Alice, a twenty-year-old girl of modest origin, lives in Bayeux, a small town in Normandy. She has an unambitious boyfriend, Kevin, and currently works as a sales clerk at a bakery. But her passion is fashion and she has a gift for weaving wool. In the tea room she serves a patron, Agnès, who discovers her talent. Determined to help her develop her skills, the wealthy woman encourages the young woman to enroll at the Ecole Duperré in Paris, a school of applied arts. Alice is selected and must now leave Bayeux, her mother, Kevin and her friends for Paris. Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with Antoine, Agnès's son, a sensitive young man who rebels against both his mother and her half-bourgeois...