Literary Criticism:

This was a terrible book for a number of reasons:

1) The title was deceptive. Rather than "The Designer" it should have been called "The Platonic Bisexual Friend of the Designer" to be more accurate. The book is not focused on Dior, it is focused on Copper. Dior was just a friend to Copper who listened to her problems.

2) The author doesn't know how to write relationships. The only interesting relationship was at the beginning when Amory, married to Copper, was boning other women.  Then he disappeared for most of the book only to return as a pitiful suicide guy at the end, at which point we no longer care since he's been gone most of the story. The only other relationship in the book is between Copper and Henry, but we are given no details of the relationship--we are simply told one exists. That's why it was so astonishing when Henry proposed to Copper, because there had been no description of relations between the two beforehand. Because the writer was so terrible at writing relationships, the story fell flat.

3) The ending was disappointing. Dior showed clothes. Everyone likes them. Big deal! Why should we care?

4) Not much happened in the story. There wasn't really much of a plot. To pad the page length, the writer had to shoehorn in details of the Holocaust which didn't have any direct impact on the main characters.

I was expecting the story of cut-throat designers competing against each other. That could have been compelling, and dramatic. Instead we got the story of one woman hanging around Paris while minor things happened to her. This was a very boring book.