Through the internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France comes an enthralling historical book about perhaps one of the most famous wedding dresses from the twentieth century-Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown-and the fascinating women who managed to get.

“Millions will welcome this joyous event being a display of color on the long road we have to travel.”

-Sir Winston Churchill in the news headlines of Princess Elizabeth’s forthcoming wedding

London, 1947: Besieged with the harshest winter in living memory space, burdened by approximately The Dress: A Novel of the Royal Wedding onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation despite their nation’s latest victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers on the famed Mayfair fashion home of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their nascent expectations for a brighter future are tested when they are chosen for any once-in-a-lifetime honor: taking part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.

Toronto, 2016: More than half a hundred years later, Heather Mackenzie seeks to unravel the mystery of a set of embroidered plants, a legacy from her late grandmother. How did her cherished Nan, a woman who never spoke of her aged existence in Britain, arrive to possess the invaluable embroideries that therefore closely resemble the motifs on the beautiful gown put on by Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding nearly seventy years before? And that which was her Nan’s connection to the celebrated textile musician and holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin?

USING THE Gown, Jennifer Robson takes us in the workrooms where probably one of the most famous wedding dresses in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes information having a sweeping family portrait of a culture left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of look at alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven collectively by the discomfort of success, the bonds of camaraderie, and the redemptive power of love.