Margaret's New Look

CBC’s Best Canadian Fiction of 2025

Fashion, mystery, and politics combine in this delectable, pacey novel set in a big-city museum where an ambitious curator is launching a controversial exhibition of Christian Dior's "New Look."

At work, Margaret is the well-regarded curator of fashion for a big-city museum. At home, she is the mother of lively twin girls, the spouse of a successful mystery-book author, and a daughter still grieving the recent death of her beloved father. Now, as she prepares to launch a career-defining exhibition on the haute couture of legendary French designer Christian Dior, she faces fierce internal politics from her peers alongside unsettling questions from younger colleagues. And to make matters more worrying, as the exhibition's opening night approaches, items in the Dior collection mysteriously begin to disappear.

Meanwhile, Margaret must deal with revelations that have surfaced after her father's death—secrets that force her to confront her family's long-suppressed Jewish heritage. Struggles and mysteries at work and home soon entwine in the unlikely figure of an elderly collector of couture—one who may have had a fascinating, long-ago connection to Dior himself.

With her keen observation of human foibles, deep love of textiles and craft, deft construction of a mystery, and ear for spicy dialogue, Katherine Ashenburg creates a page-turning tale.