Recently, my Instagram feed was blowing up with @DoubleNRich's over a throwback pic that Lena Dunham posted of our crew of original TeenVogue "It Girls." Some of whom I still keep in touch with and run into.
The backstory is, after participating in a focus group and meeting the editor-in-chief, Amy Astley at a TeenVogue test Launch party -- the highlight of my night was bumping into Jessica Simpson and telling my friend Sophie that she was "totally around my height!" I was asked to be apart of these lucky ladies and help shape the direction for the new teen magazine she was launching. I considered myself a sophisticated teen expert (I kind of still do, forever young, that's my motto and that sound weirdly makes me tear up) so felt I was perfect for this. To our credit, TeenVogue survived in a market where magazines were dropping like flies and it's contemporaries, Elle Girl, Cosmo Girl and all those other Felecias did not. I'd like to think Lena, Bee, Selby, Lana, Annabelle, Lola, Tory and I had something to do with that. Needless to say this launched my career in fashion -- I finally started to see fashion as a career and well the rest is history.
But I really do wish I had chosen a better outfit. I was going through an expensive rebel phase where I was buying pot leaf tanks and fish net tops from Scoop NYC. And those platforms... yikes! I do wish my first appearance on MTV.com was in better form. Like on the shoulders of Alexander Skarsgård during an obscure European Music Fest. But there you go, the words "Pussy Breath" and Nneya Richards, back to back.
