The play is about sex and power and deals with the changing and developing role of women at the beginning of the last century. The action moves from the Huxtable household with its six, trapped, unmarried daughters to the drapery emporium, where the “live-in” system provides a different prison and where mannequins, who speak no English, are prodded and pulled as they parade fashions displayed to delight the idle rich. Throughout the play weave the figures of Constantine and Philip Madras. The former, the designer whose flair created the Madras House, has now retired and converted to Islam, while his son is eager to sell his inheritance, find a new life and a different way forward with his wife.