Tom Ford just started at Gucci and was getting great notoriety - like Madonna wearing that head-to-toe velvet suit at the MTV awards. I remember it like it was yesterday.

Calvin Klein and Donna Karan were the big American names at that point in time, Helmut [Lung] was the cool kid on the block and you had Marc Jacobs and John Galliano who starting the revival of the old fashion houses.

I was pretty much a minimalist. I liked a lot of black at the time, which is very different from my wardrobe now, because I live in color.

There weren't paparazzi standing outside. There weren't all these photographers. People really didn't know what fashion was and what was happening in the tents.

I went to Bergdorf Goodman as an assistant in the fashion office and that was really my first exposure into the world of retail. Dawn Mello was president at the time and she had just left Gucci where she found Tom Ford.

At the time it really was the social women, the society ladies. There were the cool girls, like Aerin Lauder - everyone loved to see what Aerin was wearing. Carolyn Bessette was very much in that time period. Calvin [Kleine] was very influential in the '90s.

What we considered to be so much part of our everyday fashion vocabulary today, where we see all these designers restarting with these big houses, was just beginning then [in the 90th].