Aug 23, 2007 04:45 PM
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Wed Feb 10
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Each season on Project Runway, "Fashion Director for Elle Magazine" Nina Garcia gets bitcher and bitchier as she gets more famous. That eternal tan! That perfectly highlighted hair! That little smirk every time they mention that she is "Fashion Director for Elle Magazine"! The way she plays favorites! It's all enough to remind us why we never worked for a fashion magazine. That, and we're not a size 2. Anyway, Nina has a new book coming out after Labor Day called The Little Black Book of Style, where she imparts her wisdom about the world of fashion unto others for the low, low price of $17.95, or just $3.95 more than a year's subscription to Elle. Money well spent, undoubtedly. In the Author's Note, we learn that Nina's style was formed not just by her glamorous Colombian parents, but also by the frumpy girls at her prep school outside of Boston.
When I was fifteen, my parents sent me to an all-girls boarding school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. I strutted onto campus in a short skirt, high heels, and rabbit fur. There I stood, surrounded by khakis, jeans, pastel cable-knit sweaters, ribbon belts. "Look at the Colombian princess," the American girls must have been thinking. "We're gonna eat this one for lunch." I looked around this little bubble of preppiness. The girls all played lacrosse and they all dressed the same, more like boys than girls. I remember thinking, "Where the hell am I?" Before this moment, I considered myself really American and I thought I had seen everything. I had been to New York, Paris, Rome, but I had never seen this thing they called 'preppy.' But there I was, in maybe the preppiest town in America, nearly hyperventilating from my first experience with culture shock. My mother took me into the Wellesley town center to see if we could find something that would help me blend in a bit. The only item I found somewhat appealing was a pink angora cardigan with pearl buttons (I know). I regretted the purchase immediately and the cardigan was soon stuffed into the far depths of my closet, never to be worn again. I decided to hold my own—I was not going to be intimidated, especially by girls who wore L.L. Bean duck boots.Nothing can prepare a Colombian girl for the sight of one hundred American girls trudging across campus in duck boots. I'm sure I thought myself quite superior, but now I admire a lot of those very American things. I think that blue jeans and a white shirt can be the most fabulous outfit. It's all about how you wear it. And I love a Chanel bag, but I also see the perfection in an L.L. Bean canvas tote. Functional, chic, simple. It's about how you carry it. So I am proud to say that I owe a lot of my style to a strong, colorful Colombian woman, who taught me that how you present yourself to the world is important. And I owe a lot to a man in white linen who shunned mathematics and instead pushed me to see the world. And I also owe quite a bit to a group of American prep school girls, who gave me my first culture shock, who gave me the opportunity to hold my own, and who understood simplicity long before I did (though I'm still not sure about those boots).
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