Michael Kors At The "Y"

Michael Kors knows all too well how there isn't a rule in fashion as to how you've got to chart your course. And he wasn't afraid to spell out his own experiences to hammer home that point during a Q&A with Fern Mallis Wednesday night at 92Y.
The designer cringed describing how he presented a Christopher Street Women collection during an interview with Donna Karan in her Anne Klein days. As a boy, he appeared in Lucky Charms commercials, among others, and truth be told he and his mother, who also modeled, would come into Manhattan from Long Island for go-sees. "This is hard to believe now but she would put me in a cab with a slip of paper with the address of where I was going. Today if she did that, she'd be on the front page of the Post — Child Abuser," Kors said.

At the age of 11, he opened the Iron Butterfly Boutique in the basement of his house, selling his own homemade candles, hammered copper bracelets and other one-offs. No subject seemed taboo — Kors mentioned how he told his mother at the age of five that her wedding dress was "too busy" and he described hiding his bare-chested, sunburned self in the ocean for a good hour after spotting Ricky and Ralph Lauren looking taut and tan in Round Hill in Jamaica not that long ago.

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