New from the Parsonage Shop

My Mother’s Wedding Dress by Justine Picardie, Picador, 2005, 335pp, hardback, ISBN 0-330-41306-6 £12.99

Justine Picardie (who will be speaking as a guest of the Brontë Society in Haworth on the Friday of the annual June Weekend for members) is a fashion writer for Vogue and the Daily Telegraph. In this, her latest short story collection, she combines fashion with literature, adding her thoughts on the history of her family.

The history of the black wedding dress belonging to her mother is her starting point. She ends with her research into a family ring which once belonged to Charlotte Brontë.

Each chapter concentrates on a different item of fashion, some belonging to the author and some which are known to many in Western culture, like the “little black dress� or the school uniform.

Justine also examines how fashion is described in literature and how it influences the reader’s perception of the characters, quoting from a wide range of sources like CS Lewis’s The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe and Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.