Cover Designs! 22: Paris Never Leaves You

 

Cover Designs is a feature in which I try to match up the outfit on a book cover with a dress pattern and sometimes even potential fabric matches as well. Today's choice is a pensive historical set in Paris during the war and New York in the 1950s.

Paris Never Leaves You tells the story of Charlotte, who with her young daughter Vivi, makes it through WWII working in a Paris bookshop. She's a survivor. After the war she goes to New York to work in publishing, where her survival skills are tested again.

As the publisher notes, "Paris Never Leaves You is an extraordinary story of resilience, love, and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost. The war is over, but the past is never past."

A great match for this is Burda 139, from the March 2016 issue. All you would need to do is change it from black to white and add a line of tiny buttons down the front and you'd have a nearly exact match!

You can see that this dress closes with a line of buttons up the side seam, but that could easily be altered to an invisible zip and decorative buttons added to the centre front for a perfect match. This dress also has a slip and the overdress is made from organza -- exactly like the pensive woman on the cover is wearing. 

You could find a beautiful organza at G&S Dye, in black or white (or a few other colours) to make the Burda version directly.

Or, if you want a closer copy of the cover image, you could use a sheer swiss dot with a similar floral element, like this one from Telio. Just add a silk charmeuse slip and you're set. 

This would be a lovely summer dress for a fancy occasion; you'd look elegant and retro chic for sure.