Wendy Guerra: Fashion Has Always Been a Form of Resistance

March 4, 2025

Cuban writer Wendy Guerra believes that "fashion has always been a form of resistance," a world that she describes in her latest novel, 'La costurera de Chanel', full of female protagonists with which she wants to pay homage to the women who have always been behind the scenes of History.

'La costurera de Chanel' (Lumen) begins in a summer in Arcachon, a small provincial city in France, where Simone Leblanc, with the help of Teresa Lenormand de Mezy, her lady's maid and confidante, of Cuban mother and French father, works on remodeling her grandmother's tailoring workshop, and at the start of the season her designs are already displayed in the shop window and the premises fill with customers once again.

But Simone aspires to more, she frees herself from the corset, lightens the dresses, prefers linen and cotton to silk, experiments with swimsuits, creating simple patterns with groundbreaking fabrics for her time, until a Parisian vacationer, Gabrielle Chanel, bursts into the store and, with her keen eye for recognizing talent, proposes that they work together.

Revolution in Chanel's Fashion

The novel portrays that revolution that Chanel brought to fashion with a storyline that takes the reader to a resort on the Atlantic coast, to Paris during World War I, Nazi-occupied France, and Cuba in the thirties.

In an interview with EFE, Guerra, who has lived in Miami for the past five years, explained that she wanted to "break with many prejudices, and that's why it's dedicated to all those women who loosened their corsets, to all those hands that are behind any piece of clothing."

Besides the popular Coco Chanel, in 'La costurera de Chanel' historical figures appear such as Stravinski, Diaghilev, Christian Dior, and Madame Boucicaut, owner of the Lutetia hotel, which were frequented by Picasso, Matisse, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett.

"There is also talk of Napoleon, of the resistance of Parisian women against the German occupation, who had to change their attire in times of conflict to work in factories, there is talk of wars, in which women gained prominence, and of fashion, always marked by major historical processes," completes the Cuban author.

In her opinion, "the space of freedom almost always begins with the soul but ends with the body."

The writer thinks that this is her "most universal novel," to the point that a Spanish production company and a well-known director—she doesn't want to reveal the name yet out of superstition—are interested in making a television series based on this book; and "although it deals with an apparently frivolous subject, the novel is profound, hard, and at the same time sublime," she points out.

First Novel from Exile

Guerra has written her "first novel in exile," which is why it is "more Caribbean than Cuban," but it has been woven and sewn, to use sewing terms, facing the same sea that waters her native Cuba and Spain that catapulted her as a novelist.

The starting point of the story has something autobiographical about it, as Guerra married a Cuban pianist of French origin, "from a family that had undisclosed mysteries, that left France after World War II for reasons unknown until that moment, and with a grandmother married to a Polish count, in short, a story wrapped in gift paper for a storyteller."

Added to that is a question, "what the devil was Chanel doing at a fashion show in Havana, with all those decadent buildings?"

In a Cuba of bearded men dominated by men, always dressed in khaki, "clothing was also a political issue, it was frowned upon to dress well, which was considered bourgeois, and sewing a simple ruffle to an old dress from the 50s was committing a sacrilege," she recalls.

The author announces, without being able to give many details yet, that in June a film will be screened at "a major festival" featuring her first film script.