It all started with drawing. My hands felt it before my eyes saw it: a waistband wanted to dip a bit, a hemline suddenly needed to hit at the knee, a shoulder asked to be rounded rather than square.

As a staff illustrator at the legendary Tobé Report, I haunted the designer showrooms in the iconic buildings along 7th Avenue, capturing and anticipating the ever-changing moment with my Polaroid and an arsenal of pens, brushes & texture films.

But really, it started way before then. It was hearing my mother and aunts refer to a houndstooth coat or cable-knit sweater, a Peter Pan collar or a mock-turtle. It was the shapely little suits and bias-cut gowns in the old black-and-white movies on TV, the pored-over Seventeens and Vogues, the descriptions of clothes in novels and memoirs.

It was searching for round-toed maryjanes when all the stores had pointy pumps. It was the neat geometry of Mod morphing into the ragtag thrift shop glamour of the hippies. It was New York City, Jackie O & Warhol sightings, punks on Avenue A, disco glitter at Studio and downtown DIY at the Mudd Club. It was the sneakers-and-suits 80s and the cool minimalist 90s. I didn’t know it then, but I’d been tracing the stories of fashion all along.

— Sharon Graubard, sg files