York author Lucy Adlington reveals the secret sewing rooms at Auschwitz in her new novel

York Press features a review of Lucy Adlington's novel, The Red Ribbon, set in a fictional concentration camp during World War Two.

It was during her research into historical fashion that Lucy uncovered a footnote that lead to a remarkable story – and became the focus of The Red Ribbon.

She discovered that Hedwig Hoss, the wife of the commander at Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, loved fashion so much that she demanded a tailoring workshop be established, to be staffed by female prisoners. These prisoners were tasked with making beautiful clothes for Frau Hoss, as well as the wives of other male officers and female guards.

For a historian with a passion for clothes and fashion, The Red Ribbon was a novel she just had to write. Lucy was struck that in the midst of the horror of a concentration camp the frivolities of fashion could flourish. Hedwig Hoss is recast as Madame H in the novel. In real life, she employed prisoners to make her clothes, first at a room in her house (a villa near the camp), but by 1943 this was moved into a workshop at Auschwitz. She had 23 staff, making beautiful clothes for herself and other Nazi women.

read more here @ York Press and at Lucy's website