My Muse: Honouring A Vietnam-Era Fashion Icon

Jill Hilbrenner — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:32:44 BST

Couture Carrie's mother in Vietnam

Welcome back to "My Muse". You're three weeks into a five-part series of guest columns, in which well loved style bloggers recount memories of the first person to influence their fashion sense. We've already thanked Kelly Kapowski and Cher Horowitz, and now it's time to get personal with a good old dose of mama.

Couture Carrie, an East Coast girl who tracks down the latest trends from YSL, Thakoon and all your other favourites, tells us why her mother still has her wearing bell bottoms and vintage synthetics, and how it all started with wartime slide shows.

My earliest true fashion icon was my mother. By the time I understood the intrinsic power of fashion - subscribing to Vogue at age 12 and saving my babysitting money to buy clothes - my mother’s style had (d)evolved into a fairly utilitarian soccer-mom sort of chic that I had no desire to emulate. My inspiration derived, rather, from her past.

My mother was a Donut Dolly with the Red Cross during the Vietnam War, and she and her fellow Dollies would often put on "fashion shows" for the soldiers in Vietnam to entertain them...

Read the rest of Couture Carrie's guest column after the jump

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My Muse: Honouring A Vietnam-Era Fashion Icon