The Fashion Orphans - Hardcover

Two sisters find that forgiveness never goes out of style when they inherit their mother's jackets, purses... and pearls of wisdom.

Estranged half-sisters Gabrielle Winslow and Lulu Quattro seem to have only two things in common: mounds of debt and coils of unresolved enmity toward Bette Bradford, their controlling and imperious recently deceased mother.

Gabrielle, the firstborn, was raised in relative luxury on Manhattan's rarefied Upper East Side. Now, at fifty-five, her life as a Broadway costume designer married to a heralded Broadway producer has exploded in divorce.

Lulu, who spent half her childhood under the tutelage of her working-class Brooklyn grandparents, is a grieving widow at forty-eight. With her two sons grown, her life feels reduced to her work at the Ditmas Park bakery owned by her late husband's family.

The two sisters arrive for the reading of their mother's will expecting to divide a sizable inheritance, pay off their debts, and then turn their backs on each other once again.

But to their shock, what they have been left is their mother's secret walk-in closet jammed with luxury designer clothes and accessories mostly from Chanel.

Contemplating the scale of their mother's self-indulgence, the sisters can't help but wonder if Lauren Weisberger had it wrong: because it seems, in fact, that the devil wore Chanel. But as they being to explore their mother's collection, meet and fall in love with her group of warm, wonderful friends, and find inspiring messages tucked away in her treasures - it seems as though their mother is in fact advising Lulu and Gabrielle from the beyond - helping them rediscover themselves and restore their relationship with each other.