Agatha Award Best First Novel. She is also the author of Poppy Redfern: A Woman of World War II mystery series. And the author of the historical fictions; In Royal Service to the Queen and the newly released A Dress of Violet Taffeta.
Arlen lives in the Southwest with her family and two corgis where she gardens in summer and writes in winter.
She applied the Page 69 Test to A Dress of Violet Taffeta and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Tessa Arlen's website.“Daisy Brooke is over the moon about the dress you did for her, Lucy. She hasn’t stopped talking about it to everyone! With her as a patroness I think we can say that you have arrived!.” Elinor linked arms.Page 69 of A Dress of Violet Taffeta, set in England at the turn of the 20th century, works pretty well because it is a prelude to a family spat between a mother and her daughters. If we turn the page things get a little more interesting as the perennially discontented Mrs. Kennedy, the volatile Elinor Glyn, and the subject of the squabble, Lucy, drop all pretense and air their grievances.
Lucy’s natural caution had prevented her from being too carried away by the countess’s effusive note the day after the presentation. “Natural beauties are so easy to—"
“It should have been a success,” Mrs. Kennedy rushed in. “I don’t think Lucy had a single night’s sleep until Lady Brooke’s gown was finished.”
“I’m just grateful Lady Brooke was satisfied. Oof how we worked,” Lucy laughed, remembering the long hours she had spent with her sewing women, listening to their gossip, their stories about their families. “But she looked simply lovely in it—and she is very well connected.”
“And it would have been even more of a success if Lady Brooke had actually paid for it. The silk: yards and yards of the stuff. I hate to think of how much it cost us.” Mrs. Kennedy waved her muff in the air.
Lucy has come through a divorce—scandalous at the time—and is struggling to support herself and her five-year-old daughter by doing the only thing she knows how to do: make dresses. As the disagreement gathers force, Lucy realizes that the three of them have spent one day too many together and the tensions of the last two years are about to break. She tries to keep the peace between Elinor and Mrs. Kennedy only because it takes all her energy to keep her head above water as she tries to break into the cutthroat world of London fashion.
Mrs. Kennedy feels utterly justified in voicing her frustrations because in 1893 nice women from the upper-middle class did not divorce their husbands—even if they had run off with a pantomime dancer—neither did they go into ‘trade’ and encourage complete strangers to come to their house for dress- fittings in the dining room.
Elinor has domestic problems of her own. She is married to a man who is whipping through his fortune, at lightning speed, by renovating his country house and living the life of an American millionaire. So she is more than ready to be irritated and impatient with her mother, because it was she who worked hard to bring an influential and well-connected client to her sister. Clearly her mother knows nothing about ‘useful business contacts.’
A Dress of Violet Taffeta is a novel of real-life Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, a self-taught fashion designer, who went on to open fashion houses in London, New York and Paris at a time when the world was on the cusp of social and political change and women were determined to take their place in it.
See Tessa Arlen’s top five historical novels.
Coffee with a Canine: Tessa Arlen & Daphne.
The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.
The Page 69 Test: Death Sits Down to Dinner.
The Page 69 Test: A Death by Any Other Name.
The Page 69 Test: Death of an Unsung Hero.
The Page 69 Test: Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders.
Q&A with Tessa Arlen (April 2020).
The Page 69 Test: Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers.
Q&A with Tessa Arlen (December 2020).
The Page 69 Test: In Royal Service to the Queen.
--Marshal Zeringue
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