My father was a graduate student at Oxford in the early 1960s, where the conventions and etiquette of clothing were crucial to the pervasive class consciousness of the place and time.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've admired historical clothes like Victorian gowns since I was a child, and it's what motivated me to go into fashion.
The thing about my high school, which I loved, is that we had uniforms. But whenever we had a free dress day, it was prep-ville, with sweater vests and polo shirts and khakis and Dockers.
Well, the thing about my high school, which I loved, is that we had uniforms. But whenever we had a free dress day, it was prep-ville, with sweater vests and polo shirts and khakis and Dockers.
I was always taught how to dress for the occasion.
I was always very focused on how people dressed.
Clothes were terribly important in the '20s. They really were an arbiter of who you were and how much money you had: an indicator of social status.
I get quite excited about things other people have worn. I went through a phase as a student when I wore a lot of 1940s tea dresses.
Where I went to school, Eton College, we had to wear dark trousers, a tailcoat, and a stiff, starched collar every day, and that was fine with me: Part of the reason I wanted to go there was because I've always loved dressing up.
My audience knows me, and I wear beautiful clothes as a badge of honor. They remember where I came from.
I learned everything about fashion during my time at the 'NY Times.'