The ‘IT’ Girls: Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, the Couturiere 'Lucile', and Elinor Glyn, Romantic Novelist
ETHERINGTON-SMITH, Meredith; PILCHER, Jeremy. The ‘IT’ Girls. Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, the Couturiere 'Lucile', and Elinor Glyn, Romantic Novelist. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986.
First edition. This double biography of two extraordinary women - Elinor Glyn and her sister, Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon – touches on fashion, society, social gossip, romantic fiction, travel, politics, and illicit romance during the Edwardian period. It also explores Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1920s.
Elinor Glyn (864-1943) was a romantic novelist, author of the notorious novel Three Weeks (1907), which forever established her image as a red-haired temptress undulating on a tiger skin. She also coined the notion of ‘It’, as a term for sex appeal.
Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon (1862-1935) was one of the foremost couturiers of her age, working in London, Paris and New York. She seems to have invented the idea of the mannequin parade, and the custom of giving dresses individual names. Includes a chapter on the Duff Gordons escape from the Titanic.
xiv, 274 pp. Hardback (ISBN: 9780241119501). Very good in very good dust-jacket (some light shelf wear). Jacket design by Craig Dodd. The portrait of Elinor Glyn in the left oval is by Philip de Laszlo. The watercolour on the back of the jacket is by Lucy.
From the library of Henrietta McCall (1948-2023), ancient historian, curator, and author.