The Russians

And she also discovered French silks from Lyon, some of them made to patterns that were centuries old; patterns that she ‘recognised as old friends; I had seen them on the brocaded curtains and furniture coverings in the palaces at Tsarskoie-Selo and Peterhof. Piece after piece of brocade and silk both plain and fancy was unrolled for me to admire, a wealth of taste, artistic wisdom, and experience accumulated for generations Marie found comfort in the familiar patterns, and drew on them in her embroidery for Chanel. And as the elements of fashion reassembled themselves – old materials transformed into apparently new designs – the collaboration between an exiled Grand Duchess and a peasant-girl-turned-autocrat served, amongst other things, as a reminder both of transformation and of tradition; of survival, amidst the seismic shifts and aftershocks of revolutions great and small.