A Vintage Affair

A Vintage Affair will be published by HarperCollins in trade paperback in January 2009.

In my eighth novel, 'A Vintage Affair', the heroine, Phoebe Swift, has just opened a vintage dress shop in Blackheath. At the same time she is coping with the recent loss of her best friend, Emma, and this sadness prevents Phoebe from looking for love. So she takes refuge in her work - restoring these wonderful old clothes to their former glory so that they can go on to have new lives. But what of the past lives these clothes have lived she often wonders? What stories would they tell if they could speak? One day Phoebe meets an elderly French woman, Therese, who wishes to sell her some elegant dresses and suits. In Therese's wardrobe Phoebe also finds a child's sky-blue winter coat, from the 1940s. At first Therese wishes not to reveal the coat's history but, as the two women become friends, she opens up. Phoebe listens to the story of the little blue coat not knowing that it is to have a profound and uplifting connection with her own life...

I have been hugely helped in my research for 'A Vintage Affair' by the auctioneer and textiles expert Kerry Taylor of Kerry Taylor Auctions.