BY DESIGN : THE PAPER CHASE

A pack of Crane cards and a sloppy stack of note paper left over from a previous marriage is a pathetic excuse for a stationery “wardrobe.” (That’s what it’s called. Trust me.) But I didn’t know just how pathetic my closet was till I met the stationery manager at Tiffany & Co.

Ugh. Was I raised in a barn?

You can try blaming your personal stationery deficit on fax and phone. But even Hollywood agents and studio execs--more familiar with those devices than they are with fine manners--know that the Right Stationery signals membership in what French cultural critic Pierre Bourdieu called “the desired social subset.” Few scripts land on any desk in town without a buck slip paper-clipped to the top. As in: Perry, Talk to me about this. Don. Printed only with the company logo and a name, the cards presuppose a relationship, a mutual understanding of how things work.

“They’re just the appropriate size to drop an apothegm,” notes Castle Rock Entertainment executive John De Simio. He says he goes through hundreds of the 3-inch-by-7-inch cards a year.

“Like when someone gets a promotion,” he explains. “I’ll write ‘Congratulations. It’s good to see a meritocracy exists at your studio.’ ”

These days, that’s about as many words as anyone in or out of Hollywood cares to write, stationers say. Yet etiquette doyen Letitia Baldrige persists in describing all manner of monarch sheets, half-sheets, informals and notes in her massive guidebook, “The New Manners for the ‘90s.”

Wake up, Tish! Judging by all the blank books I’ve seen bulging from racks and shelves in stores around Los Angeles, I’d say the only people left with any enthusiasm for the long form are neurotic journal writers grappling with their own life stories.

Still, inspired by compulsive letter-writer Alexandra Stoddard’s book “Gift of a Letter”--imagine a literary, quotation-happy Martha Stewart--and the popularity of a recent translation of George Sands’ correspondence with Flaubert, I recently went in search of my own wardrobe of status symbols.

The Heights: First stop, Tiffany & Co., Beverly Hills. This is where you go for perfection. Hold the gorgeous Crane paper to the light and see the coveted Tiffany watermark. Scratch the lettering (a sorority sister test, like biting down on pearls), and it won’t flake because it’s engraved. Get treated like a princess and rest assured that typefaces and colors have been pre-edited to spare anyone from appearing tasteless.

Tiffany’s John Petterson says the trend is toward very conservative, traditional stationery. But like the Hollywood honchos, even Tiffany customers think shorter is better and are more inclined to order correspondence-card size.

One hundred correspondence cards engraved in Parsival type, with matching envelopes, cost about $200. A woman clever or dull enough to keep the same husband and address for the rest of her life can use the custom-made die till she does.

The Middle Ground: At the Drexler Collection in Santa Monica, former gallery owner Paul Drexler carries some of the most innovative paper designs around. Drexler, an attorney-turned-stationer, produces an eye-boggling array of illustrated papers made from antique images he’s collected over the years.

A trip to Flax, the artist and architecture store in Westwood, is like a trip to the storage room in elementary school: The sheer abundance of materials makes your head spin with possibilities. There is a wall full of stationery, sold by the pound, made by a company called Paper Weight. It is subtle, serviceable and, with some imagination, can be every bit as personal as the more expensive variety. A friend designed a rubber stamp with her name and address to use on this paper. It looks fabulous.

While the average ready-made rubber stamps are too cutesy for adult stationery, Oggetti, the marbleized-paper store in Century City, has an assortment of ethnic stamps made of Lucite for $9. They make a sort of wood-print-like design when repeated across the top of paper. (A sculpted raw potato just doesn’t work for this, no matter what the crafts books tell you.)

L.A. Art Supplies carries an assortment of Strathmore’s blank, heavy cotton paper note cards with deckle edge, designed to take a variety of mediums--watercolor, pastels, charcoal. Perfect for those periodic non-verbal moments in life. This store also carries an enormous variety of handmade and unusual papers priced from $3 per 20-inch-by-24-inch sheet to $20 and up.

If that route sounds too exhausting, Bandelier of Sante Fe, N.M., makes environmentally correct and acid-free (meaning it won’t disintegrate like the paper you’re reading) stationery in social sheet size--5 inches by 7 inches--tied up in a clever corrugated portfolio for $19. Bandelier’s wrapping paper is studded with balsam, which reminded me of the paper we used in grade school. Then, it was annoying to have one’s beautiful pencilmanship interrupted by big hunks of balsam. Now, we worship them.

Cutting Corners: Yamaguchi is a Japanese import store on that stretch of Sawtelle between Olympic and Pico boulevards that is dotted with nurseries and sushi restaurants. Japanese papers in cloudy hues of lavender and gold with a kid finish are $4.95 for 12 sheets and six envelopes. Added bonus--each pack contains a heavy white card the same size as the writing papers, lined horizontally on one side, vertically on the other, to keep us uphill writers level. Pick up a few disposable Japanese fountain pens in assorted colors for $1.99 and write your little heart out.

When you care enough to send the very cheapest, Hallmark’s the ticket. Granted, much of the stationery here features teddy bears and flowers, but nowhere in town could I beat the price--nor the honesty of a package called Lots of Letters. As billed, the plain box contains 50 sheets of paper and 25 envelopes for $3.99.

For a bit of pure camp, I couldn’t resist Paper Moon’s pink, sputnik-style stationery. Designed under the Hallmark label, the papers feature an undulating border decorated with super sexy fashion model types from cut-art books. Across the top, in big loopy script it says: Oh-la-la. All for $8.