Sarah Kate Newsletter
Holiday 2006 Issue

Welcome to the holiday edition of Sarah Kate, the e-newsletter for practical fashionistas who believe the red Starbucks cup marks the true kickoff of the holiday shopping season.

Spotted: Performance Fleece
The key to the animal-print phenomenon is to wear it sparingly. As luck would have it, Old Navy just released leopard-print gloves in its Performance Fleece line. For $7.50 you can pump up the volume of an existing winter coat and avoid splurging on any real fur, which will make PETA and many other people very, very happy.

Gap Opens Piperlime.com
I’m not sure if Gap Inc. is looking to be the next Zappos.com, but it did recently launch its new online shoe store, Piperlime.com.  Just like Zappos.com, Piperlime.com offers free shipping and returns, and from what I can tell, it offers the same brands as Zappos.com, but on a much smaller scale with just a hair over 100 brands for women, men and children. Zappos.com carries more than 500 brands and is projecting $600 million in gross merchandise sales by yearend (That’s up from $370 million in 2005). So, maybe the Gap’s onto something by trying to take a bite out of Zappos.com's pie, and maybe Gap’s research has shown that its customers are tired of not finding their size at DSW and the like. I know that’s why I’ve become an online shoe shopper. My humble observation, though, is that the name “Piperlime” isn’t all that memorable and is two skinny letters away from “pipeline.” And both terms really have no association to the Gap brand. Who knows, maybe it’s the new marketing trend for online spin-offs and I’ll be eating my words for breakfast in six months or less.

The Consummate Holiday Gift

Grow Where You Are Planted
Sometimes in life you just need to hunker down and look squarely at what’s physically and/or emotionally torturing your insides and outsides. In my case, it’s looking an eating disorder (a.k.a. Ed) right between the eyes and telling him to “f--- off.” That’s exactly what I did with 14 courageous women at a “Life Without Ed” workshop in Nashville this past October. No matter the issues we face—from the minors to the majors—the bottom line is that we all eventually have to stop running, figure out what’s gnawing at us and deal with it responsibly. To ease into this tall order, check out Embracing Fear by Thom Rutledge. The author’s a mastermind at getting real: peeling back the onion and calling a spade a spade, the two things that can hurt like h-ll, but can get you out of a living h-ll. What I like most about this book is that it’s written by not just another therapist, but by a therapist who also happens to be a recovered alcoholic. It adds a level of credibility and insight that can only come from someone who’s had to embrace a whole bunch of fear and somehow transcend it. Mr. Rutledge takes it another step further by sharing the “how-to” part.