The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – A Dress of Violet Taffeta by Tessa Arlen

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

A Dress of Violet Taffeta by Tessa Arlen A sumptuous novel based on the fascinating true story of La Belle Époque icon Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, who shattered the boundaries of fashion with her magnificently sensual and enchantingly unique designs. Lucy Duff Gordon knows she is talented. She sees color, light, and texture in ways few people can begin to imagine. But is the male dominated world of haute couture, who would use her art for their own gain, ready for her? When she is deserted by her wealthy husband, Lucy is left penniless with an aging mother and her five-year-old daughter to support. Desperate to survive, Lucy turns to her one true talent to make a living. As a little girl, the dresses she made for her dolls were the envy of her group of playmates. Now, she uses her creative designs and her remarkable eye for color to take her place in the fashion world—failure is not an option. Then, on a frigid night in 1912, Lucy’s life changes once more, when she becomes one of 706 people to survive the sinking of the Titanic. She could never have imagined the effects the disaster would have on her fashion label Lucile, her marriage to her second husband, and her legacy. But no matter what life throws at her, Lucy will live on as a trailblazing and innovative fashion icon, never letting go of what she worked so hard to earn. This is her story.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss wait am i the host am i the host by those okay it's chris voss here from the chris voss show welcome the show friends and family uh we certainly appreciate you guys uh tuning in for an amazing fun interview that we're going to take and have about an amazing uh hot novel that's just uh coming off the prints there uh july 5th 2022 just came off in the meantime as we talk to this brilliant author uh go to youtube.com

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Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check out ChrisVossLeadershipInstitute.com. Now back to the show. Today, the amazing author we have on the show is Tessa Arlen. She is the author of the newest book, like I mentioned, just came out, A Dress of Violent Caffeta, a novel that she's just published. And we're going to be talking about her book, what's inside of it, and what she's got planned for the future. She is an amazing author. And I'm just looking for the bio here which I can't find. She is the author of

A Woman of World War II Mysteries and the novel in Royal Service to the Queen. Born in Singapore, a daughter of a British diplomat, she has lived in Egypt, Germany, in the Persian Gulf, China and India and she now lives with her husband in historic Santa Fe where she gardens in summer and writes in winter welcome the show Tessa how are you I'm very well thank you good good and I'm hanging in here on a Friday afternoon I guess the brains already left for the weekend so congratulations on the new book give us your dot-com so people can find you on the interwebs. TessaIreland.com. There you go. And so how many books do you have under your belt there?

This is my eighth. Nice, nice. Eight books. Wow. That's just amazing. And so what motivated you to want to write this book? I was doing – I came across this protagonist about eight years ago when I was researching for my Lady Montford Edwardian Mystery Series. And she was sort of mentioned

all over the place and not with a lot of approval for the time she lived in because she divorced her husband in 1893, which was an absolute no-no then. He ran off with a pantomime dancer and left her destitute with a five-year-old child. And she was also considered to be a little bit ruthless and ambitious, which I think today would translate as merely struggling to survive. And the more I read about her, I was, we sort of went on to do other things. And then I oof, I get goosebumps just remembering it. It was incredibly beautiful. They were works of art.

And so I thought I had to find out more. And I wanted to write a story. There you go. Now, is this a continuation of any of your other books, or is this a new setup? No, not at all. Violet Taffeta is really a standalone historical fiction, and it takes place in London and New York and Paris in the years between 1893 to 1913. Nice. And so give us some more insight, some of the stories in the book that stuck out for you.

Well, she was, Lucy was very much an innovator. She was very courageous. Once she got her feet under the table, so to speak, in the world of fashion design, which was really very male dominated. I mean, it was all Paris and it was all men. But she was very single minded. But in her memoir, she claimed to be a woman of firsts.

She was the first woman to prize her clients out of their whalebone corsetry and put them into lingerie. She was the first woman to show her new seasons models with a live mannequin parade fashion show. And she also survived. Well, she married up. She married a baronet. She was from that sort of upper middle classes. And she married up this sportsman and fencing. He was on the Olympic fencing team. She married this amazing man.

And she was also a survivor of the Titanic when that went down in 1912. So her life was very full. And she was quite a grande dame. She was a real character. So, wow, she survived the Titanic. That's pretty amazing. That's an amazing story. That was a fabulous couple of chapters to write because she not only survived the Titanic,

she and her husband survived the Board of Trade inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic because he was accused of bribery. Oh, that'll get you interested. So it's based on the true story of LaBelle Epple. I'm not sure I'm going to pronounce that last name correctly. LaBelle Epple. LaBelle Epple was the. LaBelle Epple. Yes.

There we go. I'm learning everything today. An era of history. Period in history. Lady Lucille Duff Gordon. And who shattered the boundaries of fashion. Amazing. So has the book got a lot of fashion empire stuff in it and designing and dressmaking, things of that nature?

Yes, quite a bit. I do. nature yes quite a bit it's um i i i do i i describe some of the clothes she made and who she made them for because she was you know the top of the game she was everybody came to her rich rich americans um european royalty and and then all the you know the fashionable sets in london so yes i did but what i loved about lucy was that she had quite a sense of humor And then all the, you know, the fashionable sets in London. So, yes, I did. But what I loved about Lucy was that she had quite a sense of humor and wit. So her clothes were kind of bohemian.

They weren't the stiff, grand dresses of the time. And she named them. She gave her favorite ones names. She called them dresses of emotion. And she gave them names like passion flowers, first kiss. And they were all, you know, that time the Raymond of Allurement or something like that. But she was dressing women who would probably only wear that dress for one occasion. Uh-huh. That's what I do. I only wear one dress per occasion. Yeah.

Me too. Yeah. It's the only way to go. Oh, yes. And check them out when you're done with them. Yes. I sell them off to people. I don't know. So she lives this opulent lifestyle pretty much, doesn't she?

Or does she go through kind of curvature of her life when she's, you know, left penniless, I guess, and going through some different struggles? Yeah, she really does struggle. She cuts out her first dress to sell on her dining room table. And people would come and sit in her tiny little drawing room and wait for their fittings. And her mother, who was very proper, was horrified. She didn't like this at all. I don't know what she thought Lucy should have done

when she was made destitute, but she certainly shouldn't have gone into trade and she certainly shouldn't have divorced her husband. But, yeah, she went through some pretty rough times. But when she hit the big time, she really did. And she wasn't a particularly opulent woman. I mean, she liked a degree of comfort and luxury, but she didn't dress. She wore little black dresses. She was very close to her clients. She was a really good listener. So she liked to believe that she designed a dress for them, for their personality. And I think that was part and parcel of her success was that she really was a woman's woman. She really did have great close friendships. Do you think, were you thinking of any movie stars, people who play this for TV or movie

or do you have any people in mind maybe in your life as you were designing the characters? No, not at all. Do you have any people in mind maybe in your life as you were designing the characters? No. No, not at all. But, you know, I was asked that question, so I came up with one. And for the life of me, I can't remember who I thought of for the role of Lucy. But I did think of somebody good. She was an English. She's an English actress.

And her first name is God. I'm so sorry. Can you ask me something else? Who do you think this is going to appeal to most? Who are your readers usually? I don't know. I think pretty much everyone. I, I, I, I mean, you know, women, certainly women who love history, who enjoy historical fiction, of which there are, luckily for us, writers, thousands. Yes.

And women who appreciate a strong protagonist, a rule breaker, a woman who forges her way. These are very popular topics for us girls these days. Yes. I mean, it definitely appeals. I mean, women buy and read so many books. So let's see. We did the TV thing. Is there any stories or stuff that sticks out to you?

Maybe you want to tease out in the book. Is there any twists or anything like sticks out to you? Maybe you want to tease out in the book. Is there any twists or anything like that? Yes, there is. Because everything was going really well for Lucy and her new husband. And she's just going from success to success. She opens a salon in New York. She's adored by Americans because they love the fact that dresses are being designed by a baronet's wife, by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. And everything is going fabulously well.

And then she makes that fateful voyage on the Titanic. She's sort of commuting between London and New York on the Titanic. Yeah. She's sort of commuting between London and New York on the Mauritania, but her husband's really excited about the Titanic, so they go on that. And of course, it was hell. And also, the aftermath pretty

much wrecked Lucy and Cosmo. It certainly put a huge issue for them to get over in their marriage and in her business. Lucy and Cosmo. It certainly put a huge issue for them to get over in their marriage and in her business. It's always challenges. That's that awful moment

when everything's going well and then it crashes. How long did it take you to write the book? After research, which took me a while, did it take you to write the book? When I first, after research, which took me a while, probably about a year.

And then, of course, it goes into production in the publishing house, and that's ages. What helped you discover her story, or how did you discover her story? When she was, when I was researching for another book, you know, you come across all these characters and you say, oh, I'm going to remember that one. I'm going to write about her. That's right.

So what sort of, when it, did it just flow out of you when you wrote it? Or does usually when you're writing, does it exhaust you? Are you energized? Does it flow off the pen to the paper? How does it usually work for you when you're writing novels like this? Well, I have an outline, so I have an idea where I'm going. But that sometimes changes. And it just comes. I sometimes feel like it's not really me

do you kind of embody the character not so much that but i feel like a conduit that after where i become so caught up in this woman and her story that it's like she's almost telling it um and i love it it's the best part of it the writing the rest of it's hell i mean you know the editing i know is the editing goes on and on and on and then there's all the self-doubt that comes with the whole business of putting yourself out there i know isn't it weird do you still get that after eight books though yeah seriously i'm a wreck i hate i hate it when my book comes out. I can't, you know, there's a whole, I think, I feel really sorry for my husband.

I get all, you know, kind of like a Labrador retriever. I'm kind of like, and it comes out and I think, you you know why did i get so overwrought about yeah you know i think i like to think i cover it i do i like to think that i can cover that over i i you know it's funny you know i i did my first book last year uh and it's just a it's a business book but i remember going through that process where your brain screws with you and goes no one's gonna read this damn thing yeah it's not gonna sell one copy not even not even one per like you're just lying to people like they're gonna read it and go this guy's an idiot i mean i have 54 years of knowledge but you know i just

you're like no one's gonna read this to care They're just be like, what the hell is this? So but yeah, it's interesting to me that's still happening after eight books, because I was like, maybe after I write the first one and people buy it, you know, then I'll be like, yeah, people read my stupid book in my thing, you know, my idiot writing, whatever. But yeah, it's it's interesting that still goes on. Maybe that's maybe that's your brain trying to sabotage you when it does that. I think it's all sorts of things. And it certainly is your brain trying to sabotage you. You know, you can't really believe in yourself that much. Otherwise, you'd be pretty terrible. A bit of a narcissist.

Yes. So basically, you just go, you know. I just accept. This is fail before it even starts. I just accepted that I was a narcissist. Oh, well. I don't know about, you know something, I think, I honestly think that basically, you know, it's almost bad manners to believe that you're going to be successful. So I don't.

I practice. I reached a point with the, I reached a point when I was writing my book where I was like, you know, a lot of it was not only my business thoughts, but a lot of my stories. And so I've, I've been carrying around these stories for 54 years, 35 years of business. And, and to me to finally get them on paper so I could get them out of my head because I was constantly telling the stories as a verbal historian. And the reason I realized over the years that I kept repeating the stories is because I was trying to remember them. And so once again on paper.

And so finally I reached a point where I was like, you know what? I really like what I've written and I've told my stories and I put them on the paper and they're cemented in time for all eternity or whatever. And I don't really care if anybody reads the book. And I just got some reason I came to this moment where I was just like, I don't give a shit if anybody reads this book. I got it written and I don't care and fuck it. And I wrote that on Facebook. I go, I don't give a shit if anybody reads this book. I got it written and I don't care and fuck it. And I wrote that on like Facebook. I go, I don't give a shit if anybody buys this book.

I'm happy. I got it in paper. So it's a journey sometimes being a writer. Does writing get easier for you over the years or has it been just as, just as difficult each and every time? It's never difficult for me to write ever. I have, I need quite a shut-in life you know i'm not out there having um you know i was quite happy never to go and work in an office or adhere to somebody's schedule um and i love being a stay-at-home mom and then of course

that all ended up with you know that excuse went away when my kids grew up so basically i was left with this sort of well what do i do and i certainly didn't want to go out and work real you know real work so i i just thought i'll i'll have a bash at writing a story so it's the story part the writing part is never a chore. It's, you know, a wonderful thing is you can do it until you basically lose your marbles, you know, and maybe even become a bestseller then. Yeah. Some people have lost their marbles and are great writers too. So basically that, no, it's not a chore. There you go. So how do you select some of the names of your characters?

I mean, obviously this is some historical fiction, but some of the other ones you make around it, how do you select some of the names of your characters? I mean, obviously, this is some historical fiction, but some of the other ones you make around it, how do you choose your names? Do you know I love that part? My World War II, Woman of World War II mystery series, the protagonist's name was Poppy Redfern, which I don't know that just popped in.

And I had a wonderful time with my Edwardian series, choosing really snotty English upperclass names. One character was called Lucinda Lambert, because the English loved those, you know, double barrels. But I mean, I didn't really choose names for this book because she's real her name was lucy wallace and she married a chap called sir cosmo duff gordon now there's a name i could never in a million years have dreamt up and it's brilliant yeah yeah it's a very unique name when it comes down to it yeah um yeah yeah i i would i you know i i'm so factual i could never have the imagination around novel i don't think i don't know it seems like it seems like you know you have to make everything uh and i don't i don't have that imagination so i really am impressed when when

novels can do this because they have to have to make up everything they have to story and everything i mean i just have uh there's some stupid crap i did last week is what i write about but you know there's a no there is a a a definite uh trick to writing um anecdotal remembering and and it's no good if it's just only interesting to you so you know there has to be something that draws people in to read the things that you experience so i i don't know that it's any different and i really believe that memory can be very selective at times do you ever get writer's block if i do um if i do i make lunch and have a glass of wine and take the dogs for a walk and say, that's it for today. I used to write really good when I was imbibing in some of the booze.

That's usually when I used to write really well. Then it got to the point where I couldn't do the booze anymore. Then I had to write sober. In fact, I wrote my book sober. That's really weird. Do you know what Hemingway said? Ernest Hemingway, he said, write drunk, edit sober. Edit sober. Yes. I used to do that a lot. I should have turned it into a book and I would just write little things, but yeah, I should have written more when I was drinking because it was so much

easier to write. And I get, as a man, you're, you know, I'm really disconnected to my rational brain and my emotional brain. And so by getting drunk, I can connect to my emotional brain. I can play piano and guitar and do things. But when I'm sober, I was very left brain rational. And so I would write my best stuff. I thought when I was drunk and it was so easy, it would just flow out of me because I was connected to that emotional

were there any hard scenes to write in the book for you I'm sorry were there any hard scenes to write in the book any scenes that maybe you liked in the book I've always written mystery because I think I'm really good at describing how

what motivates someone to kill someone else and I'm actually very private so um Lucy had this sort of disastrous first marriage and then she fell in love with Cosmo or he fell in love with her and she had to discover her sensuality um the book. I mean, I had no idea what the real Lucy, how her love life went. But I had to have Lucy come out of this workaholic's life and recognize that, yes, she was in love with Cosmo and that she was physically attracted to him.

So that part, when they are together, when he comes to visit her in the south of france that part i get really kind of um it just doesn't flow i have to go away and say look come on it's okay you can like this you know what you're doing um and so those romantic and sexually attractive parts and there isn't graphic sex in my book um i get kind of self-conscious because i feel it's too revealing and i know tons of writers who can just toss off these amazing paragraphs that leave everybody gasping i don't think i'm that I don't think I'm that girl.

Well, I mean, you're doing quite well. I mean, you've written eight books, and people seem to love them. Well, good. Let's hope they keep it up. Anything more you want to tease out of the book before we go? No. I'm perfectly happy. I'm in the middle of writing my next one.

Ah, when does that come out? I don't know yet because we're in the middle of that publisher-agent conversation that goes on. Ah, there you go. Is it going to be a standalone or is it going to be an addition to this one? It's going to be a standalone because I'm really into my historical fiction at the moment.

And it is about a woman who, another real woman, an English woman who was a writer between the years of 1933 and 39, just before the Second World War. And it's set in England and Egypt. There you go. She was interesting and Egypt. There you go. She was interesting. Well, there you go. That should make for an interesting book. Yeah. There you go.

All right. So give us your dot coms. Where are people going to find you on the interwebs or learn more about you? So I'm on Facebook, Tessa Arlen. I think it might be Tessa Arlen. I think it might be Tessa Arlen author. And I'm on Instagram, Tessa.Arlen. And I have a website, TessaArlen.com. There you go.

There you go. Tessa, it's been wonderful to have you on the show and get to know you for a second. Thank you for coming on. Thank you. It was fun. There you go. And guys, order up the book. Also go to your YouTube or goodreads.com

for us, Chris Voss and all our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. Be good to each other. Stay safe and we'll see you guys next time.