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emotional
sad
medium-paced
3.75
Many thanks to NetGalley and Blue Box Press for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!
The Fashion Orphans follows the two sisters Lulu and Gabrielle who inherit a surprise vintage fashion collection after their mother’s death. It’s a tale that perfectly captures the complex dynamics that take place between estranged sisters and estranged mothers, though my heart was not as completely warmed as I’d wanted or expected it to be.
For starters, nearly everyone in the story needed therapy, very badly; I do not mean this as an insult in any way, but to be absolutely honest, if the characters were real people, I’d have no qualms suggesting that they seek professional help for their own good. Lulu and Gabi’s voices and reactions to the developments in the story were also indistinguishable from time to time — even though it had been stressed time and again that they had mostly different upbringings, Lulu with her father and grandparents in Brooklyn, and Gabi with her mother in Manhattan. And by the second half of the story, the book tended to be a bit in-your-face with discussing ethics in fashion, especially when it came to defending Coco Chanel’s wartime activities.
Still, there was far more reason and substance behind the sisters’ disposal of their mother’s clothing collection — far more than, say, Becky Bloomwood did in Confessions of a Shopaholic. And all in all, it had the truest and most important things to say about what happens when someone dies: that grieving is and ought to be communal; and that moving on after death is and ought to be communal as well. After all, it is rarely ever the dead who are to be pitied, but almost always the living, the ones left behind.
The Fashion Orphans follows the two sisters Lulu and Gabrielle who inherit a surprise vintage fashion collection after their mother’s death. It’s a tale that perfectly captures the complex dynamics that take place between estranged sisters and estranged mothers, though my heart was not as completely warmed as I’d wanted or expected it to be.
For starters, nearly everyone in the story needed therapy, very badly; I do not mean this as an insult in any way, but to be absolutely honest, if the characters were real people, I’d have no qualms suggesting that they seek professional help for their own good. Lulu and Gabi’s voices and reactions to the developments in the story were also indistinguishable from time to time — even though it had been stressed time and again that they had mostly different upbringings, Lulu with her father and grandparents in Brooklyn, and Gabi with her mother in Manhattan. And by the second half of the story, the book tended to be a bit in-your-face with discussing ethics in fashion, especially when it came to defending Coco Chanel’s wartime activities.
Still, there was far more reason and substance behind the sisters’ disposal of their mother’s clothing collection — far more than, say, Becky Bloomwood did in Confessions of a Shopaholic. And all in all, it had the truest and most important things to say about what happens when someone dies: that grieving is and ought to be communal; and that moving on after death is and ought to be communal as well. After all, it is rarely ever the dead who are to be pitied, but almost always the living, the ones left behind.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Infidelity, and Death
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