A DRESS FOR THE WICKED

Victorian-esque Project Runway complete with absurd competitions and bonus instalove.

In Britannia Secunda, fashion is everything: The country’s livelihood depends on the farmers who produce the raw materials, the factories that create the fabric, and the designers from the Fashion House. Fashion is also a bone of contention between the crown and the Reformists Party, whose members think it has become too elitist. Country girl Emmy Watkins, whose semidisgraced single mother runs a pub, is a born designer who loves fashion, so when it is announced that the Fashion House Interview will be open to a contestant from a rural area, she is determined to try out. The worldbuilding ranges from sloppy (cashmere from sheep?) to contrived (in a fashion-obsessed kingdom with a steady stream of accomplished designers churned out of the interviews, no other design houses exist, and Emmy is the first person to truly innovate). The girls competing in the interview lack substance (Ky is half Japanese and half white, making her stand out in this very white world; Alice is rich and mean; Kitty is rich and kind; Cordelia is unusual for wearing trousers) while Emmy is pure trope (plucky, innately talented, sharp enough to see that fashion is corrupt) and falls for the first pretty boy she meets. Props for lots of ridiculous fashion that seems insane enough to be couture, but that’s about all that works.

A high-concept debut that needs much tighter stitching.