Coverlicious: Beautiful Cover Dresses #1 - The Luxe and Rumours by Anna Godbersen

Coverlicious is a feature that I post here spontaneously where I feature anything to do with covers from covers I love and cover trends to look-a-like covers and cover reveals. I haven't done a Coverlicious post for a while but now Christmas is over and it is the start of 2011, I wan

Over the past few months I have noticed some beautiful dresses on the covers of books, so I thought would feature some over a couple of weeks in several different posts here.

Today's spotlight:

                 The Luxe and Rumours by Anna Godbersen

I adore these covers- they are just simply gorgeous! Anna Godbersen is so lucky to have such amazing cover art as I have known many fans of the series to have originally picked them up because the covers are so eye catching. I would just love to try on one of these dresses and go to a ball in it for one night. Wouldn't you just feel like a princess in one of them? I have to admit that they would be pretty hard to walk in though let alone dance in but a girl can have her dreams!

I have since found out that the dresses are actually inaccurate to the time but even though I think it historical detail is important, especially inside the book, their beauty gives it a good excuse.

Summary of the Luxe series (from the publisher's (Penguin) blog: 

 Glittering with jewels, brimming with secrets and loaded with eligible young men, The Luxe is the most delicious, tantalising and completely addictive read. Think The O.C. meets 19th century New York. High society, beautiful debutantes, buckets of scandal – in short, it’s just completely irresistible!

I read the series very quickly around Easter time and the divine covers didn't disappoint me. The summary above describes it very well, it really is addictive with characters that I grew to care about. It might not be historically accurate but it's a fun romp in the past and I really enjoyed it.



The Luxe-  To the left is a full picture of the cover without the back blurb and you can really see how large the dress really is. This dress is my favourite because I'm quite a big girly girl and I love the soft pink colour. The way the lace ruffles over each layer and the dainty rosebuds sewn subtly between give it a very feminine and pretty look but the massive size of the dress makes it more of a statement. The dress also tells you a lot about the character of Elizabeth in the book who it is supposed to be depicting as that is the type of character she is. If you look at the top picture, you can see that there are a lot of swirls and some writing at the top. Whilst I usually love these on covers, I think that they are a bit much on this cover and detract from the impact of the dress. I love the shiny gold writing though.

Whilst searching for cover photos I discovered some photos that the publisher used to promote it of seventeen year old Faye Edwards, who won a competition in a similar replica  dress reading the book around London. The dress she is wearing looks much easier to walk in than the one on the cover!  She is a very lucky girl! I also found out that the dress was on display at the Foyle's Department of Selfridges in London.

Rumours- This dress is distinctly different to the one on the cover of Luxe. It's deep, rich ruby red colour made of plain satin silk is simple but that is what makes it so bold and eye catching.  Again, it suits the character of Penelope Hayes as she is a very bold, stylish but backstabbing social queen. I prefer the swirls on the top cover picture on this one because the dress is simpler and so it makes it look less busy than it did on the Luxe.

Look out for my next Coverlicious post about the other cover dresses of of Envy and Splendour coming soon:)

I'd love to hear what you think in the comments!

 If you've read the books, did you like them as much as the cover or was the story disappointing? If not, would you pick them up because of the covers?