What Inspired Me To Write The Perfect Dress
Auspicious maybe, but a comment I remember from my childhood was: ‘Louisa has very interesting dress sense’. According to my mother, I used to rock-up to primary school wearing jewellery made from tin foil, homemade shoes, and my favourite vest over the top of everything – very ahead of the underwear-as-outerwear trend.
I can remember admiring the lacy hem and thinking: that’s the lovely bit, so why hide it? Since those days, life has twisted and tumbled down all sorts of surprising paths, but here I am, decades later, researching and writing about dresses. I’m sure there are those who’ll suggest that preoccupation with one’s outer appearance implies vanity or shallowness, but I defy them.
The relationship between humans and clothing says so much about who we are, how we live, how we feel and what we aspire to. Fran, the heroine of The Perfect Dress, understands this instinctively. In fact, she’s made it her raison d’etre, namely in the cannon of that most significant of sartorial statements: the wedding dress.
The idea for the novel came to me while writing web copy for London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, the world’s leading art and design museum. The first subject assigned to me was their collection of bridal wear. It was a pinch-me-now-I’ve-been-given-a-dream-job moment, being paid to contemplate exquisite, historic wedding dresses.
Yet it wasn’t just the dresses that fascinated me, but the personal stories behind them. From demure to ultimate glamour, from the courtesan’s sack-back gown to the ever-changing Victorian silhouette, the thirties to the sixties to the nineties, these dresses were as varied in character as the women who wore them – and it struck me that the spirit of these women seemed very much present, embodied in the fabric and stitches.
What if there was a bridal shop that sold similarly fantastic vintage dresses, but traded not just on the gowns themselves, but on the wisdom and insight of the brides who originally wore them? The best marital advice you could ever get – whisperings from those who’ve been there, done it, and got the big, white meringue to show for it! I knew straight away I had the makings of a story, but I also had lots of life to live, including myself getting married, moving house and raising three children, one of whom was only a baby, so the idea was shelved until my belated honeymoon in Venice.
The sight of myriads of Japanese wedding couples enjoying photo opportunities in one of Europe’s most romantic cities set my writing addiction alight. All weekend I could do nothing but talk through plot ideas with my brand-new/long-suffering husband.
I went home and poured my heart into creating the loveliest story I could, my antidote to all the wrong in the world, something to escape into. Fran Delaney and her unique bridal shop, The Whispering Dress, found form. Fran knows there’s a dress for everyone. It’s not about following trends, but about helping a bride be herself – her best self. What Fran also knows is that sometimes a bride needs a little help figuring out who that best self is. Thankfully she has a collection of handpicked, hand-restored dresses, each with their own unique and wonderful backstory, ready to save the day.
Although Fran has made a career out of assisting others achieve marital bliss, her own love life seems to be on permanent hold. When she stumbles across an astonishing fifties couture gown during a house clearance, she encounters Rafael Colt, son of the dress’s mysterious original bride, who is only too happy to let Fran take the ‘ridiculous’ gown away and do what she will. Evidently Rafael is not the wedded-bliss type. Love-jaded, cynical and very tight-coiled, he bids Fran a frosty farewell. Given their opposition in attitude and character, Fran assumes their paths will never cross again . . . but the whispers of the dress have other ideas.
Essentially it’s a modern English love story that looks back to the charm of the past. There’s a dusting of magic, but it’s lightly sewn, a thread of silk for the reader to take from it what they want.
Writing it has changed the way I feel about clothes. If I have a special occasion, I no longer reach for the high street, but look for something pre-loved and special. One day my husband and I might do the vow renewal thing. If so, I would want a Fran Delaney in my life, to navigate me towards the vintage couture wedding dress of my dreams. Not just one that looks gorgeous, but one that radiates warmth and wisdom and heart and soul. One that can whisper . . . and hopefully tell me that, yes, childcare gets easier!
—
Louisa Leaman was born, raised and lives in Epping Forest near London. She writes contemporary romantic fiction. Her debut, The Perfect Dress, will be published by Transworld Books in October 2019. Rights have been sold to the US, Germany, Italy and Spain. She studied Art History at Leeds University, became a teacher working with children with special needs, then turned to writing after winning the Times Education Supplement’s new writer’s award. She has written a number of teaching guides and children’s books for Hachette. She is currently working on her second book and also writes for the Victoria and Albert Museum, the world’s leading museum of art and design. When she isn’t busy writing or rearing three lively children, she paints portraits, goes running and spends far too long browsing in vintage clothing shops.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:
https://louisaleaman.wordpress.com
https://twitter.com/louisaleaman
https://www.instagram.com/louisaleaman/
https://www.facebook.com/LouisaLeamanAuthor/
The Perfect Dress
The right dress can transform your life…
Francesca Delaney has an eye for fashion; specifically she can look at a bride and find her the perfectdress. But the gown isn’t off the rack … instead Fran carefully selects it from her collection of bespoke vintage gowns, lovingly curated and waiting in her shop to meet their destined bride. The pre-loved frocks range from a 1920s flapper to a scarlet evening gown, but each dress seems to give its bride exactly what she needs to shine on her big day.
The brides-to-be think Fran’s success is all her own but she would say there’s a little magic involved as well… the dresses seem to whisper their secrets to her. With this in mind, she works by two rules; never covet your own stock and never sell a ‘dead’ dress – otherwise known as a dress worn to seal a doomed marriage.
But Fran breaks both these rules the day she finds a beautiful 1950s couture floor-length gown. In her desperation to know the dress’s history she inadvertently becomes entangled with the original owner’s son, the beautiful but standoffish Rafael Colt…
Can Fran unpick the mysteries that both Rafael and the dress are hiding?
Category: On Writing
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
