1966: You insist in wearing only a green turtleneck and blue corduroy pants, much to your mother's dismay. You refuse the frilly pink dresses and pale blue suits with Peter Pan collars. Little does your mother know that in fifteen years you will wish you could dress like that every day (with combat boots or black stilettos, of course).
1973: You go to London with your mother and father. The girls are wearing miniskirts, tights, purple suede platform shoes. They have false eyelashes and shiny lips. The boutiques are filled with color and music. Your father buys you some purple suede gillies and you beg your mother to shorten all your dresses to the top of your thighs. You feel you have discovered fashion.
1974: You become obsessed with your mother's fashion magazines. You lie on your stomach pawing through them, touching the images. The designers are Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar de la Renta, Sonia Rykiel. You love the sound of their names. The models have feathered hair and wear chiffon
Peasant dresses covered with roses or sweater sets encrusted with jewels. In one magazine, the black-haired, blue-eyed model is photographed in the homes of the designers. The elegant men serve her wine, baguettes, and cheese, recline with her on their sofas and beds, you decide that a muse is what you want to be when you grow up.
1976: You go to junior high school wearing Ditto's jeans, Korkees sandals, and T-shirts you have adorned with rhinestones using a gun from an arts and crafts store. You have a Levi's jacket that you cover with appliqués of butterflies. The prettiest girl in your class, Corrine Nichols, admires your jacket. You make her one. She only wears it once but it makes you feel popular and special. She appears in Seventeen magazine. You imagine that instead of being a muse you will grow up to be a designer. You see a pink wraparound skirt and a voile blouse with fairies on it. You buy T-shirts, cut them, and sew laces up the front. You adorn them with tiny silk roses and dye them pastel colors. Some of the popular girls ask you to make them one. At the end of the school years, Corrine Nichols writes in your yearbook in round cursive letters, "Thank you for the pretty jacket." You imagine that you, too, are popular.
1977: How unfortunate that just as you are trying to develop breasts, tube tops come into fashion. Mortifying, actually. You cannot comprehend why anyone would want to wear a band of stretchy elastic over her boobs. These things show everything and can be pulled of with one tug! Yuck.
1978: You are not happy about the disco trend. It's better than tube tops but still makes you uncomfortable and embarrassed. You go to a few dance clubs wearing spandex pants, Candie's slides, and shirts with double belts. You wish you had been born in a different era. Ten years ago you would have made a perfect flower child, part of a movement!
1980: The popular girls do not invite you to their parties. You spend time alone, sewing, listening to music, rollerskating around the city. There is a boy in school with a Mohawk. He wears black pants with chains, and steel boots, and ripped T-shirts. You've never seen anyone like him. You buy some punk albums at the record store. You feel you have discovered music. You go to your first punk rock show. You come home and take everything out of your closet. You rip up all of your T-shirts. You throw away your pastel jeans. You keep only your Levi's 501s, which you wash as often as possible, hoping they will get holes in them. You stop reading your fashion magazines. You go to all the thrift stores you can find. With just a few dollars, you buy a pair of engineer boots with steel toes, a small black-leather motorcycle jacket, a pleated red plaid miniskirt, and armloads of old silk dresses that no one seems to want. You feel that you have discovered the true meaning of fashion. You raid your mother's closet for rhinestone jewelry, beaded sweaters, miniskirts, and pointed pumps. You go to the surplus store for boy's T-shirts that you rip up and adorn with safety pins. You cut off all your hair and bleach it platinum. You decide to talk to the boy with the Mohawk, whose name is Dirk.
1981: Dirk's Grandmother Fifi dies. She leaves you her clothes- gowns, suits, hats, shoes. A genuine Chanel. A Pucci. You read about Coco and how Marilyn loved Emilio. You think that the Pucci prints are like highly magnified pictures of the inner workings of nature. These clothes transform you. They are like magic. Your treasures.
1982: You shop on Melrose. There are stores called Vertigo and Neo80 and Wacko and Tiger Rose. Cowboys and Poodles has fifties clothes that have never been worn before. Gräu is owned by a designer with feral eyes who sits in front of an aqua vinyl curtain by a bowl of gardenias, sewing "depression wear." Let It Rock features rocker clothes from London, including electric-blue suede "creepers" with big black rubber soles and a pink-leather motorcycle jacket that you save up for and buy. You wear the motorcycle jacket with a glittery tutu. You feel as if you are finally part of a movement.
1986: Melrose is now rows of cheap, stretchy, sexy clothes. The artists move east. You stay home, happily sewing dresses covered with pacifiers, jackets made of teddy bears, pants of white silk flowers, elaborate, sparkly costumes for your daughters. They become your muses.
1992: You realize that you have spent the past few years in mom clothes- capri pants or jeans, flip-flops or sneakers, and tank tops- only dressing up with style when you go out at night or play a part in a movie. You look at fashion magazines but are not inspired. The designers seem somewhat clod and mean-spirited. You dream of having your own store.
1995: The nineties confuse you. You recall that it began with Madonna in a bra with sharp gold cones. Somehow this was one Madonna look you were not able to embrace. You spent most of your time wearing fitted, black clothes. You see an exhibition of a female Japanese artist's work at the Los Angeles County Museum. There is a dress made of white iron, covered with delicate, intricate wrought-iron flowers. You believe it is the perfect metaphor for fashion.
1998: Kabbalah. Yoga. Frida Kahlo. The goddess is coming out of hiding. You decide that you love clothing again. You can't read enough fashion magazines. You go to cheap stores by the beach and Asian-print tops covered with rhinestones that you wear with jeans, and bejeweled skirts that you wear with flip-flops and T-shirts. You buy sheer, sequin-embroidered saris at the Indian shop and make them into tops and scarfs. You cut up old kimonos and piano shawls and make them into jackets. You are a new bohemian. You open your store. When you walk through the French doors, you feel you are in your own little altar to the goddess.
2001: You are depressed about getting older. You watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch. When beautiful Hedwig's lover reacts in horror to her naked body, Hedwig tells him, "It's what I've got to work with." Work it she does. You decide to do the same! Feeling that you have proven yourself in the trenches of thrift-shopping, hand-sewing, and bargain-hunting, you buy a white satin trench cost by a hot young designer. It costs more than you have ever spent on anything, but you feel that, finally, you deserve it. You also buy designer stilettos in black and a white bag. You tell yourself they are classics; you will have them forever. Events happen in the world that make you recognize the impermanence of everything. You realize that forever is not what it seems. This only helps you justify your purchases more.
2003: Your most treasured items of clothing are stolen. You try to decide if you should take this as a message of endings. Or beginnings.
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