What Will Be Worn

A tender portrait of the generations of women, including the author’s mother, Jill, and grandmother, Joan, who inherited the legacy of now faded art deco treasure, department store McWhirters of Brisbane. Sat on an iconic corner plot in Fortitude Valley, Fagan’s grandfather gambled his inheritance, while her grandmother was cast out of society for in delity. In a moving introduction, Fagan remembers evenings on a rooftop bar with her mother, drinking champagne, gazing at the decaying building. “I can see her now, turning her back on the building and towards me, saying how beautiful it was and how surreal to be sitting so close to it.” Fagan traces her family back to Ayrshire in Scotland, where her great-great-grandfather set sail for Australia in 1878.