Six Noteworthy Brands of Stationary

By susan_grace on July 5, 2012 • ( 0 )

During my formative years my grandmother and mother took great strides to instill in me the art of ‘being a lady’. This included the odd lesson on just what hem lengths were acceptable, the proper cutlery to use, the endless utility of a great set of china, and one of my favorite lessons: the merit of a hand-written note. From an early age, birthdays and Christmas would be followed by an afternoon of writing thank-you notes on the stationary purchased by the two of them with my initials gracefully embossed at the top of the page. This is a practice I quite enjoy to this day, and so when I saw Vanity Fair’s article on noteworth brands of stationary I jumped at the chance to post it.

Someone dear to me recently asked me how I spelled my middle name. I told him offhandedly and promptly forgot about it until six weeks later, when the most gorgeous gray box arrived at my office. “It’s beautiful!” I said (squealed). The box itself would have honestly been enough, but when I untied the bow I found the most heavenly stationery tucked into folds of tissue. My full name was handsomely embossed on the thickest card stock I had ever held. There were also hands down the nicest personalized correspondence cards I had ever seen. Sold exclusively at Barneys—with celebrity clients from Victor Cruz to Matt Lauer and Blake Lively—Connor has won me over as a client for life.

(Vanity Fair) There was a time when people used to send handwritten thank-you notes. It was a lovely time—a civilized time—a time before e-mail and Twitter. I have to admit I am a little torn on the subject because I have a very good time with “the twitter” (as my dad likes to call it) and concede that e-mail is indeed very useful. However, there is nothing chicer than receiving a handwritten note of gratitude on beautiful stationery. If you were born after 1985 you might not even know what I am talking about. “Hand” writing? What’s that? So I have decided to meld a very current way of communicating with a timeless tradition in (hopefully) a very modern approach to discussing stationery. I have chosen six of my very favorite companies along with six of my favorite tweets to discuss the lost art of letter writing. So Gram, if you are reading, this one’s for you (in fewer than 140 characters). See the slideshow here.