Top Drawer: "This is the most wonderful place in the world!"

Instructions for my mother's 1982 trip to Paris

Notable: My mother’s first job out of college was for the renowned interior designer Sarah Tomerlin Lee (one of the reasons I’m named Sarah). She was a huge inspiration to my mother and such a thoughtful person. Before a trip to Europe, she furnished my mother with a long, typewritten letter of things to do and people to meet. (Very much in the vein of “letters of introduction” in novels like A Room with a View.) Here’s an excerpt from the letter. During that trip, my mother would, in fact, “go mad for the scarfs and bags.” Who wouldn’t? I still wear one of the scarves she bought on that trip.

The scarf in Amsterdam, mid-1980s

The scarf in Manhattan, 2023