In Vanity Fair

Paris seen through its clothes: the tyrants of the Rue de la Paix and the great ateliers, the racecourses where the new models are shown, dining as a fine art, the round of the Normandy resorts, the hunting season at the châteaux, the winter under southern skies — and, last, the American women without whose custom the whole trade would falter. Brainerd wrote light social fiction for the magazines; here she takes the frivolity seriously, and the fashion detail is documentary.