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"  The first person to blow up my fashion consciousness was a 14-year-old girl named Sandrine. She was the most beautiful human I had ever seen. Her beauty was mature, nothing like the pixie ideal of my high school\u2014with her astonishing body, pale skin, high cheekbones, and aquiline nose, she looked like a brunette Julie Christie, but weird, slightly off-kilter, better. If I ever knew where she came from, I&amp;#039;ve since forgotten. But she dressed like nothing my school had ever seen: Her mother made all of her clothes, and she came to school on the first day in a low-cut, tiny-waisted minidress made of sheer black silk, with puffy sleeves and a flared skirt, high heels, false eyelashes, and a fall clipped to her hair. The boys were stunned. The girls hated her. She was divinely indifferent. I was in love. The year was 1969, but in my small Michigan town it might as well have been 1965, a significant cultural delay at the time, especially for a teenager. The two basic social identities were Normal and Greaser; although a few sophisticated girls wore peace signs, hippies didn&amp;#039;t exist, and while a seminal punk band, Iggy and the Stooges, was playing in nearby Ann Arbor, punk didn&amp;#039;t exist yet either. In this context, &amp;quot;style&amp;quot; was kneesocks, plaid skirts, sweaters and loafers, blond streaks, bangs, tons of mascara, and pink lipstick, though there was also a sort of high-skank variation\u2014ratted hair, white lipstick, heavy eyeliner, hot colors, and skirts so short you showed the tops of your pantyhose. Between my hatred of mall shopping and my mother&amp;#039;s firm ideas about how a girl should dress, my style choices were pretty unenthusiastic: plaid skirts or whatever empire-waisted thingamabob was on sale at Sears. I was really not popular, but I wasn&amp;#039;t a nerd or a slut or anything else, and my fashion anemia was one symptom of a nasty case of social ineptitude combined with social disgust. That too changed when I met Sandrine. When I describe Sandrine as indifferent I don&amp;#039;t mean that she was snotty. She was indifferent to social categories, not to people. Sandrine was nice, gracefully and naturally so. She was also extremely bright, and the combination was revelatory; I had been getting the message, loudly and for some time, that to be stylin&amp;#039; required being mean, dumb, or both. Sweet was a term of high approbation for popular girls, but what they apparently meant by it was &amp;quot;simpering twit&amp;quot;; Sandrine was not sweet. She could be cutting when need be, and she didn&amp;#039;t even have to get verbal; it was all in her eyes and tone, in her indifference. Even bitches didn&amp;#039;t mess with her, because she clearly was not playing by their rules. Within weeks we were best friends. Sandrine was the first person I knew who read Interview and listened to Bob Dylan, but she liked classical music, too, and when she picked a boyfriend, it was not some popular fool, it was a shy guy who played something like the cello. Meanwhile, there was a nonstop cascade of amazing clothes, layered &amp;quot;gypsy&amp;quot; skirts, lacy low-cut blouses with butterfly sleeves, high-heeled boots, huge hats with ribbons, a maxi trench coat, and all of it\u2014the clothes, the knowledge, the demeanor\u2014seemed to come from a world in which anything was possible. Single-handedly, this girl had turned fashion from a depressing requirement into something magically world altering. Of course, there was a problem: Now that I knew what it could be, I wanted to do it too. But I wasn&amp;#039;t beautiful, no one was making me incredible clothes, and I wouldn&amp;#039;t have known how to wear them anyway. And the boring duds I had accepted as facts of life were now odious to me. All of this probably played some small part in the boiling discontent that culminated in my being sent to a school for screwed-up kids, stealing some of my beloved friend&amp;#039;s clothes on the way. In a movie, my theft of Sandrine&amp;#039;s clothes would mean that I wanted to be her. I did not. I wanted to be myself, but I didn&amp;#039;t know how. And so I unimaginatively imagined that it might help to swipe a little beauty from someone who had enough for 10 people. Sandrine&amp;#039;s outfits were scanty and she wasn&amp;#039;t a big girl, so it was easy to stuff a skirt and blouse, even an entire dress into my purse while she was in the bathroom. My wickedness was foiled, however, when my mother went through my suitcase before I was shipped away and discovered the contraband. She immediately called Sandrine&amp;#039;s mom, effectively, although not immediately, ending the friendship. Shortly thereafter I was kicked out of the school for screwed-up kids, and there was so much bad drama in my life that I didn&amp;#039;t have time to miss Sandrine. But I still had feelings, and apparently so did she. We had been close for a year and a half, a long time for adolescents. More than 20 years later, when my third book came out, she sent her husband to a reading I gave in San Francisco so that he could hand-deliver a letter from her that included a third-person short story about our friendship. The letter was touching. It was also strange; in it she referred to my taking her clothes, along with what she called her &amp;quot;talent coupons&amp;quot;\u2014as if, with her personal effects, I&amp;#039;d also made off with the artistic success she might have had. A friend to whom I showed the letter suggested that I cut out some pieces of cardboard, label them talent coupons, and send them to her. I instead sent an emotional reply that included (another) sincere apology. I did not, however, include my return address, because I had found her letter weird. And of course it was. It must&amp;#039;ve been weird for her to be so precocious, so freakishly beautiful, and to be handed absurdly theatrical, irresistible clothes that heightened that precocious beauty until it nearly blotted out everyone else, to be the focus of so much admiration and envy that even your best friend got infected with it. Reading the letter, I wondered if it might have been better for Sandrine if her mom had just taken her to the mall to get the same dumb stuff as everyone else. But then I remember what it was like to see her that first time in that fantastic dress, with that fall and fake eyelashes, how the mere sight changed my life on the spot. And I think\u2014God bless her mom\u2014that is what Sandrine was meant to be, a source of game-changing awe, for me and whoever else was lucky enough to set eyes on her. I don&amp;#039;t know which perception would be most true for her today. But I&amp;#039;m glad I knew her, exactly as she was. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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