When I Knew I Loved Fashion
Hiiii friends,
Let’s start from the very beginning…fashion has been my happy place ever since my adolescent days in sunny Florida. I was born a New York native, but moved south when I was 9 years young. At this point I stopped dancing ballet and took up tennis full time, the most fashionable sport of them all.
Growing up…..
You could say that one of the reasons I decided to play tennis ( I was 9 when I knew I wanted to pursue tennis full time) was because I got to wear cute printed dresses and pleated skirts, the fashion choices were endless on weekends when I got to choose what I wore during a tournament. Beating my opposition also meant outplaying them for best dressed too, right? At least if I lost the match, winning the fashion contest was what really counted.
I was always so mesmerized how brands like Nike, Reebok, and Adidas by Stella McCartney always came up with outfits that were brightly colored, but at the same time aerodynamic in way. I used to think to myself how cool it would be if I got to create my own custom outfit with a high end brand like other cool professional sports players got to. It was then that I understood through fashion I could be anything I wanted to be. With my child-like imagination came the ever-evolving possibilities of style.
The Moment I Fell In Love
As my love for sports reached their peak, my love for fashion only grew stronger. Very early on, fashion became my escape and my friend. I didn’t have many close friends because I was a competitive tennis player and was homeschooled since 6th grade. I traveled a lot by myself as a teenager, so I found solace in the glossy pages of a Cosmopolitan magazine or a beautiful Vogue while on airplanes. I would soak up the pages like a person who had been in the desert without water for days. I would be completely absorbed in the hair & makeup tricks, the latest trends in runway fashion and boy advice of course. I, somehow, found my most reliable best friend and the sister I never had in those pages and never let it go.
“Once I set my eyes on those trendsetting women in the magazines I knew, immediately, I wanted to be one.”
I eventually developed a minor obsession with finding my own personal style and learning how to do my own makeup, a knack for knowing how to put pieces together like a real styling pro and a MAJOR shopping habit. I would scroll through vintage shops on Etsy and online stores like Papaya & Abercrombie and Fitch for hours filling my shopping cart with items I knew I couldn’t buy (but one day I would). Just like these celebrities and models in magazines, I too wanted so badly to be an outlet of inspiration for other girls and women. I wanted to be my own magazine.
shop:
The Birth of My Blog
With that shopping habit came a large credit card bill, of course I have since curbed my habit (clearly not that much haha), but I decided to turn my practice into something that I can spill onto my webpage like fashion vomit, something that could otherwise help people with their fashion enquiries; whether its with becoming the best version of themselves, finding the right products for them or just looking at fashion photos that spark joy.
I fell in love with the fashion business during my college days and I knew I wanted to start my own. I was never good at drawing so being a designer would never hold up. I did, however, love to write and take photos so documenting my fashion and beauty picks in an online style diary made the most sense.
I’m currently writing this at 1 am completely dreary-eyed and not even sure if I’m making sense, but this passion project has had me wrapped around its little finger and I’m severely convinced that this labor of love (no matter what) has always been and will always be worth all my efforts because of the pure happiness that it brings me.
Hope for the future
Sharing the pieces that I love is a therapeutic art form for me. It’s what I consider to be one of the closest things in my life to pure euphoria. This place that I can call my own has been created out of genuine love; I willingly share it with the world because I’m hoping one day I can be that beacon of hope & that place of solace that Vogue was for me to another little girl who, just like me, might just be imaginative enough to think she can be whatever she wants to be all because she found my little fashion abode.
