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Unsinkable Lucile: How a Farm Girl Became the Queen of Fashion and Survived the Titanic
Before Chanel there was Lucile. She was one of the world's most glamorous women and the most famous fashionista of the Edwardian age. Yet, couturiere Lucile, Lady Duff Gordon was born as just plain Lucy Sutherland and grew up in a stone farmhouse in Ontario, Canada. How she went from a backwoods farm to presiding over an international fashion empire is a remarkable story of unshakeable determination and female achievement at a time when it was thought that a woman's place was in the home. Unsinkable Lucile is a lavishly illustrated story of Lucile's lively childhood, her rise to the top of the fashion world and her survival of the Titanic disaster and its aftermath, during which she was unjustly vilified. Time and time again, she proved that nothing could sink her spirits or stop her drive to innovate and create. Among Lucile's many innovations were the first fashion shows, the first fashion models and the Edwardian craze for oversized hats. She also helped free women from the corset and coined the word "chic." Lucile was also a fashion adviser to millions and the creator of clothes seen in over 115 movies. Replete with historical photos and beautiful paintings by award-winning illustrator Laurie McGaw, Unsinkable Lucile is a humorous, touching and empowering tale of a woman who beat the odds, never backed down and changed the world of fashion forever.
40 pages, Hardcover
Published September 1, 2022
16 people want to read
About the author
Hugh Brewster
24 books32 followersBeing able to create books about history is a dream job for me since I’ve always been enthralled by history. When I was growing up in Georgetown, Ontario, our house was just around the corner from the town library. And I haunted its children’s section—reading sometimes four or five books a week. Historical fiction titles by writers like Geoffrey Trease and Rosemary Sutcliffe were particular favourites. I still treasure a copy of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages that I was given as a prize in a library reading contest in 1960.
Since ours was the only house in the neighbourhoood without a TV antenna on the roof, reading was my primary form of entertainment. My parents thought their four children would read more without a television to distract us. And they were right, we did — though we also showed up at our friends’ houses whenever our favourite shows were on!
Our family had moved to Georgetown from a small town in Scotland in 1956, when I was six years old. When I was thirteen we moved to Guelph, Ontario, and I went to high school and university there. My first real job after graduating with an English degree in 1971 was with Scholastic – then a fairly new publishing company in Canada. As an editor for Scholastic Inc. from 1972 to 1984 in both Toronto and New York, I was involved in the creation of Scholastic’s Canadian children’s publishing program as well as in the selecting of books for Scholastic’s school book clubs. (One of our early discoveries was the teenaged author Gordon Korman and his Bruno and Boots books.)
Between 1984 and 2004 I was the Editorial Director and Publisher of Madison Press Books in Toronto. While there, I helped to create a number of successful books for both adults and young readers including Robert Ballard’s The Discovery the Titanic, that has sold over 1.5 million copies, and TITANIC: An Illustrated History a book that provided inspiration for James Cameron’s epic movie. Among the award-winning children’s books that I edited and compiled are: Polar the Titanic Bear, On Board the Titanic, First to Fly, and Journey to Ellis Island.
The first children’s book that I actually both wrote and compiled was Anastasia’s Album: The Last Tsar’s Youngest Daughter Tells Her Own Story, which was published in 1996 and won a number of awards. In 1997 I wrote the text for Inside the Titanic, which featured amazing cutaway illustrations by Ken Marschall. The next year, with Laurie Coulter, I compiled a book filled with fascinating facts about the Titanic entitled 882 1/2 Amazing Answers to Your Questions About the Titanic. Laurie and I went on to write To Be A Princess in 2001 which was a Silver Birch and Red Cedar nominee. In 2004, the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I wrote On Juno Beach which won the Children’s Literature of Canada Information Book Award in 2005. The success of that book encouraged me to write At Vimy Ridge which appeared in 2007 and won the Norma Fleck Award in 2008.
In 2005, I decided to devote myself to writing full-time and have produced seven books since then: The Other Mozart: The Life of the Famous Chevalier de Saint George published Fall 2006; Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose: The Story of a Painting and Breakout Dinosaurs. DIEPPE: Canada’s Darkest Day of World War II was released in 2009 and was followed by the novel Prisoner of Dieppe in Scholastic’s new I Am Canada series. A second novel, Deadly Voyage appeared in Fall ’11 and for the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, I produced a large adult book entitled Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage in Spring 2012.
Since ours was the only house in the neighbourhoood without a TV antenna on the roof, reading was my primary form of entertainment. My parents thought their four children would read more without a television to distract us. And they were right, we did — though we also showed up at our friends’ houses whenever our favourite shows were on!
Our family had moved to Georgetown from a small town in Scotland in 1956, when I was six years old. When I was thirteen we moved to Guelph, Ontario, and I went to high school and university there. My first real job after graduating with an English degree in 1971 was with Scholastic – then a fairly new publishing company in Canada. As an editor for Scholastic Inc. from 1972 to 1984 in both Toronto and New York, I was involved in the creation of Scholastic’s Canadian children’s publishing program as well as in the selecting of books for Scholastic’s school book clubs. (One of our early discoveries was the teenaged author Gordon Korman and his Bruno and Boots books.)
Between 1984 and 2004 I was the Editorial Director and Publisher of Madison Press Books in Toronto. While there, I helped to create a number of successful books for both adults and young readers including Robert Ballard’s The Discovery the Titanic, that has sold over 1.5 million copies, and TITANIC: An Illustrated History a book that provided inspiration for James Cameron’s epic movie. Among the award-winning children’s books that I edited and compiled are: Polar the Titanic Bear, On Board the Titanic, First to Fly, and Journey to Ellis Island.
The first children’s book that I actually both wrote and compiled was Anastasia’s Album: The Last Tsar’s Youngest Daughter Tells Her Own Story, which was published in 1996 and won a number of awards. In 1997 I wrote the text for Inside the Titanic, which featured amazing cutaway illustrations by Ken Marschall. The next year, with Laurie Coulter, I compiled a book filled with fascinating facts about the Titanic entitled 882 1/2 Amazing Answers to Your Questions About the Titanic. Laurie and I went on to write To Be A Princess in 2001 which was a Silver Birch and Red Cedar nominee. In 2004, the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I wrote On Juno Beach which won the Children’s Literature of Canada Information Book Award in 2005. The success of that book encouraged me to write At Vimy Ridge which appeared in 2007 and won the Norma Fleck Award in 2008.
In 2005, I decided to devote myself to writing full-time and have produced seven books since then: The Other Mozart: The Life of the Famous Chevalier de Saint George published Fall 2006; Carnation, Lily, Lily Rose: The Story of a Painting and Breakout Dinosaurs. DIEPPE: Canada’s Darkest Day of World War II was released in 2009 and was followed by the novel Prisoner of Dieppe in Scholastic’s new I Am Canada series. A second novel, Deadly Voyage appeared in Fall ’11 and for the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, I produced a large adult book entitled Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage in Spring 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 13, 2022
Lucy Sutherland (Lady Cosmo Duff-Gordon) was indeed a very remarkable woman. I first read that she was "the lady in the millionaires' lifeboat" - one of two women in Titanic's lifeboat number one, with only her husband, her secretary [named Laura Mabel Francatelli "Franks"], and two male passengers, two crewmen and five stokers. The lifeboat could hold 40, and they were 12. Not their doing that 1st Officer Murdoch sent them off with so few people; but it left an impression on me as a young girl. All those people who drowned. The last lifeboats overcrowded, and Boat One with only 12 people. Later, I found out that she was one of the fashionable dress designers of the Edwardian era and that her sister was the racy romance novelist Elinor Glyn (of "Three Weeks" and the rhyme about the tiger sign.) This was definitely a lady whose story I had to read.
There are other books about Lucy Duff-Gordon. She features in Hugh Brewster's "Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage", about the 1st class passengers, written for adults. She, of course, wrote her own autobiography, as a celebrity would.
This book, written for middle-school readers, will be a keeper for Titanic "fans", and fashion history fans as well. It's well illustrated by Laurie McGaw, with pictures from Randy Bryan Bigham's collection. The missing star signals my disappointment that there was not a bibliography. I hope that the readers will later read Lucy's autobiography "Discretions and Indiscretions". There was a book called "Lucile Ltd." a reproduction of a book of designs shown to customers, of her "look", circa 1904. I can't find it in my library now [Such books get 'lost' quickly.] But I remember seeing pictures of the two dresses drawn by Ms. McGaw shown on page 19 of this book and wishing myself inside the green walking costume. Lucy designed the costumes for "The Merry Widow" operetta, including the huge wide-brimmed hat that was "all the rage".
So you realize I became a fan of the lady in Lifeboat 1. It was a treat leafing through this book, and I hope that all the library copies won't be "lost". (Most seem to be.)
There are other books about Lucy Duff-Gordon. She features in Hugh Brewster's "Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage", about the 1st class passengers, written for adults. She, of course, wrote her own autobiography, as a celebrity would.
This book, written for middle-school readers, will be a keeper for Titanic "fans", and fashion history fans as well. It's well illustrated by Laurie McGaw, with pictures from Randy Bryan Bigham's collection. The missing star signals my disappointment that there was not a bibliography. I hope that the readers will later read Lucy's autobiography "Discretions and Indiscretions". There was a book called "Lucile Ltd." a reproduction of a book of designs shown to customers, of her "look", circa 1904. I can't find it in my library now [Such books get 'lost' quickly.] But I remember seeing pictures of the two dresses drawn by Ms. McGaw shown on page 19 of this book and wishing myself inside the green walking costume. Lucy designed the costumes for "The Merry Widow" operetta, including the huge wide-brimmed hat that was "all the rage".
So you realize I became a fan of the lady in Lifeboat 1. It was a treat leafing through this book, and I hope that all the library copies won't be "lost". (Most seem to be.)
December 1, 2022
Modern fashion shows and costumes for actors are the brain child of Lucy Duff Gordon. She was an amazing and forward thinking fashion designer and business woman, at home and abroad, especially at a time where not much was expected of women. And she is also a survivor of the ill-fated Titanic! She is actually a survivor of the many ups and downs of her life. She is a good example of grit and can do attitude!
September 4, 2022
The true story of a young girl who faced many challenges and eventually found her fame in fashion. While aboard the Titanic she escaped only to be named in a scandal.
October 25, 2022
A story of the fashion innovator and tragedy survivor, a poor little rich girl tale.
October 31, 2023
This is way too long for K, so it is part of my home Titanic collection. I have never been a fan of Lady Duff Gordon but this book was interesting.
January 22, 2024
Very interesting. All new to me history.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews