A woman of style - Colin McDowell

A novel of the fashion world

Distinguished fashion writer Colin McDowell makes his fiction début with a romantic, and moving saga featuring an unforgettable woman of style.

She was born Constance Simpson with a tempestuous spirit which her overbearing mother tried unsuccessfully to curb all through her wartime childhood in isolated Northumberland, where they lived alone following the violent death of her country doctor father.

She became Constance Castelfranco di Villanuova when she married Ludovico, a charming but feckless Italian aristocrat whom she met on a train. When she discovered how poor he really was she took control of their marriage, determined to make it a success despite the dark mysteries in his family.

It was for Ludovico that she set up her simple hat making business, a business so successful that it increasingly became her obsession as it grew into a major force in 1950's Italian fashion circles and gave her name international fashion status.

Yet the more successful she became, the more Constance alienated her pleasure-loving husband. As she prepared to hand over the reins to Margharita and Manfredo, her two warring children by Ludovico, and to Tudor, her love-child and her favourite, she knew that one day she would have to choose between the emptiness in her heart and the business which had established her as A WOMAN OF STYLE.