As a very small child, I once fell ill, and my mother took me to her room to care for me. Thinking I was asleep, she was busy in the other room. I awakened and saw a sewing machine in her room. I tried to pedal it, and although I could not pedal it straight at first, I kept trying until I succeeded. When I heard my mother approaching, I ran back to bed and pretended to be asleep. From that moment, I was fascinated with clothing.

Less than two years later, my mother died in a tragic accident, and I never had the opportunity to ask why she had that sewing machine. My siblings and I went to live with our grandmother. Every Christmas, she had a tailor make dresses for my sister and me. The dresses were always very large because she wanted us to wear them for more than one year. We wore them on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, but even by the following Christmas, they were still too large. I never liked the way those oversized dresses looked on us.