Studio Saint-Ex

Szado (Beginning of Was) crafts the facts of Antoine de Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry's life into an engaging tale of youth, power, and longing set in New York City as the country heads off to WWII. Mignonne Lachapelle is a hungry young designer, fresh out of fashion school, searching for Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry to resume the affair she ran from the year before. His wife Consuelo becomes the key to Mignonne's success, her nemesis, and ultimately her muse. The world of haute couture depicted here overflows with backstabbing, design stealing, and credit-robbing injustice. Meanwhile, French-American ex-pats make love, lie, cheat, and steal while the fabric of their world is torn apart by the looming war and their affairs. Neither Szado's shifting points-of-view nor movements through time are seamless, but the love of story within the story is redeeming. Mignonne turns The Little Prince into a fashion show, names her studio Saint Ex, and casts Consuelo as the rose all in hopes of keeping Antoine from flying off to war. But like his fictional creation, Antoine was destined to fly: "It isn't a love story, it's a war story. The Prince goes back to his rose at the end. That's his country. He signs up to die for his pretty, prickly France." (June)