Dear Amy,

I've been thinking deeply about the crinkly green silk coat you passed up at the Eileen Fisher store last month on our shopping adventure. This you must have, of course, because it brings out the greenest green of your eyes, but also because you will look like Harry Potter's mother returned from the dead, she who surely is lovely and witty and fashionable and definitely green-eyed, and wears black tank tops under said green cloak. It is important, don't you think, that all of us in the writing industry make an immediate and compelling connection to good old HP?

A glamorous acquaintance of mine recently mourned the fact that people here in the Middle West do not do as the Europeans, and "Dress." And it is true that here we are all masters of Frump. Something must have happened to those glam people in the Holy Roman Empire who wore tidy wreaths and cunningly draped togas, who then invaded Europe, and the Puritans, it is true, didn't go so much for that look by the time they came around, and yet still and all, after lo these many years, many Americans have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, and way over in your part of the world I believe there is something like fashion. I'm quite sure that no one in my neighborhood is shopping for a green cloak.

jh