Katherine Ashenburg has always loved fashion. She has fond memories of sitting on the high stools in the pattern sections of department stores as a child while her mother chose dresses, coats and suits to sew. Her German mother, aunts and grandmothers were skilled with cloth and yarn, and she grew up surrounded by their handiwork.
“They were amateur needlewomen, far from the heights of Dior, but their aesthetic and their seriousness made me see Dior as a kindred spirit,” she says over Zoom.
Katherine Ashenburg, who published her first fiction book in 2018 at the age of 73, thought fiction writers “had magical powers” that she never dreamed of having.Joy von Tiedemann
Ashenburg’s passion for the artistry of textiles can be clearly felt in her new novel, Margaret’s New Look, published May 27, which follows a fashion curator at a museum as she gears up to launch a career-defining Dior exhibition. It’s a job Ashenburg herself might have enjoyed in another lifetime.
“I was charmed by the idea of spending time with gorgeous clothes and diving into research rabbit holes, like the invention of the zipper or the development of the peplum,” she says. She was also inspired by the Royal Ontario Museum’s 2017 show about Dior.
Ashenburg likes to tell people she has a 10-year attention span for careers; Margaret’s New Look is the third novel she has published within the past decade.
She started out as an academic, writing her PhD on Charles Dickens and Christmas and then teaching at a university in Holland for a decade. After that she got a job at CBC Radio in Vancouver and later moved to Toronto, where she worked as a senior producer on an arts program before being “seduced away” to The Globe and Mail, where she was the Arts and Books editor for another 10 years.
Apple TV+’s The New Look explores privilege, power and responsibility when society falls
While working on her second non-fiction book, Ashenburg decided to devote herself to writing full-time and resigned from her position. She’s been authoring books ever since, with three novels plus four non-fiction works under her belt. She published her first fiction book in 2018 at the age of 73.
“I never thought I could do it,” she says of writing fiction. “I’m way more of a fiction reader than a non-fiction reader, and I thought those people who wrote those things had magical powers that I never dreamed of having.”
It was her friend, novelist Jane Urquhart, who encouraged her to write her first novel. Ashenburg told her she was crazy but decided to give it a shot anyway.
“I was well into my 60s when she said this, so I wrote in fear and terror for a very long time,” she concedes. “Now it feels very natural.”
At a glance, the subjects covered in Ashenburg’s books – the architecture of Southern Ontario, mourning customs, washing the body, fashion – may seem unrelated, but they all stem from Ashenburg’s unrelenting curiosity in social history.
Katherine Ashenburg’s latest novel touches on the beauty of Dior’s clothing, along with a number of other aspects of social history.Supplied
Her newest work touches on the beauty of Dior’s clothing, but it focuses on a number of other aspects of social history, too: the scars of the German occupation of France, changing attitudes to the way museums present their stories, the complications of loving people who are more flawed than we care to admit.
The result is a mystery novel about fashion, politics and history in which the protagonist, Margaret, faces rising scrutiny over Dior’s connection to the occupation. Though Dior himself was not a Nazi sympathizer, at the time of the occupation he was forced to design for Nazis in a bid to survive and also support his sister, Catherine, who was actively involved in the resistance and later persecuted.
When Margaret receives menacing notes questioning her exhibition and finds that some of the Dior pieces have disappeared, the book’s central mystery is revealed: Who is sabotaging her exhibit?
But the author really hopes “readers will not guess the perpetrator until the end.”
The concept of hero worship is another idea at the heart of Margaret’s New Look. Margaret worships both Dior and her father, the latter of whom she is mourning. She struggles to acknowledge their flaws and understand their complexities, especially in light of the discovery that her father long suppressed his Jewish heritage.
Ashenburg: My complicated feelings about having a house cleaner
“She has to build a more complex love for these two men that accepts but doesn’t condone their weaknesses and blind spots, while continuing to celebrate their strengths,” Ashenburg says.
Margaret’s father is loosely based on Ashenburg’s own father. One of five children, she was raised Catholic in Rochester, N.Y. Despite being quite familiar with Jewishness because of where she grew up, it wasn’t until her 40s that she received confirmation that her father’s family had in fact been Jewish.
“Thinking of Margaret at the end of the book when she is beginning to really take an interest in that side of her heritage, I realized my character, whom I created, is ahead of me,” Ashenburg admits. “She’s more advanced than I am in really taking her Jewishness seriously, so I’m planning on taking my cue from Margaret.”
