After her mother dies, art student Annie Wilkes moves to New York to seek fame and fortune. She takes a job in a dressmaking establishment owned by rapacious Madame Estelle and enters a contest to design a standardized outfit for American women to wear during the war to help the conservation effort. Her design, called "Heart of Gold" and submitted on the shop's letterhead, wins the $5,000 prize and becomes the rage of the city, but Madame Estelle claims credit for it and fires Annie. Annie's sweetheart Mike Monahan hires a lawyer to help, but the lawyer steals her original drawing and becomes Madame Estelle's partner. After Annie goes to jail under an assumed name for attempting to retrieve her drawing, Mike proves her case with the help of the newspapers. When he locates Annie, their romance is accompanied by her acclaim as a designer.