Les belles vagabondes

The boats came and went on the canals of Bruges, breaking the mist and the foam. The shipowners unloaded their cargoes of cinnamon, cloves from the Orient and Burgundy wines with rich aromas. Obsidian and amethyst necklaces encircled with gold and silver were straight from Africa. But it was mostly sheets, fabrics, velvet, cashmere that wandered around the city on the dresses of the ladies and the capes of the bourgeois.

It is among this environment that Blanche de Prato and Marguerite d’Anjou, now called Les Belles Vagabondes, met. Pretty redhead with eyes of azure, Blanche imported from Italy sheets of quality, famous for their softness and their lightness. Marguerite, with a calculating and intelligent eye, was a merchant, having succeeded in setting up a powerful and influential company.

With Blanche’s meticulousness and knowledge of fabrics and Marguerite’s business and exchange skills, the two Vagabondes formed a breathtaking duo. They went to India to acquire the mastery of printing motifs on textiles and brought back a finer and more voluptuous material than wool: silk…