Twenty-year-old Alice lives in Bayeux. She works with wool, creates dyes, makes clothing. She doesn't know what to do with this innate talent, until the day she meets Agnès, a rich Parisian, who helps her to be accepted into a prestigious school of applied arts.
Alice leaves everything behind to go and live in Paris. There she encounters Antoine, Agnès's son. They fall in love. In Alice, Antoine finds a sincerity and naivety which allows him to escape from the bourgeois milieu that he rejects.
Thanks to Antoine, Alice discovers the inner workings of a world that fascinates her. It offers her culture, and she gives herself to it entirely. At the risk of losing herself...