The Fashion Orphans
Flashpoints erupt in the lives of estranged, debt-ridden, and opposite half-sisters (Gap vs. Bergdorf's; denim vs. cashmere) when instead of an expected fortune, they inherit a walk-in jammed with vintage luxury Chanel—forcing them to work—or starve— together.
From Randy Susan Meyers and M.J. Rose
Half-sisters Gabrielle Winslow and Lulu Quattro have only two things in common: mounds of debt and coils of unresolved enmity toward Bette Bradford, their controlling and imperious recently deceased mother.
Gabrielle, the firstborn, was raised in relative luxury on Manhattan’s rarefied Upper East Side. Now, at fifty-five, her life as a Broadway costume designer married to a heralded Broadway producer has exploded in divorce.
Lulu, who spent half her childhood under the tutelage of her working-class Brooklyn grandparents, is a grieving widow at forty-eight. With her two sons grown, her life feels reduced to her work at the Ditmas Park bakery owned by her late husband’s family.
The two sisters arrive for the reading of their mother’s will, expecting to divide a sizable inheritance, pay off their debts, and then again turn their backs on each other.
But to their shock, what they have been left is their mother’s secret walk-in closet jammed with high-end current and vintage designer clothes and accessories— most from Chanel.
Contemplating the scale of their mother’s self-indulgence, the sisters can’t help but wonder if Lauren Weisberger had it wrong: because it seems, in fact, that the devil wore Chanel. But as they being to explore their mother’s collection, meet and fall in love with her group of warm, wonderful friends, and magically find inspiring messages tucked away in her treasures — it seems as though their mother is advising Lulu and Gabrielle from the beyond — helping them rediscover themselves and restore their relationship with each other.
Praise
“A fabulous story that dives into the complicated relationships of family, and offers a stylish escape into the world of high fashion and Chanel. Simply captivating!”
–NYT bestseller, Jennifer Probst
“This cowriting project is sure to please fans of Rose (Cartier’s Hope) and Meyers (The Widow of Wall Street). Estranged half-sisters Lulu and Gabrielle aren’t very close, but they will have to work together to decode the last wishes of their deceased mother, Bette, who wanted her daughters to sort out the contents of her apartment. Lulu, Bette’s younger daughter, is widowed; she still works at her late husband’s bakery and is drowning in debt. Gabrielle is recently divorced and disgraced after her ex-husband and his girlfriend trashed her name and ruined her career as a costume designer. When the sisters search through their mother’s things, which they must catalogue and make final plans for, they find her hidden closet of vintage Chanel. With the help of Bette’s friends and the owner of the bookshop where Gabrielle works, Lulu and Gabrielle decide what to do with their mother’s Chanel collection—but when they must make sacrifices to realize their dream for the collection, they’ll have to face the possibility of failure. Their mother’s encouragement from beyond the grave turns out to be more support than she’d ever given them when she was alive.”
—Library Journal
“Loved it! Family drama, sisters, friends, Chanel — all with a happy and satisfying ending! Took me right out of this cold pandemic winter in the best possible way.—Kathleen Crowley, Belmont Books
“This is a beautiful book about family both real and found. It is about reconnecting with the family that you are born into and forging new familial type connections with people you may not be not related to by blood. If you are feeling down about the state of the world and people’s horrible treatment of one another, you are definitely going to want to read this book. There are so many good, kind, and caring characters in this book, it will make you feel hopeful. You will wish you could be a part of this family group.”
—Says Me Says Mom
“I am a fan of Randy Susan Meyers (Waisted) and M.J. Rose (The Last Tiara, Cartier’s Hope and many historical novels) and together they have written a great novel at its core about family and putting the past behind them and moving forward. The whole Chanel part is the historical look at the famed designer and the whole novel is just great.”–Red Carpet Crash
A wonderful book about sisters and friendships and how strong women are, no matter what the circumstances” ~ Sue, Goodreads Reviewer
“Heartwarming, feel-good story. The Fashion Orphans is a fashion-infused novel that is like the older, wiser aunt to The Devil Wears Prada or Sex in the City.” ~ Leighton, Goodreads Reviewer
“A great read, well-paced and interesting throughout. This story is a tribute to strong women and a fascinating depiction of the Chanel brand..” ~ Lynne M, Goodreads Reviewer
“One of my very favorite books this year. I just adored every word of this beautifully written book. It will hold a special place in this reader’s heart. ~ Michelegg, Goodreads Reviewer
Backstory: The Fashion Orphans
Nurture? Nature? Culture? Imagination? The Thin Lines of Fiction
When you grow up a fatherless daughter of a fatherless mother, where does your outlook on family begin? Culture? Nurture?
My mother worked hard, partied harder, and resembled a movie star when dolled up. My sister and I watched her transform as we three raced around, getting ready for school and work each morning. Mom applied her makeup at the same time, the same place, leaving her purse (with her cosmetics) in the bathroom, in position for her return to brush her hair.
I’d rush into the vacated bathroom and, with a polished skill belying my years (10, 11, 12), swipe anywhere from one to five dollars from her wallet. (Years later, I learned my sister did the same.)
Dinner consisted of whatever cereal my sister shook into the bowl or a walk to George’s Luncheonette on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn.
Nice clothes being rare, I snatched (stole?) what I could from my sister and mother’s closets.
Every family has a hierarchy; ours resembled an open-door prison. Mom was the warden. My sister and I, the inmates, fought for money, food, and scraps, often turning on each other—sometimes teaming up. I escaped whenever possible (sometimes clear across New York City, once to Montreal), easing back into the apartment like the seasoned sneak I’d become.
Then Mom remarried. Nightly dinner appeared on the table. We had a car. Two parents. Our extended family grew to include multitudes of cousins, aunts, and uncles we were eager to please. Our new stepsisters matched each of our ages! We simulated a normal family, which pleased me to no end. We barely had to steal for money, what with having a kind stepfather who offered cash when we needed.
I slipped into my new role like butter. How? Television is my only explanation. I watched Make Room for Daddy as religiously as my friends attended church and temple, latching onto the flickering stories of traditional nuclear families. I gorged on novelized wisdom from Little Women to Marjorie Morningstar. Newspapers fascinated me early on. At eight, I determined that President Kennedy and First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy were my birth parents. They’d stuck me in Brooklyn to demonstrate cream rising to the top.
Media educated me and allowed me to fall into the warm chicken soup of a new family and pretend it could be reality.
Nurture? That I never trusted for a minute.
My past educates me in every novel— in my first The Murderer’s Daughters, I ‘what-iffed’ the time my father tried to kill mother into a domestic homicide of Dickensian proportions. Accidents of Marriage? I transmogrified emotionally damaging criticism to a tragic accident. Growing up as an outsider who fit in nowhere (or everywhere, with a good enough mask in place) translated to The Comfort of Lies, where three women simultaneously reject and claim a lost little girl.
The Widow of Wall Street allowed me to explore my life-long fascination with crime: does it pay or does it not? The family where I grew up skewed in favor of distrust and cheating— I believed everything would become kittens and ice cream with a new family (my birth parents, the Kennedys!).
I longed for the cultural norms of living a righteous life.
Waisted took every criticism I faced growing up (about my weight) and turned it into a righteous fantasy of revenge and reparation.
In my upcoming novel, The Fashion Orphans, which I co-authored with the multi-talented M.J. Rose, we planned something entirely new for us. She’d concentrated on magic, history, mystery, jewels, and the beauty surrounding us; I’d written of dark domestic drama and families touched by tragedy and crime.
In The Fashion Orphans, we planned a reach into a more bubbly arena—with half-sisters-of-a-certain-age at odds, an unexpected inheritance nowhere near their expectations. We planned on the magic they discovered about their untouchable mother, the meaning of fashion and jewelry, and the joy of life reinvented.
But of course, M.J. and I brought ourselves to the pages—so we have the sparkling phenom of growing up in the magic of Manhattan and the glittery grit of a Brooklyn childhood:
John’s Bargain Store meets Bergdorf’s.
Bakeries in Brooklyn vs. Broadway Plays in Manhattan.
Gap vs. Chanel.
And we found joy in the writing. We invented a story where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. M.J. and I merged our mishigas and came out with sisters Lulu and Gabrielle. (Both named by their mother to honor her goddess: Coco Chanel.
We let all our nurture, nature, and culture get equal billing.
And once again, I relearned that everyone is the star of their own show and how I access that doctrine with every character I inhabit.
To explore what I know, what I might recoil from, and what I must discover requires allowing emotional cruxes, past and present, to bubble until culture and nurture and nature make a dark viscous stew. Then I season to taste.
Only then do I become every character, those with the best of intents, those with the worst of intentions, and those who, like most of us, invent the story that allows ourselves to get away with everything—whether it be stealing millions or the extraordinary act of forgiveness and reinvention.