OBSESSED WITH FASHION
I have been obsessed with fashion from an early age.
I grew up in a happy close knit home. My parents always told me that I was a very happy and fun loving child.
My sister, who is 12 years older, always treated me like a dress up doll. She experimented on me with funny hairstyles and makeup, dressed me up in fancy outfits and made pretend fashion shows for me to walk in like a model. At a young age i learned from these pretend shows to enjoy strutting down the runway and present each one of my sisters creations. I even tried to walk in my mom’s high heels! Fortunately, I never twisted my ankle playing this way with my sister.
I remember a funny story. One day, I secretly took my father’s shorts from the closet and went into one leg pretending to be a skirt. The whole family was bursting with laughter!
I loved playing with Barbie dolls and I spent hours pretending they were in top fashion shows and shooting photo sessions. I also loved getting fashion magazines and would cut out blouses, skirts, dresses, pants and shoes and I would create my own collage outfits by glueing them to cardboard cut outs of girls that i created on boxes.
My mother was also always interested in fashion. She would watch fashion shows on TV and record them for me to watch with her and would get for us fashion catalogs from our aunt in Italy. I loved watching the recorded shows over and over and would spend hours looking over the beautiful photos in the catalogs showing the latest fashion trends. All this created an interest in fashion from an early age.
In junior high school I started experimenting with fashion. I would cut trouser legs, dye them, make tassels, holes and change t-shirts. I also kept a journal where I kept cut outs of my favorite looks and styles that I picked from various fashion magazines which I used as inspiration for my own outfits.
Today, my whole family finds it so funny how all these childhood games that we played from an early age actually led me to the career in fashion. Although it was always a small chance for me to make it in the fashion industry, to look back today and see how far I came and how much I accomplished gives me great satisfaction.
