An adaptation of the 1982 novel of the same name by Judith Gould, it is the story of a woman who survives the horrors of the Nazi occupation of France and endures a succession of challenges as she rises in the world of fashion.
In France during World War II, 13-year-old Helene is raped and brutalized at the hands of the Gestapo (led by the sadistic Nazi commander, Karl Von Eiderfeld) as they murder her pregnant mother, caught sending messages for the Allied Forces.
At the same time, Helene has hired an investigator named Otto Mueller, as she wants to find her brother and sister and the Gestapo commander responsible for the death of her mother years earlier.
Mueller succeeds in finding Helene's brother Edmund, now a grown man but living in a mental institution in a permanently catatonic state after years of torture and abuse at the hands of the Nazis.
Helene reluctantly agrees and tells the police it was an accident, but then discovers that the incident and their conversation afterwards had been taped as Eric was recording music at his piano at the time.
However her victory over the De Villes is bittersweet as she finds out she is pregnant with Eric's child, but miscarries and learns she can never have children because of an injury she sustained after being raped by the Nazis during the war.
Soon after, Mueller informs Helene that he has tracked down the ex-Nazi commander Von Eiderfeld, who is now a wealthy businessman living in Austria.
Meanwhile, Helene meets Italian publisher Marcello D'Itri, who tries to secure a loan from her to save his floundering fashion magazine.
Some years later in the 1970s, Helene's empire has expanded and she hires American architect Steve Bryant, and his jealous wife Zizi, to design and build a new skyscraper in New York named the Junot Tower.
In 1982, at a fancy dress ball in Venice to mark the 50th issue of Couture Italiana, Helene learns that Marcello has been embezzling from the magazine behind her back, and she forces him to resign.
A couple of years later, Helene's enemies Von Eiderfeld, Hubert, Marcello and Zizi join forces in a conspiracy to destroy her.
Helene has launched a new magazine, Woman Of Today, but has taken out huge loans and sold off a large amount of stock in her company, Junot Publications, in order to finance it.
They also manage to lure Helene's long-time editorial associate, Luba Tcherina, away from her, while bribing her banker, Adam Gore, into calling in her outstanding loans so that she will become bankrupt.
Directed by Douglas Hickox, Sins was filmed in 1985 at Studios de Billancourt in Paris, and on location in France, Italy, and New York.
[3]An episode of the hit ABC series Growing Pains entitled "Reputation", which was also originally telecast in February 1986, made multiple indirect references to the miniseries, including the audio of a faux television advertisement and the reading aloud of a fictitious listing description in TV Guide.