New York City, September of nineteen ninety. Rose DeLuca works six days a week at a small dress shop on Fifth Avenue, and on her one free day she walks four blocks down to stand at somebody else's window.

Behind the glass is a red gown called Four in the Morning. It costs thirty eight thousand dollars, which is two and a half years of her life.

She does not want to wear it. She wants to understand how it was made.

For five months she has been taking it apart with her eyes, and writing what she works out in a squared notebook, on the bed, next to her mother's sewing machine from nineteen sixty two.

She does not know that the man who designed that gown has been watching her from a window on the second floor, and that he has not drawn anything worth cutting in four years.

A story about a shop window, and about the thought that stands behind the glass with you.

00:00 Four in the morning, thirty eight thousand dollars
03:21 One suitcase from Albany
06:42 The man at the second floor window
10:07 She works across the street
13:23 Sold through a side seam
17:06 The middle that does not exist
20:35 Nineteen forty seven, and permission to be beautiful
24:02 Her grandmother's kitchen in Bay Ridge
27:27 Central Park, and the whole truth at last
31:04 The coffee still standing on the stove
34:23 A blue dress with a name
37:57 The board says no
41:17 Fourteen pots of plants move to Manhattan
44:49 Twenty two women on the runway

Fifth Avenue Stories. New stories about love, dignity and the price of silence.