The low tables along the perimeter of the workroom, their tops messily shingled with trays of beads and sequins, boxes of buttons, and skeins of embroidery silk.” its bank of windows generously supplemented by hanging electric lights” and “scores of drawings and samples and photographs pinned to the whitewashed walls, with one entire section given over to the women of the royal family and their Hartnell gowns. and her left eyebrow would arch just so.” Robson vividly depicts the “large, brightly lit workroom.
What most charms is Robson’s portrait of the work itself: “Miss Duley’s eye was infallible: if a bead sat in the wrong direction, or one strand of satin stitch sat proud of the rest, or even one sequin was duller than its neighbors, she would notice. Robson, whose previous novels include Goodnight From London, is skilled at creating drama: the braided narrative shifts among three protagonists: Ann Hughes, a 25-year-old embroiderer in Hartnell’s London workroom Miriam Dassin, a French emigre and Holocaust survivor who becomes Ann’s co-worker and friend and Ann’s Canadian granddaughter, Heather, who receives – after her grandmother’s death in 2016 – a box of exquisite, embroidered flowers and sets out to discover their significance and her grandmother’s secret past.
It’s the work behind that art that forms the through-line of Jennifer Robson’s compelling and informative novel The Gown. star flowers, ears of wheat, jasmine blossoms, and smilax leaves,” plus crystal beads and pearls – was a Botticelli-inspired work of art. English designer Norman Hartnell (an inspiration for Phantom Thread) was given the commission, and the gown – with a 15ft train of tulle embroidered with “York roses. When Princess Elizabeth’s engagement to Philip Mountbatten was announced in 1947, her wedding dress was the subject of speculation and intrigue in war-exhausted England.
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