis were full; the window displays at Bonwit Teller, Macy’s, Henri Bendel were opulent. The city was stronger than ever, like a flu patient who wakes up to find himself healthier for having spent a few days in bed.
The children out walking with their mothers or nannies that day were well-fed, rosy-cheeked in their winter hats and mittens; the women were dressed in their new postwar coats and dresses, mostly Dior and Dior knockoffs; the New Look, the yards of fabric in the full skirts speaking of wealth and prosperity, the pinched-in waists making women ultrafeminine once again.
The Madison Avenue women looked so gay in their new clothes, the fashions meant to restore the world to glory, or at least to normalcy. Schiap had taught me that. Clothes aren’t just clothes. They are moods, desires, the quality of our souls and our dreams made visible. The female shape morphs into the dreams and hopes of a generation. Clothes are alchemy, the philosopher’s stone, my friend Schiap would have said. The second skin, the chosen skin, the transforming art we wear on our backs.
During the war women were filling shells in ammunitions factories, spending lonely nights on top of skyscrapers listening for the angry growl of Messerschmitts. Perhaps they nursed the wounded at Normandy or the Ardennes. But that was over. Women were staying home, making families. New York was full of babies and strollers, and thanks to the new bras, women’s bosoms were as full and pointed as weaponry.
Every once in a while a different kind of woman would pass by the window with an expression in her eyes that made me wince: loss, the kind that paints permanent blue shadows around the eyes. My face had looked like that, during the war, after I’d opened my We regret to inform you . . . telegram.
I watched out the gallery window until Liz came out from the back room, jangling the door keys. The next time I stood and stared out a window the view would be of Place Vendôme, not Madison Avenue, the view outside Schiap’s boutique, that elegant, glorious circle of Paris where Napoleon stood guard on top of his tall colonnade. Napoleon and all his little soldiers. Except Charlie wouldn’t be there. And Ania . . . so many wouldn’t be there.
Okay, Schiap. Let’s hear what you have to say. Maybe she had some gossip about Coco Chanel, her old enemy? The thought made me smile. It would be like the old days, full of malice and fun. No. It wouldn’t be. Nothing would ever again be like the old days. And then I thought of even older days, the long sad days before I had met Schiap, when, young as I was, I thought my life was already over.
England 1938
There are moments of convergence in life when the stars align just so. Every mundane detail, from the burnt morning toast to the ladder in your new stockings, when the universe itself becomes a question demanding an answer. The answer will decide the rest of your life. Stay. Or go.
That moment, for me, occurred on June 6, 1938.
“Telegram for you,” said Gerald, the school physician, my supervisor, once my brother-in-law. By then, we had both said farewell to any family relationship, to anything other than stiff greetings, cold nods of the chin as we passed each other in the school halls or met to discuss work.
The telegram on his desk was from France and it had already been opened. Since I worked for the school, Gerald assumed any correspondence sent to me would be about a work matter and he could read it. He was wrong, this time.
“From your brother,” he added. He didn’t hand it to me. I had to reach over, pick it up from his desk.
Come to Paris. I want to see you. Arrived from Boston, here for the summer. Meet me at Café les Deux Magots. June 9. Two pm. Charlie.
I read it twice, then folded it and put it into my pocket.
“You won’t go, of course,” Gerald said, looking up from his folder of medical charts. “To see your brother.” His glance was icy. I didn’t blame him for this, nor was I surprised. If the situation were reversed, if I thought Gerald was responsible for the death of my brother, I’d give him the same look, even worse, a dragon look, a dragon breath to incinerate.
“I won’t?” I said.
“Classes aren’t finished. The term hasn’t ended.”
“Of course,” I said. “Here are the notes for the week.” I kept notes on the girls who took my art classes, especially those who had been ill, and Gerald, as school physician, read them dutifully. The boarding school had a reputation, an excellent one, of educating and caring for exceptional girls, especially those with serious and long-term health problems. There were several recovering polio victims, young girls with uncertain steps who needed daily therapy and exercise, and a girl with a stutter so severe she could barely speak. At the school, they were able to receive treatment while also living a social life with other girls their age.
Keeping the notes on the students was part of my contract with the school. Free room and board and a decent if not generous salary in exchange. It had seemed a suitable arrangement two years ago, after Allen’s funeral, when I had no idea of where and how I was to live. The school’s offer of employment had seemed an answer of sorts. And it meant I could stay where I had been happy with Allen.
Passing on those notes had come to feel like a betrayal to my students, a breaking of confidence. Art begins as a private exploration of dreams and desires and should be kept private till the artist deems it is ready to be shown. My notes to Gerald betrayed those secrets I discerned in the paintings and in our classroom conversations. What about those dark places that we need to keep for ourselves, those mysterious shadows where others couldn’t intrude with their shoulds and should nots, their Freudian theories and respectable dictates?
Florrie, a quiet girl with red braids, had confessed yesterday to sketching a nude male but had torn it up before anyone could see it. Next time, I told her, let me see it first. Hands and feet are difficult, all the bones, tendons. The other parts are actually rather easy. Look at Michelangelo’s statues. Simple geometry. Florrie, intelligent girl that she was, had the sense not to giggle. She’d be married in a few years. A mother soon after, a busy responsible woman with a trunk in the attic full of her unused art materials.
“The notes seem a little brief this week,” Gerald said, still not looking at me.
“There wasn’t much to write.” I certainly wasn’t about to reveal Florrie’s growing curiosity about the male physique. “Miserable weather, isn’t it?” Rain pelted at the windows, running down in sad rivulets. Not go to Paris? When Charlie has asked me to come see him?
“Good for the gardens.” Gerald studied the neatly arranged papers on his desk, pushing and sorting in a way that indicated this meeting was over.
“So much green,” I said.
Green is a secondary color made by mixing yellow and blue. Blue for sky, yellow for sun; chloros, or green, in nature. And that’s the problem: only the true greens of nature look believable. All other greens look what they are: imitation. Green is unreliable. There are so many wrong greens, greens where the yellow is too dominant, making a sickly tint like a fading bruise, or greens where the blue is too dark, making the green look like a storm cloud over an angry ocean. To me, only when green is accented with black does it look authentic in a painting, black pigment made from burnt bones. Fire. So much of life is about fire and destruction.
“Travel is very difficult these days,” Gerald said. “All those Austrian refugees clamoring at the embassies.”
The sad clock ticked. Footsteps rushed down the hall, one of the girls late for her class. I studied the pattern in the worn carpet, torn between obeying Gerald, and my duty to the school, and a growing desire to see Charlie. It had been a long time.
Gerald looked up and I could see in his face that awful puzzlement: Why is she alive, when my brother is dead? It was my fault, and it was unforgivable. I agreed.
I ate boiled beef and greens with the students and other faculty in the dining hall that night, and then went to my studio. I hadn’t painted since the accident, since Allen’s death. Colors defied me, wouldn’t come true. I would try a study in blue, but when it dried it would be gray, only gray, and I didn’t know if it was my vision that had changed or the paints themselves. It was like a singer losing her voice, knowing what the ...
Revue de presse :
A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel
Berkley
New York
Copyright © 2019 by Jeanne Mackin
Part 1
Blue
Of the three primary colors, blue is most suggestive of paradox: it is the color of longing and sadness, and yet it is also the color of joy and fulfillment. On a ship, at night, blue water merges into blue sky, so blue is the color of places with no borders, no edges.
If you throw salt into a fire, the flames will burn blue. Salt rubbed into a wound renews the pain, intensifies it. Seeing others kiss and embrace was salt in my wound, a blue flame burning the length of me.
Blue best represents the contradictions of the heart, the need to be loved and cherished at the same time that we wish for freedom.
Blue, the color of the Worth gown that the little girl Elsa Schiaparelli found in her Roman piazza attic, the color of the covers of the penny romances Coco Chanel found in the orphanage attic.
Blue is what made Elsa Schiaparelli’s daring color, shocking pink, so special: it is pink infused with blue, turning a demure blush into an electric surge. Schiaparelli turned girlish pink into the color of seduction by adding that touch of blue.
And always, there is the blue of the Paris sky on a June day.
Listen. I’m going to tell you a story about fashion, and politics. And of course, about love. The three primaries, like the primary colors.
1
New York, 1954
“For you.” Liz, the gallery assistant, handed me the telegram. Pale blue paper, bold blue lettering. I turned it over and over in my hands. During the war we had learned to dread telegrams. The war was over and whoever was coming home was already there, but dread remained, the fear of again reading those words, “We regret to inform you . . .”
“Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked.
“Of course.” I hesitated. The only people I loved, those still left to me, were just a few blocks away, downtown. No telegram would be needed, if something had happened to them; they were a local telephone call away. Open it, I ordered myself.
I sat on a packing crate and tore at the paper with my chipped fingernails, reminding myself that sometimes telegrams carried good news. It’s possible.
The message was brief. Come to Paris. Need to see you. Signed, Schiap.
Elsa Schiaparelli. Of course she would send a telegram instead of making a transatlantic phone call. It wasn’t the expense of the call but one of her many phobias and superstitions: she hated telephones. All the noise of the Madison Avenue gallery, the hammering, the whir of measuring tapes, the scraping of ladders being pushed across the floor, fell away. New York dissolved, and I was in Paris again.
I closed my eyes and remembered the accordion player on the corner of rue Saint-Honoré playing “Parlez-moi d’Amour,” the throaty laugh of Schiap as she shared a bit of gossip with her assistant, Bettina. Usually, it had been gossip about Coco Chanel, her archrival. Charlie, handsome in his tuxedo, blond bombshell Ania turning heads in the Ritz bar. The taste of strong café, the smell of yeasty bread, the colors, the gleam of the Eiffel Tower, the medieval miracles of rose windows in the churches.
How long had it been? I’d been twenty-five when I met Schiap in Paris. She’d been forty-eight, only nine years older than I was now. And I had thought of her as old, though she never had. “Women don’t age if their clothes stay new,” she had told me once. “Grown women must never dress childishly, but neither should they accept age as inevitable. It is not, not in fashion.”
After the war Schiap and I had gone separate ways, eager to get on with our lives, to return to what had been interrupted, to try to find what had been lost. Of course, there is no going back. Time is an arrow that flies forward, not back. I’d learned that particular lesson well. Too much looking over the shoulder turns you to salt, like Lot’s wife, salt which burns blue.
Even so, why did Schiap “need” to see me? Why not just “want” or even demand, as she was known to do? There had usually been a bit of drama in her messages, a bit of the self-importance and self-absorption often found in the personalities of the very driven, the very successful. She’d earned that drama, the very famous, some would say infamous, Elsa Schiaparelli, designer of the most beautiful, and sometimes most bizarre, women’s clothing ever worn.
“Bad news?” The assistant put down the wooden frame she was carrying.
“No. I don’t know what it’s about,” I said, folding up the telegram and putting it in my pocket. “Just from an old friend. In Paris.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. Mr. Rosenberg’s gallery employee was a caring person, likely to give you a hug for no reason, to hold your hand if she suspected you’d had bad news. I liked that quality in her, and I liked how her hands, pale and slender, reminded me of Ania.
“Paris. I’d love to go there some day. You’ve been, haven’t you?”
“Yes. I’ve been.” Oh, how I had been. “We’re just about done. Can we call it quits for today?” I needed to think about that telegram, to decide.
“But the show has to be hung by Monday.” She looked more worried than ever. It was my first show in the famous Rosenberg gallery, and not to be taken lightly. I had been in several group exhibits, and even sold some paintings, but if this show was well received . . . well. I’d be successfully on my way.
Liz looked at the telegram I was still holding. “Okay,” she agreed.
“We can finish tomorrow. Go. Go home.” And that was what Schiap had said to me once, years ago. Life was breaking into repetitive refrains, pulling me back.
The echo of her words didn’t startle me, though. It was the echoed action of opening a telegram and reading those words that had. Come to Paris. Need to see you. Exactly what my brother, Charlie, had written sixteen years ago.
Of course I would go. Impossible not to, in both cases. As Liz began to clean up, I found a scrap of paper and began the list-making needed for any complicated journey made during a busy time. I’d stay for my opening reception and then I’d take an airplane to Paris. An airplane! Before the war, the ocean had been busy with steamers to-ing and fro-ing; now, people traveled by air. It was cheaper. It was faster. Schiap had been one of the first to fly transatlantic, had loved the possibility of being in Paris for breakfast on Monday and New York for breakfast on Tuesday.
Liz folded the stepladder and gave me another concerned look over her spectacles, always worn low on her nose, the way Coco Chanel wore hers when she thought no one was looking. Outside the gallery window, Madison Avenue throbbed with life. New York had recovered from the war. The shelves in the neighborhood delis were full; the window displays at Bonwit Teller, Macy’s, Henri Bendel were opulent. The city was stronger than ever, like a flu patient who wakes up to find himself healthier for having spent a few days in bed.
The children out walking with their mothers or nannies that day were well-fed, rosy-cheeked in their winter hats and mittens; the women were dressed in their new postwar coats and dresses, mostly Dior and Dior knockoffs; the New Look, the yards of fabric in the full skirts speaking of wealth and prosperity, the pinched-in waists making women ultrafeminine once again.
The Madison Avenue women looked so gay in their new clothes, the fashions meant to restore the world to glory, or at least to normalcy. Schiap had taught me that. Clothes aren’t just clothes. They are moods, desires, the quality of our souls and our dreams made visible. The female shape morphs into the dreams and hopes of a generation. Clothes are alchemy, the philosopher’s stone, my friend Schiap would have said. The second skin, the chosen skin, the transforming art we wear on our backs.
During the war women were filling shells in ammunitions factories, spending lonely nights on top of skyscrapers listening for the angry growl of Messerschmitts. Perhaps they nursed the wounded at Normandy or the Ardennes. But that was over. Women were staying home, making families. New York was full of babies and strollers, and thanks to the new bras, women’s bosoms were as full and pointed as weaponry.
Every once in a while a different kind of woman would pass by the window with an expression in her eyes that made me wince: loss, the kind that paints permanent blue shadows around the eyes. My face had looked like that, during the war, after I’d opened my We regret to inform you . . . telegram.
I watched out the gallery window until Liz came out from the back room, jangling the door keys. The next time I stood and stared out a window the view would be of Place Vendôme, not Madison Avenue, the view outside Schiap’s boutique, that elegant, glorious circle of Paris where Napoleon stood guard on top of his tall colonnade. Napoleon and all his little soldiers. Except Charlie wouldn’t be there. And Ania . . . so many wouldn’t be there.
Okay, Schiap. Let’s hear what you have to say. Maybe she had some gossip about Coco Chanel, her old enemy? The thought made me smile. It would be like the old days, full of malice and fun. No. It wouldn’t be. Nothing would ever again be like the old days. And then I thought of even older days, the long sad days before I had met Schiap, when, young as I was, I thought my life was already over.
England 1938
There are moments of convergence in life when the stars align just so. Every mundane detail, from the burnt morning toast to the ladder in your new stockings, when the universe itself becomes a question demanding an answer. The answer will decide the rest of your life. Stay. Or go.
That moment, for me, occurred on June 6, 1938.
“Telegram for you,” said Gerald, the school physician, my supervisor, once my brother-in-law. By then, we had both said farewell to any family relationship, to anything other than stiff greetings, cold nods of the chin as we passed each other in the school halls or met to discuss work.
The telegram on his desk was from France and it had already been opened. Since I worked for the school, Gerald assumed any correspondence sent to me would be about a work matter and he could read it. He was wrong, this time.
“From your brother,” he added. He didn’t hand it to me. I had to reach over, pick it up from his desk.
Come to Paris. I want to see you. Arrived from Boston, here for the summer. Meet me at Café les Deux Magots. June 9. Two pm. Charlie.
I read it twice, then folded it and put it into my pocket.
“You won’t go, of course,” Gerald said, looking up from his folder of medical charts. “To see your brother.” His glance was icy. I didn’t blame him for this, nor was I surprised. If the situation were reversed, if I thought Gerald was responsible for the death of my brother, I’d give him the same look, even worse, a dragon look, a dragon breath to incinerate.
“I won’t?” I said.
“Classes aren’t finished. The term hasn’t ended.”
“Of course,” I said. “Here are the notes for the week.” I kept notes on the girls who took my art classes, especially those who had been ill, and Gerald, as school physician, read them dutifully. The boarding school had a reputation, an excellent one, of educating and caring for exceptional girls, especially those with serious and long-term health problems. There were several recovering polio victims, young girls with uncertain steps who needed daily therapy and exercise, and a girl with a stutter so severe she could barely speak. At the school, they were able to receive treatment while also living a social life with other girls their age.
Keeping the notes on the students was part of my contract with the school. Free room and board and a decent if not generous salary in exchange. It had seemed a suitable arrangement two years ago, after Allen’s funeral, when I had no idea of where and how I was to live. The school’s offer of employment had seemed an answer of sorts. And it meant I could stay where I had been happy with Allen.
Passing on those notes had come to feel like a betrayal to my students, a breaking of confidence. Art begins as a private exploration of dreams and desires and should be kept private till the artist deems it is ready to be shown. My notes to Gerald betrayed those secrets I discerned in the paintings and in our classroom conversations. What about those dark places that we need to keep for ourselves, those mysterious shadows where others couldn’t intrude with their shoulds and should nots, their Freudian theories and respectable dictates?
Florrie, a quiet girl with red braids, had confessed yesterday to sketching a nude male but had torn it up before anyone could see it. Next time, I told her, let me see it first. Hands and feet are difficult, all the bones, tendons. The other parts are actually rather easy. Look at Michelangelo’s statues. Simple geometry. Florrie, intelligent girl that she was, had the sense not to giggle. She’d be married in a few years. A mother soon after, a busy responsible woman with a trunk in the attic full of her unused art materials.
“The notes seem a little brief this week,” Gerald said, still not looking at me.
“There wasn’t much to write.” I certainly wasn’t about to reveal Florrie’s growing curiosity about the male physique. “Miserable weather, isn’t it?” Rain pelted at the windows, running down in sad rivulets. Not go to Paris? When Charlie has asked me to come see him?
“Good for the gardens.” Gerald studied the neatly arranged papers on his desk, pushing and sorting in a way that indicated this meeting was over.
“So much green,” I said.
Green is a secondary color made by mixing yellow and blue. Blue for sky, yellow for sun; chloros, or green, in nature. And that’s the problem: only the true greens of nature look believable. All other greens look what they are: imitation. Green is unreliable. There are so many wrong greens, greens where the yellow is too dominant, making a sickly tint like a fading bruise, or greens where the blue is too dark, making the green look like a storm cloud over an angry ocean. To me, only when green is accented with black does it look authentic in a painting, black pigment made from burnt bones. Fire. So much of life is about fire and destruction.
“Travel is very difficult these days,” Gerald said. “All those Austrian refugees clamoring at the embassies.”
The sad clock ticked. Footsteps rushed down the hall, one of the girls late for her class. I studied the pattern in the worn carpet, torn between obeying Gerald, and my duty to the school, and a growing desire to see Charlie. It had been a long time.
Gerald looked up and I could see in his face that awful puzzlement: Why is she alive, when my brother is dead? It was my fault, and it was unforgivable. I agreed.
I ate boiled beef and greens with the students and other faculty in the dining hall that night, and then went to my studio. I hadn’t painted since the accident, since Allen’s death. Colors defied me, wouldn’t come true. I would try a study in blue, but when it dried it would be gray, only gray, and I didn’t know if it was my vision that had changed or the paints themselves. It was like a singer losing her voice, knowing what the ...
Praise for The Last Collection
“A fascinating insight into a war of passion and ambition set amid the looming threat of the Nazi invasion of Paris. With elegant, vibrant writing, Mackin cleverly captures the infamous rivalry between Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli in a novel that historical fiction fans will savor.”—Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter
"Sophisticated couture wars and looming world wars take center stage in Mackin’s latest, with a plot that buzzes with love triangles and political intrigue. A gorgeous meditation on art, fashion, and heartbreak. Stunning."—Fiona Davis, national bestselling author of The Masterpiece
“An in-depth tale of an enchanting, dangerous and fascinating time period in Paris. Mackin’s attention to detail and lyrical prose bring Chanel and Schiaparelli to life in a gorgeous and riveting manner.”—She Reads
"The designers’ obsession with besting each other makes for fun, gossipy reading, while the tensions of prewar Paris and Lily’s attempts to ease her grief through her art lend the narrative satisfying emotional depth."—Library Journal
“A smart, witty, heartfelt, and riveting look at the infamous rivalry between Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli set against a gripping period in history. Mackin’s powerful novel brings these characters to life and transports the reader, juxtaposing both the gaiety and tension of Paris on the brink of war. As elegant and captivating as the designs depicted in the novel, The Last Collection is the perfect read for both historical fiction lovers and fashion aficionados. Simply stunning.”—Chanel Cleeton, USA Today bestselling author of Next Year in Havana
“A skillful weave of compelling characters grappling for both fortune and affirmation, and set against a vivid backdrop--first the glittering cosmos of Paris fashion, then the hardships of World War 2, and then the remains of beauty after war. Beautiful prose and imagery enrich every page. Mackin is an insightful, engaging storyteller.”—Susan Meissner, author of As Bright As Heaven
“A wonderful story of two intensely creative women, their vibrant joie de vivre, and backbiting competition played out against the increasingly ominous threat of the Nazi invasion of Paris.”—Shelley Noble, New York Times bestselling author of Lighthouse Beach
“A vibrant portrait of two designers cut from very different cloth, The Last Collection pits bold Coco Chanel and colorful Elsa Schiaparelli against each other in a fiery feud even as the ominous clouds of World War II darken the horizon. A captivating read!”—Stephanie Marie Thornton, author of American Princess
"As Hitler and the Nazis gather strength and the world braces for war, Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, whose politics differ as much as their couture, wage a war of their own....Jeanne Mackin takes the reader on an enthralling journey, complete with such vivid descriptions of the clothing, you can practically see them on the page. Beautifully rendered and meticulously researched, The Last Collection is a must read."—Renee Rosen, author of Park Avenue Summer
“The Last Collection brings to center stage the fascinating life of Elsa Schiaparelli in a story that is as elegantly constructed as the clothes she designed. The combination of Schiap’s fierce rivalry with Coco Chanel and the inevitable war makes for a palpable tension, and Jeanne Mackin ultimately delivers an ending that is beautiful, heartbreaking, and perfect in every way.”—Michelle Gable, New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment
“A fascinating insight into a war of passion and ambition set amid the looming threat of the Nazi invasion of Paris. With elegant, vibrant writing, Mackin cleverly captures the infamous rivalry between Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli in a novel that historical fiction fans will savor.”—Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter
"Sophisticated couture wars and looming world wars take center stage in Mackin’s latest, with a plot that buzzes with love triangles and political intrigue. A gorgeous meditation on art, fashion, and heartbreak. Stunning."—Fiona Davis, national bestselling author of The Masterpiece
“An in-depth tale of an enchanting, dangerous and fascinating time period in Paris. Mackin’s attention to detail and lyrical prose bring Chanel and Schiaparelli to life in a gorgeous and riveting manner.”—She Reads
"The designers’ obsession with besting each other makes for fun, gossipy reading, while the tensions of prewar Paris and Lily’s attempts to ease her grief through her art lend the narrative satisfying emotional depth."—Library Journal
“A smart, witty, heartfelt, and riveting look at the infamous rivalry between Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli set against a gripping period in history. Mackin’s powerful novel brings these characters to life and transports the reader, juxtaposing both the gaiety and tension of Paris on the brink of war. As elegant and captivating as the designs depicted in the novel, The Last Collection is the perfect read for both historical fiction lovers and fashion aficionados. Simply stunning.”—Chanel Cleeton, USA Today bestselling author of Next Year in Havana
“A skillful weave of compelling characters grappling for both fortune and affirmation, and set against a vivid backdrop--first the glittering cosmos of Paris fashion, then the hardships of World War 2, and then the remains of beauty after war. Beautiful prose and imagery enrich every page. Mackin is an insightful, engaging storyteller.”—Susan Meissner, author of As Bright As Heaven
“A wonderful story of two intensely creative women, their vibrant joie de vivre, and backbiting competition played out against the increasingly ominous threat of the Nazi invasion of Paris.”—Shelley Noble, New York Times bestselling author of Lighthouse Beach
“A vibrant portrait of two designers cut from very different cloth, The Last Collection pits bold Coco Chanel and colorful Elsa Schiaparelli against each other in a fiery feud even as the ominous clouds of World War II darken the horizon. A captivating read!”—Stephanie Marie Thornton, author of American Princess
"As Hitler and the Nazis gather strength and the world braces for war, Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, whose politics differ as much as their couture, wage a war of their own....Jeanne Mackin takes the reader on an enthralling journey, complete with such vivid descriptions of the clothing, you can practically see them on the page. Beautifully rendered and meticulously researched, The Last Collection is a must read."—Renee Rosen, author of Park Avenue Summer
“The Last Collection brings to center stage the fascinating life of Elsa Schiaparelli in a story that is as elegantly constructed as the clothes she designed. The combination of Schiap’s fierce rivalry with Coco Chanel and the inevitable war makes for a palpable tension, and Jeanne Mackin ultimately delivers an ending that is beautiful, heartbreaking, and perfect in every way.”—Michelle Gable, New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
- ÉditeurBerkley
- Date d'édition2019
- ISBN 10 0593099338
- ISBN 13 9780593099339
- ReliureBroché
- Nombre de pages352
- Evaluation vendeur
Acheter neuf
En savoir plus sur cette édition
EUR 14,23
Frais de port :
EUR 5,03
Vers Etats-Unis
Meilleurs résultats de recherche sur AbeBooks
Image d'archives
Last Collection, The
Edité par
Berkley - Us
(2019)
ISBN 10 : 0593099338
ISBN 13 : 9780593099339
Neuf
Paperback
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Paperback. Etat : New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title!. N° de réf. du vendeur 100-39860
Acheter neuf
EUR 14,23
Autre devise