Trelise unruffled as author mocks fashions of the rich

Her trademark designs involving opulent frills helped Trelise Cooper establish a multi-million-dollar fashion empire.

But her elaborate dresses - and the women who wear them - have been ridiculed in the latest book by one of New Zealand's premier authors.

Charlotte Grimshaw's fourth novel The Night Book is set among Auckland's wealthy political elite. It tells of a publisher whose husband has risen from dirt-poor beginnings to the verge of becoming the next National prime minister.

Grimshaw writes of women with more money than dress sense, decked out in "yards of ruffle and flounce and skirt and boot, like a crew of pirates who'd plundered a giant treasure chest (all seemingly dressed by Trelise, the fantastically expensive local designer, who scorned the notion that less was more)".

Elsewhere she describes wives who "all had the same hard, affluent, provincial look - long skirts with elaborate flounces and frills, big boots, detailed tops; they were always done up to the nines in yards of cloth, as if big money had to mean big clothes".

Far from being offended, Cooper said she was "flattered" at the mention.

"If anything I find it hilarious. That's what I am known as.

"I'm a very feminine designer, frills and flounces are my signature. But I really am quite flattered," she said.

Cooper, whose dresses have been worn by Hollywood stars such as Julia Roberts and Liv Tyler, said she hadn't been able to shake off her old image.

"People like to hark back to stuff that I did, but that was only between 1998 and 2004. It's fashion, it's evolved. Now I feel like I have moved on from all the big ruffles."

Reviewers have often made mention of the real-life parallels in Grimshaw's work, and The Night Book is no exception.

As well as the lead character, whose background has some similarities to John Key's, there is a high-ranking policeman facing a historical rape accusation. Grimshaw was reluctant to explain her characters' motivations this week.

"I think I have no comment because I just write the books. I hope people enjoy the book."

But in a recent interview, she told Britain's Guardian newspaper: "Every now and then people get offended, but they shouldn't, because it's fiction."

In today's Herald on Sunday Detours magazine, reviewer Nicky Pellegrino says Grimshaw "has fun being bitchy about Parnell matrons swathed expensively in flouncy Trelise Cooper clothes".

"This is a well-heeled world Grimshaw clearly knows well and she writes about these characters, who have a lot to lose and are wobbling on the edge of losing it, with clarity."

Grimshaw's father, award-winning author C. K. Stead, is no stranger to having his fictional characters dissected. His latest work was interpreted by some critics as a revenge fantasy against deceased author Nigel Cox, who wrote a stinging essay about Stead in 1994.

Stead's book Last Season's Man, which won the $51,000 London Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Prize, is about a Croatian dramatist who wishes death on a younger writer who criticised his work.

Stead said writers had dealt with such real-life comparisons "through the whole history of fiction".

"Fiction writers have always had to deal with this and deal with it in different ways according to the case. Too bad if people are unsophisticated about reading fiction."