Fashion has always been a part of my life. Perhaps because of the way I grew up, it became the way I communicated with people. My father, Herbert Rounick, was a traditional fashion manufacturer. He worked on Seventh Avenue, and that was my childhood stomping ground. I spent hours in his warehouses playing among the racks of plastic-covered clothes.  

I knew every conceivable treat to be found on the narrow, crowded side streets around the neighborhood. The buttons, the lace, the sequins, the trim—it was all like penny candy to me. 

When I was 12, I bought beads and string from a few wholesale bead stores and started making sterling silver necklaces with semiprecious stones. To sell my necklaces, I would go door-to-door in the big apartment building where I grew up, and I set up a stand outside the United Nations. I sold them for $6.50 a piece. It seemed a fortune at the time. When I had netted a bit more than $400.00, I went off to Tiffany’s to buy myself a pair of Elsa Peretti mesh earrings that I still wear today. 

Learning how to look for, choose, and wear accessories is a craft, like glassblowing or creating micro mosaics. And it is one that very few women take the trouble to learn. Except me. As far as I can tell, I’ve been at it since birth. I’ve decked out my feet in items that are supposed to go on my head. I’ve turned shoes into handbags, earrings into necklaces, socks into mittens. I’ve played and played, experimenting on myself, using my body as a canvas.