Author Q&A: Jade Beer

Author Jade Beer’s new book, The Memory Dress, published earlier this month. Publishers Weekly describes the plot: Jayne, a dog walker, leads a quiet life until one of the dogs she cares for gets loose and runs into the apartment of her dementia-stricken neighbor, Meredith Chalis. A retired dressmaker, Meredith is alone and confused, and claims her husband, William, and their daughter, Fiona, are missing. Jayne, determined to help Meredith, gathers neighbors to help clean and organize the apartment and attempts to track down William and Fiona. In hopes of jogging Meredith’s memory as to their whereabouts, Jayne takes her to London to visit locations mentioned alongside sketches of dresses Jayne found in the apartment. Meredith recalls to Jayne how she and William worked for a famous dressmaker and created clothes for Princess Diana, leading Jayne closer to finding out what happened to William and Fiona. 

Jeanne Mackin, author of Picasso's Lovers, says: "Jade Beer's newest novel is a romantic, elegant story of two women who find they have much more in common than their Bath, England, apartment house. Uniting them is a gorgeous, historical dress that holds the key to their story. In glimmering, sumptuous details this exquisitely imagined novel unfolds in a way that leaves the reader completely captivated."

Jade Beer is an award-winning editor, journalist, and novelist who has worked across the UK national press for more than 20 years. Most recently, she was the editor in chief of Condé Nast's Brides. She also writes for other leading titles, including the Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Glamour, Stella magazine, and is one of the Mail on Sunday’s regular fiction and nonfiction book reviewers. Jade splits her time between London and the Cotswolds, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

Jade Beer is an award-winning editor, journalist, and novelist who has worked across the UK national press for more than 20 years. (Photo: Holly Clark Photography)

Jade answers some questions that I posed to her about The Memory Dress:

What inspired you to start writing? 
I had always worked as a journalist on national newspapers and magazines since graduating university. But that is a very different type of writing to producing a novel. I had to send myself off on a creative writing course, to unlearn all the journalistic rules and almost surrender to this new, much more emotionally charged form of writing. I think there was a large part of me that just needed to see if I could do it. Could I go from writing 500-word news articles to building characters from scratch and plotting a story out across 100,000+ words. I hope the answer is yes! 

What kind of research did you have to do?
Research for The Memory Dress really began with the 1997 Christie’s auction catalogue, Dresses from the Collection of Diana, Princess of Wales from 25 June 1997. I stumbled across it online, ordered it, and while I was waiting for it to arrive began to research it. I noticed that 80 dresses were listed and 79 sold. That was the starting point. What happened to the missing dress? The entire story hinges from that one question. I spent a lot of time deciding which dresses in the catalogue I would include in the book, studying their composition and interviewing dressmakers and pattern cutters so I could understand how each was made. I then made several trips around England, walking through each of the locations the dresses were worn by Diana – there were many happy afternoons spent at Althorp (Diana’s childhood home); Spencer House, Kensington Palace and the Royal Albert Hall. 

Can you share something with me about your book that is not in the blurb?
One of the key characters, Meredith, is named after Meredith Etherington-Smith who was the editor-in-chief of Christie’s magazine and the curator of the Princess of Wales auction. I read her brilliant eulogy describing a woman who was ‘incredibly zeitgeisty, with her bejeweled finger on the pulse of fashion and style and society . . . with a love for her husband that was deep and profound. She liked to present their union as one of the great love stories of the century.’ She helped to form the very glamorous premise I like all my books to have. 

Are you working on anything at the present that you would like to share with me?
I have a fully formed synopsis and chapter plan for my next book that I want to revisit and revise. It will be set in the present day and 1980s London, have a glamorous fashion theme and, as with all my books, will be multi-generational and celebrating strong female relationships. I think it’s a solid story, but it needs the sprinkle of fairy dust that’s going to make it a gripping and deeply emotional read.

Share something your readers wouldn’t know about you.
This, 2024, is a very big year in my family. I turned 50, my eldest daughter turned 16 and my mum is about to turn 80. I also have a 10-year-old daughter who is in her final year of primary school. Life is never quiet (and neither would I want it to be) but it often feels like it’s menopause meets coming of age meets funeral planning (my parents are very progressive and organized). We have a self-contained apartment in the basement of our home where you’ll often find my husband, hiding. We live in a house that is over 200 years old and I am increasingly beginning to believe it is haunted – but that’s a whole other story! 

What are you reading now and what have you read recently that you loved? 
My current read is The Birdcage by Eve Chase. I think I have read every one of her novels. They are typically set on the Cornish coast in England, in grand old family homes where shocking secrets are deeply buried. Her writing is so lyrical and descriptive, I get completely lost in her storytelling. Before that it was The Push by Ashley Audrain which was tense until the final sentence and next it will be The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet because it has the kind of glamorous premise I love.  

For more book recommendations and bookish thoughts, see Cindy’s monthly Buzz Reads column, her award-winning Thoughts from a Page Podcast or follow @ThoughtsFromaPage on Instagram.