The middle-class Eliott sisters, 30 year old Beatrice (Stella Gonet) and 18 year old Evangeline (Louise Lombard) have been kept virtual prisoners by their father all their lives until he dies and leaves them penniless, but a chance encounter leads to new friends and a proper job for Beatrice. Before long, the sisters find work in the fashion industry and with a little financial help from their friends, decide to use their talent for dressmaking to start their own business.
The first season covered 1920-1923, the second covered 1924-1926 and the third covered 1927-1930, the fourth was supposed to follow the sisters into the next decade but the show was sadly cancelled.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: The father, if he wasn't yelling at his daughters, then he was ignoring them and leaving them to fend for themselves, including abandoning Evie to the care of twelve-year-old Beatrice. He wouldn't even buy them clothes, just the fabric to make their own.
- Anachronism Stew:
- The 1921 New Year's costume party, featuring a Bela Lugosi Dracula and an Errol Flynn Robin Hood, 1931 and 1938 respectively.
- Actually, these could be references to the Dracula play (which formed the Tuxedo and Cape look) and Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood, 1924 and 1922 respectively.
- Book Ends: Season 2 opened with Bea and Evie on a ferry to France and ended with them on an ocean liner to New York.
- Costume Porn: The House of Eliott fashion shows in particular but also in general, goes with the territory in a 1920s-set drama about a fashion house. Covering the entire decade even allowed them to document changing fashions.
- Dashed Plotline: Kind of necessary to fit the entire 1920s into three series.
- Death by Childbirth: The sister's mother, who didn't survive giving birth to Evie.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: The class system and a certain amount of sexism, such as the banks not wanting to lend money to a female-owned business and getting away with it.
- Depending on the Writer: Beatrice was usually supposed to be good with figures but one writer had the business get into financial straits without her realising it. Whether or not Tilly wanted to be a workroom manager seemed to vary with the writers too.
- Family Business: Obviously.
- "Gender-Normative Parent" Plot:
- It's only the aftermath of a that is shown; Henry Eliott was a tyrannical father who denied education to his daughters out of a belief that women are not made to be academics.
- Daniel Page is engaged to marry Evie Elliott, and she insists on meeting his parents, a family of ordinary farm labourers. His father is bitter about him leaving them to go to art school, but he comes round eventually on meeting with Evie, and attends their wedding.
- Grande Dame: Aunt Lydia.
- How We Got Here: Season 2 opened with Bea and Evie on a ferry, then the episode flashed back to the lead-up to a trip to Paris.
- Important Haircut: Evie swaps her long hair for a modern fashionable bob as part of her character development in gaining confidence.
- I Never Got Any Letters: Beatrice never got any from her first boyfriend Phillip because father was intercepting them until Phillip gave up on her and married someone else.
- Layout of a Season: A three-season Period Drama with ten episodes per series and no finite plot, more similar to an American series than the typical British literary adaptation or original period miniseries, ended on a cliffhanger with one of the sisters threatening to walk out on the eponymous fashion house. However, The BBC then decided not to commission another series, so the series was left dangling.
- Promoted to Parent: Bea for Evie, their mother didn't survive her birth, and their father wasn't interested in her, which left Bea —who was twelve.
- Put on the Bus: Penny went to work with the poor in Africa and never came back, Aunt Lydia emigrated to America.
- The Roaring '20s: All of them.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: When the sisters met father's mistress and her son Sebastian, he and Evie took an interest in each other but had to worry about the possibility they were half siblings. Sebastian's mother eventually confirmed his father was someone else altogether, leaving him and Evie free to pursue a romantic relationship but before they could really get anywhere he crashed his plane and died.
- The Voice: Father, he's heard yelling at Evie from behind a closed door in the first episode then collapses and dies offscreen.
- Will They or Won't They?: Bea with Jack, Evie with several men.
