Childhood Inspirations

I’ll start this blog by tell you a little something about my history. As I’ve had a most interesting 35 years on this planet. Born outside of San Francisco to a multi-ethnic hippie family, I was one of 5 (or more?) children. At age 3 my father moved us all to Thailand where I we lived for the next 10 years, intermittently traveling to destinations like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Tokyo and Burma.

Sounds amazing, and it was, but let’s get a visual here of non-disciplining hippie mom, 5 kids running wild, money always down to the wire, father on the other side of the world wheeling and dealing and yes, making more babies. It was in 5th grade at the International School of Bangkok that I realized I should be a fashion designer; the day I wore a striped skirt with a floral shirt and got laughted at by all the other girls at school. Naturally I vowed to dress them all one day!

Unfortunately our exotic life style in South East Asia would come to a screeching halt when I was 13. Suffice to say that the wheeling’s and dealings of international-jet setting-hippie papa took a turn for the worst. All of the family was displaces back to the US of A. It all gets a little grim at this part, so let’s quit for now and just bask in the sweetness of childhood in the tropics…

Running around in nothing but panties for the heat. Eating exotic fruit like rambutan, durian, papaya and mango daily. Trying and failing again and again to climb coconut trees like the natives men do. Making elegant floating boats out of folded banana leaves. Collecting the little pastel eggs of mosquito eating lizards. Sneaking out the back gates to make friends with poor families living in stilted houses over dirty rivers. Yes, I want to stay right here in mind all day, as I go about the work of my grown-up life…making fashions, an artist expression rooted in all that I am and everywhere that I come from.