The Paris Seamstress

The novel alternates between two timelines: the story of Estella Bissette, a young French seamstress navigating wartime Paris and building a fashion career in New York during the 1940s, and the story of her granddaughter Fabienne Bissette, a fashion curator in 2015 who uncovers long-buried family secrets after Estella's death.

In June 1940, twenty-two-year-old Estella works in a Paris atelier, or dressmaking workshop, making artificial silk flowers for haute-couture (custom-made high-fashion) gowns alongside her mother, Jeanne, a widow who raised Estella alone. Estella moonlights as a sketcher, copying couture designs and selling them to American buyers to pay off family debts. As the German army advances, Estella finds her employer, Monsieur Aumont, mortally wounded in the courtyard of an abandoned townhouse. He entrusts her with silk maps to deliver to a contact at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. There, she passes the maps to a dark-haired man during a dance. He reveals himself to be an Allied spy and urges her to leave France.

At home, Jeanne discloses that Monsieur Aumont had been passing intelligence for the British and insists Estella flee. She produces American papers and reveals that Estella's father was American and that Estella was born in the United States. After a wrenching farewell, Estella boards the last American embassy train to Bordeaux.

Aboard the SS Washington, the last American ship out of Europe, Estella befriends Sam, an American medical student who had been working as a fabric cutter at the House of Worth, a prestigious Paris fashion house. A German U-boat targets the ship and forces passengers into lifeboats, but the U-boat captain lets them go. Estella vows to design clothes that help women feel strong.

In New York, Estella discovers that American fashion is entirely derivative of Paris. She cycles through four jobs in six months, fired each time for refusing to suppress her design instincts. She befriends Janie, an Australian house model (an in-house garment presenter) at the Barbizon Hotel for Women. The three friends toast to founding Stella Designs: Estella as designer, Sam as cutter, and Janie as model. At a Christmas party, Estella is kissed in the shadows by a mysterious man named Alex, an Allied intelligence operative. The next night at a jazz club, she finds Alex with his companion, a woman named Lena who looks exactly like Estella. Shocked, Estella flees, realizing Alex mistook her for Lena.

The narrative shifts to May 2015. Fabienne Bissette, Estella's twenty-nine-year-old granddaughter and newly appointed Head Curator of Fashion at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, attends the Met gala exhibition of Estella's work. Her father, Xander, died of a stroke one month earlier. At the gala she meets Will Ogilvie, the Head of Design at Tiffany & Co., and his sister Melissa, who has terminal ovarian cancer. Estella, now ninety-seven, urges Fabienne to visit Paris and consider taking over Stella Designs.

In Paris, Fabienne visits an exhibition about MI9, the secret British intelligence agency that facilitated Allied escapes during World War II. She recognizes the name Alex Montrose on a photograph, the same name on her father's birth certificate alongside "Lena Thaw" as his mother, with neither Estella nor Sam listed as parents. She and Will share their first kiss. Back in New York, Fabienne confronts Estella, who directs her to read the memoir of Evelyn Nesbit, the infamous early-twentieth-century showgirl, before explaining further.

Returning to the 1940s, Alex tracks Estella down and introduces her to Lena, who is the ward of Harry Kendall Thaw, the notorious convicted murderer from the Stanford White scandal. Lena helps Estella prepare for her first fashion showing at her Gramercy Park townhouse, a house identical to Estella's family home on the Rue de Sévigné in Paris. Harry attends uninvited and disrupts the event with maniacal laughter, driving all guests away.

Alex later asks Estella to accompany him and Lena to occupied Paris to retrieve a wounded MI9 agent. On the rooftop of the Rue de Sévigné house, Estella and Lena open a shoebox containing proof they are twin sisters. Inside they find a pencil drawing of two newborn babies by Jeanne and a portrait of Evelyn Nesbit and actor John Barrymore labeled as Jeanne's parents. Lena reveals that Harry branded his initials on her shoulder when she got her first period and recounts years of abuse.

When Estella visits her mother's empty apartment against Alex's instructions, a collaborating concierge leads them into a trap. Alex kills a German soldier, but Lena is fatally shot. Estella's newly found sister is gone.

In the 2015 timeline, Estella suffers two strokes, the second leaving her unable to speak. She dies at the Gramercy Park house while Fabienne sketches downstairs. Fabienne inherits the business and both houses but is left with unresolved questions about the birth certificate and a silver medallion engraved with three witches, the insignia of Alex's MI9 unit, which she finds among Estella's belongings.

Back in the 1940s, Alex returns to New York months later. He and Estella share a passionate reunion, and he presents her with Lena's legal bequest of the Gramercy Park house and funds for Stella Designs. He proposes and she accepts. Their happiness shatters when Harry Thaw reveals he is Estella's biological father, explaining that he discovered Jeanne at a Paris convent, charmed the fourteen-year-old, and raped her, resulting in twin pregnancies. Consumed by shame, Estella tells Alex she cannot marry him and leaves without revealing the truth. That same day, the Pearl Harbor attack draws America into the war.

A letter from Lena's attorney reveals that Lena secretly gave birth to Alex's son, Xander, conceived during their single night together, and asks Estella to adopt the boy. Unable to reach Alex, Estella signs the papers and falls in love with the child. She reinvents her business, holding a triumphant showing at the Barbizon Hotel for working women. Stella Designs grows rapidly, and Estella publicly confronts Harry at an awards ceremony, ending his power over her.

When Alex sees Estella with Sam and Xander, he misinterprets the scene, believing she has married Sam, and disappears. Jeanne later gives Alex a letter in Marseilles revealing the truth about Harry's assault; Alex realizes Estella left him out of shame. Jeanne is killed working on the escape line. In early 1945, Estella finds Alex in Paris and introduces Xander as his son. They reunite and spend three months restoring the Rue de Sévigné house as a family. Alex resigns from MI9, but on his final mission, his car drives over an unexploded bomb and he is killed.

Estella gradually falls in love with Sam, who has always been by her side. They marry in 1947 and build the Stella Designs empire, raising Xander as their son.

In the final chapters of the 2015 timeline, Fabienne decides to take over Stella Designs. She visits the dying Melissa with a handmade dress and discovers Will has named a pendant after her in his Tiffany collection, part of a series called "The Women I Have Loved." They declare their love. Reading Estella's final letter, Fabienne learns the full truth: Xander was Lena and Alex's biological son, making Estella her great-aunt rather than her grandmother. Estella describes two kinds of love: Alex, like a toile (a preliminary garment pattern), the hidden foundation of her life; and Sam, like a spool of thread, strong enough to pull everything together.

Fabienne launches her debut collection at the Gramercy Park house, wearing Estella's original black velvet gown. Sitting beside Will as the show concludes to resounding applause, she takes his hand, at peace with her family's past and her own identity.