BARNEY COSTUME SIZE 8 SERIES

Harris gets a front-row showroom seat for the debut of Dior’s 10th anniversary collection. With the help of chivalrous Anglophile the Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson), Mrs. That’s if she can get past the snooty gatekeeper, Madame Colbert (Isabelle Huppert), who shudders at the idea of a common charwoman wearing haute couture. She arrives in Paris believing that a Dior acquisition will be as straightforward as buying a frock from Woolworth’s, but soon learns that tailoring, measurements and fitting will take weeks.

BARNEY COSTUME SIZE 8 SERIES

Harris achieves this through a series of charmed windfalls, setbacks, happy accidents and the helping hand of a raffish bookmaker acquaintance, Archie (Jason Isaacs). There’s an understated touched-by-an-angel aspect in the details of how she accumulates the then-outrageous sum of 500 pounds that a Dior dress would cost. Harris shuffles off to work every morning on the bus in the predawn hours with her best friend and neighbor, Vi (Ellen Thomas). The early action is set in a fogbound storybook London, where Mrs. Harris’ circumstances to champion the right of all invisible women to be seen and appreciated as individuals, every bit as entitled to swathe themselves in drop-dead glamour and sensuality as the flawless beauties who model the clothes in the exclusive Dior salon on Paris’ Avenue Montaigne. Harris could use a touch of grace, even magic in her life. Having finally received confirmation in 1957 of the death of her beloved RAF pilot husband, Eddie, shot down near Warsaw 12 years earlier, Mrs. Harris starts daydreaming about how it would feel to own such a dress herself. But when she gets a glimpse of a shimmering couture gown from the House of Dior, purchased by one posh client (Anna Chancellor) who keeps crying poor when it comes time to settle her household accounts, Mrs.

Rather than an aspirational climber, she’s a woman who makes no attempt to disguise her background as a house cleaner making a living scrubbing the floors and scouring the bathrooms of well-heeled Londoners. What makes Ada Harris such a lovely character is that she’s not an arriviste. Screenwriters: Carroll Cartwright, Anthony Fabian, Olivia Hetreed, Keith Thompson, based on the novel by Paul Gallico Cast: Lesley Manville, Isabelle Huppert, Lambert Wilson, Alba Baptista, Lucas Bravo, Ellen Thomas, Rose Williams, Jason Isaacs

Barney costume size 8