In the frenzy of Fashion Week, three women cross paths in Paris, grappling with the world's tragedies and the questions of their lives: Maxine, an American film director in her forties, discovers she has cancer; Ada, a young South Sudanese model, escapes a predetermined destiny to be thrust into a deceptive universe and French makeup artist Angèle, a small hand working in the shadows of the catwalks, dreams of escaping her life.

Paris, spring 1968. While most students take the lead in the May 'revolution', a French poet's twin son Theo and daughter Isabelle enjoy the good life in his grand Paris home. As film buffs they meet and 'adopt' modest, conservatively educated Californian student Matthew. With their parents away for a month, they drag him into an orgy of indulgence of all senses, losing all of his and the last of their innocence. A sexual threesome shakes their rapport, yet only the outside reality will break it up.

Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.