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Rachel Ashwell
Creator of Shabby Chic

"Don't leave school just yet."

Deep pillows and feather beds are at hand. Plump armchairs wear slouchy white denim or cream linen slipcovers. Worn tables bear honorable scars and nicks. In the unpretentious slipcover and flea market world of Rachel Ashwell, coziness counts more than pedigree. A self-taught designer and entrepreneur who grew up in Britain, Rachel, forty-six, says her biggest fear is mediocrity. To her, an ordinary decor looks familiar — because it's been done before. "Mediocrity is a superficial effort — what happens when a project is done without passion," she says. Her company, Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic, based in Los Angeles, celebrates plain design and refurnished furniture, edited by a strict "Less is more" principle. "I can't bear cluttered closets. A cluttered cupboard is a cluttered mind," she says.

The concept has lured customers around the world, including celebrities like Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson. Her fifteen-year-old company, with more than $10 million in revenues and 125 employees, is expanding quickly. In addition to six stores, five books, and a TV show associated with the company, Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic spread in 2004 to department stores like Bloomingdale's (with a new line of sleepwear) and Target stores (with bedding, furniture, rugs, and other products for the kitchen, living room, and elsewhere).

Despite her successful track record, until recently Rachel was uncomfortable if someone she didn't know approached her at a party. She explains why in her letter, written to herself at age sixteen, when she dropped out of school. "In America people think of everybody in Britain as Cambridge- or Oxford-educated and madly intellectual, but they're not," she says.

After dropping out, she found employment as an au pair in Britain and moved in with the family she worked for. A few months later, she relocated into a room in a Council Flats building, which was government-subsidized and "pretty Dickensian," she says. Rachel's working-class floor mates included quite a few drunks. Every tenant shared a hall bathroom. You had to put change into a meter for hot water.

In time, of course, she became an expert at replacing hard edges and dark gloom with soft cushions and pastel colors. That feat is detailed in The Shabby Chic Home, an account of Rachel's unglitzy renovation of her beloved Malibu home, which she later sold. Her special alchemy lies in the way she allows a room to answer to a primal need, described by poet Maya Angelou: "The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."

Dear Rachel,

Don't leave school just yet. You're sixteen, eager to get a job and get on with it. This willingness to move on — no, actually it's like a compulsion, isn't it? — will serve you well. What would you say if I told you that your love for design and decorating, combined with that incredible drive to start the next thing, will lead to a business with your name on it that generates more than $10 million in annual sales?

So, being impatient will be an asset. But you need school, too — not because you need book knowledge but because you should have more experience with learning. Without that, you'll struggle. Even in your mid-forties, when you're doing something silly, like reading instructions for a new appliance or reading People magazine, you'll have to keep bringing yourself back to focus. You'll love what you do. Your life will be like a big box of candy every day. But the problem will be savoring the one in your mouth. You'll no sooner bite into one piece than you'll have you're eye on the Milky Way over there.

Many entrepreneurs and artists skip the traditional educational path. Still, one thing that's really wonderful is that if you follow certain rhythms in life, the tracks that most people pursue, things do tend to work out. Without that evolution of character building, though, it's hard to catch up. At forty-six, I think I'm just beginning to catch up. I've always been quite nervous about crowds and parties. I worry because I don't trust strangers. I just didn't allow myself to go with that rhythm when it was the right time to connect with people, so you should. I didn't cultivate friendships or a sense of myself, which is why you must.

Now that I have a daughter who's older than you are, I understand that the experience of being around other kids is as important a part of education as classroom material. I see all these dramas she and her friends have. They hate one another; then they love one another. It's just what they do. Without the bumps and bruises of a school's social scene, you're going to be defenseless when conflicts arise. You'll be so uncomfortable around confrontation, for example, that there will be many instances in your future life where you'll walk away without presenting your point of view.

Impatience and restlessness will lead you to one decision in particular that you'll regret. After establishing a career based on making houses into cozy sanctuaries, you'll sell the first house you ever bought, in Malibu. You'll think it's important to have more communal space, something bigger. You won't take into consideration the importance of the place where you made your family's memories. That's what comes of not having the intellectual habit of thinking things through and making a decision for the right reason. Life will be your school, and you'll be successful. But with a mentor and some training, your success could be really amazing.

With patience,
Rachel

Barbara Boxer
U.S. Senator from California

"Don't be so quick to dismiss another human being."

After short careers as a stockbroker and a journalist, Barbara Boxer, now sixty-five, found her voice as an advocate in politics. It was like a race car at full throttle suddenly finding traction. Barely five feet tall, Boxer, a passionate champion of the environment, childhood education, and women's rights, sometimes has to stand on a box to see over the podium at press conferences. In recent years, the Brooklyn-born Democrat has become better known for criticizing key Republican moves. She fiercely censured the war in Iraq. She signed a House member's complaint about Ohio voting problems during the 2004 presidential election, which forced Congress to debate the snafu before certifying President Bush's victory. Her vehement opposition to Condoleezza Rice's nomination as secretary of state inspired a skit on Saturday Night Live.

Far from scaring voters away, Barbara's boldness seems to have endeared her to Californians. Running for her third term in 2004, she received more than 6.9 million votes, the highest number ever tallied for any Senate candidate, beating opponent Bill Jones by twenty percentage points. There's also talk of a Boxer for President campaign on Internet blogs, but she says she has no interest in running.

Though her success looks effortless, she had to learn that passion, clarity, and determination are not enough to ensure victory. The first time she ran for office — a spot on the Marin County Board of Supervisors — she lost. "One of my biggest faults when I started out in politics was being judgmental. At that young age, I didn't really have the patience to hear why someone might have a different point of view from mine," she said. Four years later, in 1976, she ran again and won. This letter is for the thirty-two-year-old Boxer, mother of a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, as she was preparing to run for office for the first time.

Dear Barbara,

You're full of fire. You're passionate about quality education, safe streets, the environment — all of these things. I know you feel these things in your heart and you feel them strongly, but look, you have to understand that the next person may hold their beliefs with the same amount of passion that you have. Don't be so judgmental about other people. Don't be so quick to dismiss another human being. Don't jump to the conclusion that another person just doesn't get it or isn't wise enough just because he doesn't agree with you.

The name of the game in politics is to move forward an issue you deeply believe in. You're just starting out and young enough to be impatient when people don't see your point of view. Stop and listen to what you're saying: I can't believe you feel that way! And: How could you possibly think that way? You've shut off the potential to learn from that person you're talking to and you'll be less of a person for it. In the end, you'll lose what matters most — the chance to advance an issue you care about.

There's something else you may not want to face: It's easier to be judgmental. It's less work to see everything in black and white. But every single person is as important as you are and has a story to tell, just like you do. Open up your mind to other points of view — and you may not have to experience how losing an election can take you down a peg or two.

Your staunchest supporter,
Senator Boxer

Copyright © 2006 by Ellyn Spragins. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Tags: Women's Studies, Biographies & Memoirs

About the Author

Ellyn Spragins is an editor at large for Fortune Small Business. She wrote the "Love and Money" column in the New York Times business section for three years. She first edited five of these letters for an issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. She lives in Pennington, New Jersey, with her family.