Part of what was in the ether all around me growing up, until I was between 19 and 20, was a terrible, debilitating stutter. It was part of what made me very reclusive as a kid.
On my first day teaching my own classroom, I threw up before I entered the building.
Fashion was in a crisis up until the mid-'90s and, when it came out of the crisis, it was a very different place. It was a place that nurtured and cultivated young entrepreneurial designers.
But if fashion were easy, wouldn't everybody look great?
I love helping people.
I've never mentioned this, but when I was at Parsons teaching, the other design disciplines, they don't like fashion design. They see it as very nineteenth-century.
If you told me when I was a teen that I would end up being a teacher, I would have said you're out of your mind, because quite frankly I hated school.
I just don't like conspicuous consumption. I find it distasteful.
But I will add, there's one thing I will not do, ever: I will never talk to you about things you cannot change. It plants a negativity in the head of a designer or the student, and it's a distraction.
I have my flaws and my issues, past and present and who knows what will happen in the future. I want people to know I'm vulnerable too and each one of us is.
I wouldn't know what to do on a date. I don't have the time. To make a relationship work, I'd have to give something up, and I'm not so sure I'm willing to do that.
If you want to write an angry e-mail, write it but don't send it. It's based on my experience that whenever I have acted out in some manner, I have always regretted it.
Does a man need to know what a peplum is? Probably not.
I'm one of the biggest introverts you could ever meet.
I love HGTV. I love the Food Network.
But if I had to choose a single destination where I'd be held captive for the rest of my time in New York, I'd choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I had this wonderful career and thought I would retire as a teacher.
I learned quickly that if the student's perception is that you're not listening to them, and not understanding them, they discredit you.
