Park Avenue Summer

By Renee Rosen

Fashion, 1960’s NYC, Following Your Dream.

Novels set in the Mad Men ‘60s, especially in NYC, carry this cool edgy style when women were bursting out of 1950’s cardigans, smoking up a storm, and flocking to single-girl sex. Add to this cultural backdrop the sensation Helen Gurley Brown created as editor of Cosmopolitan when it burst on the scene, and you have the ingredients for a terrific story of a young woman’s coming of age.

Alice, Helen’s (fictitious) secretary, is eyewitness to the headwind created by stuffy Hearst executives and the triumph when Helen’s vision of “my girls” delivers a smashing success. But more than simply being a testimonial, Alice’s account is intimately personal. She is the epitome of the emerging new young woman Helen recognized.

Brave, naïve, daring—Alice is the heroine I loved rooting for.