The Collection (2007)

The Collection is a valentine to Gabrielle ''Coco'' Chanel, the woman behind the famously musky No. 5 fragrance and the iconic little black dress. Gioia Diliberto intertwines her fictionalized behind-the-seams portrait of the haute couture queen with that of Isabelle Varlet, a consumptive country girl/precocious needleworker. While Diliberto can be prone to florid prose — Isabelle sees her future as ''a sparkling, flower-filled meadow'' — her descriptions of garments are beautifully evocative and vivid, down to the last hand-sewn stitch. Who knew there could be so much drama in the early-20th-century French fashion revolution? B+