By center faculty, I had determined I wished to go to Parsons College of Design in New York Metropolis, and I used to be dressing prefer it, too. I wore numerous black leather-based, chunky heels, headbands (undoubtedly impressed by the unique Gossip Woman), and outsized, slouchy totes as an alternative of backpacks. I might search for Miu Miu runway photographs and canopy my binders in them, taking the extra whimsical parts from the collections and making an attempt to convey them into my very own wardrobe. I positively couldn’t afford the dragonfly sneakers I lusted over from the model’s spring 2008 assortment, however my mother helped me discover alternate options for reasonable. To counteract my days in school, the place I used to be endlessly bullied for trying completely different (folks discover if you’re not dressed like them; I obtained requested nearly each day, “Why are you so dressed up?”), trend turned my escape. My mom and I might drive into the subsequent city over to learn trend magazines inside Barnes & Noble and window-shop. We might spend hours at Goal and TJ Maxx — the one locations within the space to search for garments that had been decently inexpensive and fashion-forward — poring over completely different items, holding them as much as see how they’d look on us, and suggesting kinds for one another that we usually would not gravitate to.