The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang Summary

The Prince and the Dressmaker is a delightful read consists of 250 pages. It is a full color comic novel featuring excellent gender representation.

Crisp about the story

The Prince and the Dressmaker features two main characters, Prince Sebastian and Frances the dressmaker. It is set in Paris, France. The story starts with the Prince noticing Frances who is an aspiring Costume fashion designer. He noticed a design she made for a lady attending the ball and called for her to design dresses for him.

The twist here is he wanted her to sew dresses for a girl and he was to wear those. He was basically interested in dressing like a woman and he liked to flaunt himself as a lady.

Lady Crystallia

The representation of the prince Sebastian exploring gender identity and the support that he gets from Frances is the beauty of the story. Every evening Prince dresses as a lady with a gown and put on a different identity as Lady Crystallia as an alias name. He becomes famous all over as Crystallia because of her gowns she wore. Every other girl adores Prince i.e. Lady Crystallia as the beauty Pageant of that time but nobody knew the girl was the prince.

After Story

He hires Frances and asks him to keep the gender thing of him as a secret. This ultimately hides the dressmaker and she is also a secret. Now she is unable to flaunt to the society that this is her work. This disturbs her and she decides to leave the Prince and go live her dream.

After Frances left Sebastian he was devastated because he had to protect his family’s dignity and his father asks him to take over all the responsibility after he dies. He felt sad for not responsible enough to be a right heir to the kingdom. So he decided to listen to whatever his father says to.

Devastated

In the meantime he fell in love with Frances. After she left he was alone and he could no more be Lady Crystallia because the King asks him to marry. He decided upon marrying the princess because he had no choice left. But he was in great grief because he lost Frances plus the “lady freedom” he had, to roam around like he always wanted to.

The final evening before the prince’s marriage turned the story round. The brother of the Princess he was going to marry caught Sebastian red handed in the face of Lady Crystallia. The next day the news broke in the city and the parents of the price were flushed with pain and shame.

Then after few days Prince came to meet Frances who was now going to show off her talent as a seamstress in the biggest event of her dream. This could make her famous and fulfil all her dreams but she was showing the dresses according to the current requirement not the ones she designed while she stayed with the Prince. Then somehow she showed off those particular dresses which all men wore in the stage and walked on the stage.

This was unique but the audience loved him. The king himself supported his son in the gender exploration.

My View

The Plot of the gender exploration was foamingly beautifully challenging but in the end this is the reality that one must support and let people be how they want to because this is how they are and it cannot be altered at any cost.

I absolutely love the story, the gender queer of the plot created. The romance between the prince and the dressmaker was really sweet. The exhilarating ending brought a sense of satisfaction in me.

Look of the book

Me not being an illustrator, the artwork of the novel allured me and gave me a pinch of excitement the very moment I got to grab the book in my hands.

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