Back to School

Nostalgia, anyone?

I miss shopping for school supplies. Unsurprising to anyone who knows me, I was a bossy and opinionated child. Back-to-school meant marching my mom through the store with a death grip on my printed out list, gleefully hunting down glue sticks and pencils like playing a life-size version of Eye Spy. I would carefully select the perfect color palette for my slick plastic folders before spending entirely too much time choosing between the available shades of scissors. Aesthetics were a serious business, even as a precocious elementary schooler.

My mom really knew something when she put me in this bib…

This penchant for appealing visuals, of course, went far beyond what was in my backpack. I have a lot of strong childhood memories of specific clothing items, mostly things I felt particularly attached to or fond of. In the spirit of fall nostalgia, I wanted to spend some time reflecting on some of my strongest style memories. 

While I didn’t know it at the time, many of the garments and accessories I was most drawn to throughout my youth would become pivotal parts of my lifelong style framework. Below are some of my most potent fashion impressions, the ones that followed me into adulthood and have continued to influence my choices decades later.

While I was pulling photos for this piece, I realized how similar these outfits feel! Right down to the campy animal accessories (dog purse vs wicker duck basket) feel so accidentally aligned!

Preschool: The Campy Accessories Era

By the time I started attending yochien in Yokohama, I was already a year or two into my first job. Being mixed in Japan means permanent outsider status, but it’s also a fast track to a modeling career, especially as a kid. I started doing catalog shoots around two years old, thrilled to be the center of attention.

Aside from the small paychecks and the validation for having a cute kid, my mom was in it for the perks. We were often allowed to take home the things I wore on set, which helped bolster my adorable toddler wardrobe beyond my young parent’s limited budget. I don’t remember the clothing as well as I remember the accessories, because most of them looked like toys! I had plush Woodstock hair clips with firm metal inside their bright yellow arms, clamping them together like a hug on my little pigtails.

The hair clips in question

I had a plush purse shaped like a curly-haired white dog, wearing a red leather collar with a little golden heart charm.

The original novelty bag, and just a few of my various adult iterations

For my school photos, my mom tied my hair up into little buns, each one fastened with a hair tie attached to a tiny plastic Kewpie figurine. The Kewpies were wrapped in miniature bath towels, as if they had just stepped out of the shower.

Kewpie hair ties toddler = Kewpie tattoo adult

1st Grade: The Clothing Swap

It was my first year back in America since I was born, and I had recently discovered deception. I wasn’t a good liar, but apparently I still liked trying. I once declared to my mom that I was packing my own lunch that day, then proceeded to load up my lunch bag with stuffed animals. They didn’t make it out of the house. On a different day, my friend and I came up with a brilliant (to us) scheme.