The Dressmakers Series in Order

Marcelline, Sophy and Leonie Noirot are professionals in a genre that usually only lets its heroines be daughters. They cut, they fit, they price, they steal clients, they manage cash flow. The aristocratic men they end up with are, from the sisters' point of view, partly a marketing problem — which is a far more interesting starting position than most Regency romances allow.

The Dressmakers books in order

1. Silk Is for Seduction (2011) — Marcelline, the designer, sets out to capture the future Duchess of Clevedon as a client and instead captures the duke. Establishes the shop, the sisters and the family's disreputable past.
2. Scandal Wears Satin (2012) — Sophy, the one who handles publicity and lies for a living, chasing a runaway client across the country with Lord Longmore. The fastest and funniest of the four.
3. Vixen in Velvet (2014) — Leonie, who keeps the books and is the only sane Noirot, and Lord Lisburne. A slower, warmer romance built around an art exhibition and a charity for fallen women.
4. Dukes Prefer Blondes (2015) — Lady Clara Fairfax — a client rather than a Noirot — and Oliver Radford, a barrister with no patience for the ton. The series steps outside the shop and is better for it.

Publication order is reading order. The sisters' business grows across the quartet, and book four assumes you know who they are.

What makes this series different

Almost every historical romance about a woman in trade treats the trade as an obstacle to be resolved by marriage. Chase does the opposite: the shop is the point, and each hero has to work out how to be married to a woman who will not be closing it. The dressmaking detail is specific enough to be genuinely interesting — fabric, fit, credit terms, the politics of who wears what to which ball.

There is also a child. Marcelline has a daughter, Lucie, who is present throughout the quartet and is written as an actual person rather than a plot device. Readers who normally avoid children in romance tend to make an exception.

Where to start, and whether order matters

Start at book one. The Noirot sisters' con-artist background, the rivalry with the established modistes and the shop itself are all set up in Silk Is for Seduction, and the later books lean on all three.

Dukes Prefer Blondes is the one that can be read alone if you must — Clara is a client, Radford has no connection to the earlier plots, and the courtroom material stands by itself. It is also the book most often named the best of the four.

If you liked the Dressmakers

Try the Carsington Brothers for Chase in comic mode, or Lord of Scoundrels and its series for Chase at her most intense. The complete list is in the Loretta Chase reading order.