Starting out

If you were to tell me then that I would be focused on tee shirts now, I would have laughed. Maybe not out loud but certainly to myself and with a definite gasp at the possibility. You know, that clutch at the throat that means you've had an "yikes" moment. I could NEVER change that much. I was the girl who gobbled up every issue of Vogue and Bazaar, especially the French versions, with a reverence reserved by some for Hemingway and Dostoyevsky. I saved them you know. Have them still. I was the girl who did more than window shop at St. Laurent. The girl who knew the layout of every trendy NYC
boutique intimately. It was my habit to walk up and down Madison Avenue filling my eyes with every new thing–feasting. Much more satisfying than food.

I had dreamed of living in New York City from the minute I first saw its face from a train window as a kid. WOW! Love at first sight. I knew it was the place for me. So as soon as the diploma was dry, with some help from mom and dad, off I went to seek fame and fortune. Now, this was around the time when hot pants were hot and girls were very busy burning bras and the boys, their draft cards. Patchouli was in the air–thank God. Everyone was letting their hair grow–long and longer still. It got to be very difficult–sometimes embarrassing–to tell the boys from the girls. Well, beards were some indication of maleness. In this hour unisex was born. All in all, a very surreal time. And one day–pinch me–I found myself working as an assistant to a Coty Award winning designer right there on Seventh Avenue in the heart of fashion city. FYI, the Coty Awards, referred to as the Oscars of the Fashion Industry are no more. Sadly, they ended in the mid-eighties. Her winner was a menswear inspired evening dress–an elongated tuxedo shirt in white cotton, rows of fluttery ruffles with tiny pleats in between cascaded down the button front which of course remained seductively unbuttoned, halfway down and up. I wish I had at least a photo of it now. Being her assistant was rather amorphous. I would scour the market for the right button one day, be fitting a garment the next and then some days, I'd be modeling the line for a buyer who happened by. I never knew what to expect and that was OK. That style of work suited me and the times. Things changed overnight back then. We were in a recession. Businesses would be open one day and gone the next. Sounds a bit too familiar. My wonderful job–poof–disappeared with her atelier but not before I had the chance of seeing myself on Page Six photographed in one of the masterworks–I'm including that photo. A lot has changed in life and fashion since then as you will see if you visit their site. I'm also sharing a somewhat fuzzy, happy snap of me in one of my own creations from that era. And one of my wonderful parents, who I love dearly. They were the best.