The Last Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel

Women don't age if their age if their clothes stay new.

It’s good to sometimes let things go. And people, too,” she added.

We leaned even closer and pressed our foreheads together for consolation, as a promise, fingers entwined, and it was like the last application of color to the canvas, the moment when you know this is what had been waiting to be completed, this is what had existed somewhere, even if just in your imagination. You have brought it isn't the richness of being. Layer up on layer of color, and when the final one is applied, gold bursts upon the back of your closed eyelids.

We both believe in beauty and elegance. In strong women who know their own minds. No one will look good in her clothes if she doesn't walk as if she owns the world. Remember that, Lily. It's ours, all the beauty we want, if we want it hard enough.

An artist must do what she was put on this earth to do. I do not give up and go into my little safe cocoon.

Bundists marched regularly in Times Square, demanding that all “foreigners” be sent back to their own countries and no more admitted; New York had its own share of Nazi sympathizers and American Aryanists.

Death can do that, make reality as hard to hold on to as water dripping through your fingers.