I became a fashion designer by accident. I loved to make portrait drawings when I was a teenager, and from that came the interest in what people were wearing and why they were wearing it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It was only when I began modeling at 18 that I really began enjoying fashion and reading any fashion magazine I could get my hands on, and developing a profound respect for designers, fashion and how to wear it.
My fascination with women's clothes began very early. My mother was a very fashionable woman. She also made her own clothes. She had these fashion magazines, and I would draw the women in them. My middle school art teacher suggested that I have a fashion drawing show.
Doing fashion drawings was the only way I had to express myself when I was a teenager.
I've been designing my own pieces for a long time. My mother's a jewelry designer, so we knew at some point we were going to do a line and dive into the fashion world.
The reason I did fashion was it was the only way to get paid to do anything creative. You couldn't support yourself as an 'artist' - I hate that word. The only way you could be 'arty' was as a fashion photographer, because it still had a certain amount of integrity involved.
My mom modeled and made clothes, so I always had such an appreciation for design.
I never went to fashion school. I didn't know what a designer was. I knew I had something, but I didn't know what it was. And it could just have easily been nothing.
I think I was very young when I became interested in fashion.
I was a baby when I began, but I knew exactly what I wanted to wear myself. I became a jewelry designer because I knew how to do something with a pencil and sketch my ideas.
I never wanted to work in fashion. At age 12 or 13, I wanted to design for showgirls - for the theater! And I was crazy for the Hollywood of the 1950s: Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones. They were my idea of glamour - and Sylvie Vartan, the French singer.