Since I was a little girl I’ve been accused of over analyzing and taking to the extreme nearly everything that enters my psyche.

On my 4^th birthday I thought my mother stopped loving me because she topped my cake with pink lettering instead of my favorite purple.  Did she not know? Was I not important enough to her to pay attention to such a detail?

This insignificant detail left a lingering impression…a trait that would translate to all aspects of my life from love to fashion…

So it’s no surprise at all that one of my preferred fashion houses is the one created by Mademoiselle Chanel. What for some women is a mere mark of status, is to me a token of possibilities—a constant reminder of a brilliant woman’s adventures, losses, and gains as she navigated her way from an orphaned girl to an elegant (and wealthy) icon.

My classic quilted bag has come to mean more than the desire to let everyone know my small handbag cost more than a month’s rent for most people. At first just gliding my finger tips gently across the quilted lambskin was enough to make my insides quiver with joy. The idea that something so lovely was finally in my closet seemed to comfort me in the most ridiculous way—as though objects play any role at all in defining who I am. It’s absurd, and I know it, that someone with any amount of intelligence will fall prey to that sort of thinking—the danger in feeling validated simply because you can afford luxury or worse, that if you cannot find true companionship you can at least adorn yourself in pretty things.

But it comes to symbolize something greater than that when you grow up with nothing. These objects become reminders that your talent has been recognized, that you’ve earned the benefits that comes with hard work—and who better than Mlle. Chanel to illuminate these very feelings? I dare not compare myself to her legacy, but rather empathize and feel inspired by the tumultuous 20-something years of our lives filled with nothing but fantasies and a knack for something hardly anyone takes seriously (until they do, and then of course, a star is born). If she got a break, then perhaps there is still hope for me. I too see no future in the conventions of marriage, I never did, and am ashamed that I almost let myself fall into that sacrificing my imagination for safety and tradition. I look at my Chanel ballet flats and handbags and think of all the mistakes and progress that I’ve made and how hard I have to keep working—how it’s OK to be a woman that works—that life sitting in service to a man or someone else’s money leads to boredom and unhappiness. At least it would for me. I know that now.

Each time I snap the button of my bag together I move further and further away from the mistakes and memories that hold me back. No one understands the reasons you do anything, unless they’ve lived your life. No one should make you feel inferior for trying to work with what you’ve got, especially if it’s only a little. No one blames Coco for lying her way into the home of Etienne Balsan or carrying on an affair with Arthur Capel because she became a luminar; just as no one blames famed author Ayn Rand. And why should they? They both did what they felt was necessary to become who they were meant to be. One hopes that greatness can be achieved by only the purest endeavors, but the truth is, that hardly anyone was a saint the entire way to the top. It’s a struggle.

The fact that something no bigger than a piece of paper can remind me of all that is a peculiarity I don’t want to lose, even if it means I get all the wrong assumptions strewing about in my head…because  at least I can rest easy knowing that I’m thinking. That I’m not just part of some group trying to keep up with the Jones….