A Dress for Success

Jane L. Rosen ’87 was in an airport when she overheard a snippet of a story about a dress being returned to Bloomingdale’s with formaldehyde stains.

How could that happen?

That question inspired her debut novel, “Nine Women, One Dress,” a buzzed-about, breezy romance released today by Random House. It’s already been translated into 10 languages and generated a beach bag full of positive reviews, with Publisher’s Weekly calling it “a fun book, tightly plotted and perfectly timed for the summer season.”

And in the vein of a Nora Ephron or Garry Marshall flick, it’s an unabashed love letter to New York City, where Rosen has lived since graduating from UMD.

The Long Island native ended up on campus at the urging of her mom, in part because her sister already lived in nearby Rockville. Rosen, born Jane Levenbaum, arrived with two high school friends, pledged Delta Phi Epsilon and settled right in at the party-focused Maryland of the time. With so much to do and so many people to meet, she says, “it was kind of like summer camp.”

Even now, she can recite her social circle’s weekly outings: Mondays, the Vous (with Vous shoes); Wednesdays, Bentley’s; Thursdays, Santa Fe; Fridays, Friday’s; and Saturdays, D.C. or a local fraternity or sorority party. She figures that Tuesdays must have been the one weeknight for studying.

That must have been enough, since Rosen earned a degree in fashion merchandising and textile manufacturing, then worked for five years in New York’s Garment District in sales and design for a ladies’ coat manufacturer.

After she got married and one, two, three daughters came along, she instead began writing. It was something she’d enjoyed as a teen, but stowed away to pursue a more “responsible” job.

“When I was coming of age, you were looking for a career more to support yourself,” Rosen says. “I wouldn’t even have thought to do something as risky or free as writing.”

While raising her children, she blogged for the Huffington Post, wrote and sold a couple of screenplays, and self-published a young adult book, “The Thread,” a 250-page Facebook conversation thread that she calls a labor of love for her then-teen girls. She even co-founded a web-based gift company, It’s All Gravy.

Her past in the Garment District bubbles back up in “Nine Women,” a series of vignettes about the magic of the perfect little black dress. In the book, described as “Love Actually” meets “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” Rosen weaves the amusing stories of nine women who all wear the most popular dress of the season, the last one available at Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan.

These include Natalie, the salesgirl grieving a breakup; Felicia, the loyal executive assistant who’s pined for her boss for 17 years; Sophie, the jobless grad faking a fabulous life on social media; and Andie, the divorcee turned private eye.

Behind the contemporary tales are two backstories, that of dress manufacturer Max Hammer and his wife, whose teenage emigration before World War II was loosely based on Rosen’s great-uncle’s, and its 90-year-old patternmaker, Morris Siegel, who, like everyone in his scenes, is named for one of Rosen’s relatives.

Tying it all together is Rosen’s affection for New York. Her appealing descriptions of Grand Central Station, the Carlyle Hotel—and of course, Bloomie’s—may nearly convince readers to sell off their suburban abodes.

Rosen just didn’t know how to navigate the publishing world so she could get her tale into readers’ hands. Luckily, a friend shared her rough manuscript with a sister in the industry, it quickly got passed around, and she soon had an army of agents looking to represent her.

She also didn’t initially understand how important positive reviews (such as by Kirkus) were in getting her novel in the public eye. When she finishes her next book, about an enlightened Upper East Sider, she says, “I’ll be duly nervous.”

Follow Rosen on Instagram at janelrosen and Facebook at Jane L. Rosen.