Margaret's New Look

Fashion, mystery, and politics combine in this delectable, pacey novel set in a big-city museum where an ambitious curator is launching a controversial exhibition of Christian Dior's "New Look."

At work, Margaret is the well-regarded curator of fashion for a big-city museum. At home, she is the mother of lively twin girls, the spouse of a successful mystery-book author, and a daughter still grieving the recent death of her beloved father. Now, as she prepares to launch a career-defining exhibition on the haute couture of legendary French designer Christian Dior, she faces fierce internal politics from her peers alongside unsettling questions from younger colleagues. And to make matters more worrying, as the exhibition's opening night approaches, items in the Dior collection mysteriously begin to disappear.

Meanwhile, Margaret must deal with revelations that have surfaced after her father's death—secrets that force her to confront her family's long-suppressed Jewish heritage. Struggles and mysteries at work and home soon entwine in the unlikely figure of an elderly collector of couture—one who may have had a fascinating, long-ago connection to Dior himself.

With her keen observation of human foibles, deep love of textiles and craft, deft construction of a mystery, and ear for spicy dialogue, Katherine Ashenburg creates a page-turning tale.

KATHERINE ASHENBURG is the author of several books and many magazine and newspaper articles. She has written for The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and Toronto Life, among other publications. Her nonfiction books include The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die, and The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, which has been published in twelve countries and six languages. In former incarnations she was a producer at CBC Radio and was The Globe and Mail's Arts and Books editor. In 2018, she published her acclaimed debut novel, Sofie and Cecilia, and in 2021 she followed that work with the delightfully tart novel Her Turn.

ISBN: 9781039056480
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: May 27, 2025

"An utterly captivating novel that stitches together past and present, personal and political, beauty and tragedy. Margaret’s New Look is at once a mystery, a comedy of cultural politics, a love letter to craftsmanship, and a profoundly moving examination of one woman’s encounter with the hidden past. I wanted it to never end." —Elizabeth Renzetti

"Katherine Ashenburg’s delightful and absorbing Margaret’s New Look is as elegantly tailored as the Dior couture at its heart. Fashion, family, and history intersect in this richly layered novel of a curator navigating professional rivalries, personal upheavals, and long-hidden secrets. With Ashenburg’s trademark wit and nuanced eye for human complexity, readers are swiftly drawn into Margaret’s world—a big-city museum brimming with tension, glamour, and mystery. This is a beautifully crafted, memorable, and ultimately deeply moving novel." —Jennifer Robson

"Mystery is at the beating heart of this beautifully composed novel: the aesthetic mystery of how fabric is able to transform human flesh, and the interpersonal mystery of how war can bring out the best or the worst in human character. Ashenburg, herself, is a master designer." —Jane Urquhart