Deborah
Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of twenty books for
adults and children. She has been a regular contributor to The New York Times (including four
years as the Sunday New York Times Magazine
beauty columnist), and a home design columnist for Long Island
Newsday. Learn more
about Deborah and her books at her website.
I look through my closet filled with designer
clothes. The question is what to put on: The grass-green Chanel jacket with the
worn jeans, sky-high heels and the navy Birkin bag? The black cashmere
Valentino sweater with the skinny white wool Prada pants and the black
Louboutins with the blood red soles?
In my dreams.
Sage Parker may have a wardrobe like that,
but I don’t. I’m more J. Crew mixed with Uniglo, and a designer splurge here
and there. But a girl can dream.
Sage Parker, the heroine of Someone Else’s Love Letter, knows how to
dress—for any and every occasion. And she’s a dogged shopper—except for the
time she spends searching for the man who wrote the love letter she found on
the floor of a taxi on her way home from a closet assessment. The man who
seduced her with his words, the quality of the paper, and the color of the ink
in his fountain pen.
But I’ll get back to that.
So shopping is what Sage does for a
living. She sorts through her clients’ closets and puts together outfits
that help them look and feel their best, even when they’re not at the top of
their game.
Sage can pair that perfect black pencil skirt
with a classic white shirt, and then shake things up with a killer jacket, or a
handful of fun necklaces. She has a wardrobe of high-quality staples, but she
takes them up a few notches with quirky finds, some designer quality, others
from vintage shops. And then there are all the high-end shoes and handbags she
owns that go the distance in terms of completing her chic outfits.
Not all Sage’s clients have the budgets
to buy couture clothes, but no matter. Sage mixes investment pieces with cheap
chic. She knows where to shop and when. Best of all, she has fun doing it and
doesn’t take any of it too seriously.
Wear your old clothes like they’re new, and
new clothes like they’re old, as the French say.
What am I leading up to?
I created Sage Parker. But I’m no Sage
Parker. While it’s easy and fun to talk about dressing well, doing it is
something else.
I remember my six-year-old daughter turning
to me one day and saying, “I know how to swim, I just can’t do it.”
That sort of sums it up. I know great fashion
when I see it, but I can’t exactly shop for it or put it together. Especially
on my own body.
So what do I do?
I work at channeling Sage Parker. What would
she do? How would she dress me if she were standing here? If I told her I was
going to a book signing, say, what would she tell me to wear?
The fun of writing is pretending. You’re the
best-dressed woman in the room. You have that yellow diamond ring from Graff
and a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park in New York, not to mention
a retreat on the Amalfi coast. You always know what to say, or what not
to say. You have the perfect men in your life and the most giving,
compassionate friends. Yes, it’s all fiction, but the more you write
about that life, the more it becomes real to you. And crazy as it may sound,
you sometimes would rather spend time with your fictional friends in your
made-up world than the real one.
And when you’ve created characters you enjoy
spending time with, chances are your readers will feel the same way.
So I give you Sage Parker, wardrobe
consultant extraordinaire. While you follow her on her journey of finding the
writer of the love letter that captivated her from the moment she read it, may
she inspire you to wear clothes that make you look and feel fabulous.
Or to quote Virginia Woolf: Vain
trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to
merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of
us.
Someone Else’s Love Letter
Sage Parker
has the perfect job — she helps people discover the powers of dressing well.
Her sense of fashion is impeccable, her connections are unsurpassed, and her
eye misses not a single well-made stitch.
So when she
discovers a love note left on the floor of a cab, Sage admires the card stock
and the ink, but also the heartfelt words. She sets out on a mission to find
out who the love note was intended for―and who wrote it.
What she
finds will change her life, introducing her to an extraordinary woman who is
revamping her entire world midway through life, a dashing Brit with a hive of
secrets, and a free-spirited painter, whose brush captures the light in
everything he paints, including Sage.
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