We chat with New York Times bestselling author Natasha Lester about her latest release, The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard, which is a bold novel of feminism and fashion set in 1970s New York City and the historic designers’ showdown in Versailles.
Hi, Natasha! Welcome back! How has the past year been since we last spoke?
Well, I’ve just returned from a month long overseas holiday, so I’d say it’s been pretty good! I spent time in an eighteenth-century velvet atelier in Venice, went to a perfume-making workshop in Florence and ate my bodyweight in Manchego cheese in Spain. Oh, and I wrote a book before that, so I was due for a holiday!
With it being a new year, are you setting any goals or resolutions for 2024?
I wrote about this on Substack recently. Not a goal or a resolution exactly, but more of an affirmation. I borrowed it from the title of Maggie Smith’s excellent memoir: you could make this place beautiful. If we all went through our days believing that, then wouldn’t the world be beautiful?
Your latest novel, The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Fashion, disco, rock ’n roll!
What can readers expect?
Astrid Bricard, daughter of Christian Dior’s legendary muse, arrives in Manhattan determined to make her mark on the fashion world, but not in the role of muse like her mother. She does make her mark very quickly—but not in the way she’d hoped for. Then on the eve of the fashion battle at Versailles, just as Astrid seems to be about to get everything she ever wanted, she vanishes, leaving behind only a white silk dress and the question: what happened to Astrid Bricard?
You’ll have to read the book to find out!
Where did the inspiration for The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard come from?
The incredible Battle of Versailles that took place at the Palace of Versailles in November 1973. This was a battle for fashion supremacy between five French couturiers and five American fashion designers, including Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Oscar de la Renta, Halston and Anne Klein. Everyone expected the French to win – they invented couture, after all – but the Americans took out the crown. The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard opens in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on the eve of that battle.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I—enjoyed is maybe the wrong word—but I was desperate to write about the huge gender imbalance in the fashion industry. Those in charge are mostly men, but the workers down the chain are all women. I also wanted to write about the way women working in creative industries alongside men are often cast into the role of muse, their stories rewritten and their talent erased. After reading my book, I’m hoping that the next time people see a media report about a woman, with a juicy headline and a string of titillating accusations, they’ll think about what it might be like to be the woman in the article, and they’ll question how much of it is truth and how much is fabrication. I’m also hoping readers will rediscover a love of 1970s fashions because they were spectacular!
With Astrid Bricard following three generations, can you tell us about your research process and how you manage to keep their stories distinctive?
I was writing The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard during COVID, so I couldn’t travel, but luckily I’d been to the Palace of Versailles many times and used all my photos to help me write the scenes set there. I was also very lucky that archivists from around the world answered my emails and, because travel was impossible, went to great lengths to send me letters, articles and other documents from their archives that helped me write about all the many real people who inhabit my book – everyone from Bianca Jagger to Christian Dior’s infamous and so-called muse, Mizza Bricard.
Keeping the three main characters’ stories distinctive was actually pretty easy because they each take place in three very different time periods: 1917-1947; 1970-1973; and 2012. People use different slang, listen to different music, have different daily worries in different decades, so that allowed me to give my three women three distinctive voices.
This is your tenth published novel! What are some of the key lessons you have learnt since your debut when it comes to both writing and the publishing world?
That it never gets any easier, that you have to love what you’re writing or else choose another idea, and that being a writer involves hard work, talent and luck. You can control the first two, but you just have to hope for the third.
What’s next for you?
There was only one Resistance network in France in WWII that was led by a woman. That woman was Marie Madeleine Méric, a thirty-year-old mother of two children, known as “the beautiful spy.” She led three thousand agents during the 1940s, providing the Allies with some of the biggest intelligence coups of the war. I can’t believe nobody has written a novel about her – she was remarkable. So I’m writing one, and its working title is The Secret Life of Marie-Madeleine.
Lastly, are there any 2024 book releases that you’re looking forward to?
Kate Quinn and Janie Chang’s The Phoenix Crown and Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It.
