grunge & glory; How one young woman discovered her style in the early 1990s-with the help of Vogue, Madonna, thrift shops, and Contempo Casuals.

Byline: Amanda Brooks

Iwas born in 1974 in Palm Beach, where the idea of

elegance was chic, classic clothing worn in an individual way. My dad's best friend, Suzie Phipps Cochran, who had the biggest estate in town, would arrive at dinner parties driving an old post-office mail truck (her own), wearing an evening gown in bare feet. Another family friend, Ancky Johnson, ex-wife of Revlon founder Charles Revson, was never seen without a colorful linen caftan, matching turban, and gigantic sunglasses. Our neighbor Countess Tauni de Lesseps always wore a solid-colored Gucci cashmere cardigan with perfectly pressed gabardine pants and a very thin leather belt worn over the sweater, all in the same color. She must have had fifteen color variations of exactly the same outfit.

My parents themselves dressed in coordinated, understated clothes, mixed with a few luxuries bought to last. My father still wears the stainless-steel Rolex diving watch he bought in the army, and my mother still carries a chocolate-brown ostrich Gucci purse with a bamboo handle that she bought in her 20s and then had custom remade in her 40s. I was at her house a few weeks ago, and I went in her closet and wondered aloud when she would be ready to pass it on to me. "Never!" she said emphatically.

After that period of aesthetic (but not romantic) bliss in Palm Beach, my parents divorced, my mom remarried, and we moved to Bronxville, a conservative town north of New York City. Here my sister and I fell into the preppy-suburban style appropriate to our surroundings, augmented with a few finds from the Bronxville hospital's thrift shop. My uniform was Laura Ashley dresses and Putumayo skirts, or a boarding school wardrobe of J.Crew barn jackets and L.L. Bean moccasins. Then, at college, everything changed.

I arrived on my first day at Brown wearing a Ralph Lauren postcard-print sundress I'd bought at an outlet store, proud that it was a "designer" outfit inspired by a vintage piece. Clearly, I was not prepared for the fashion parade I was about to encounter. As I sat waiting for art class to begin, my eyes wandered around the room looking at everyone's shoes. And that's when I saw a pair of black combat boots with a large gold interlocking Cs on the toe. It was so unexpected that I wasn't even clear what I was looking at. But sure enough, when class was over, the owner of the boots reached around her chair to pick up her bag, grabbing two gold chain-link-and-black leather straps, and slung her matching backpack over her shoulder. I was so intrigued by this vision in full-on Chanel that I followed her down the stairs and watched, transfixed, as she climbed into her BMW convertible and sped away.

At a party given by my roommate's older sister, I realized that Chanel Girl was just one of many high-fashion women at Brown. Another was the daughter of a famous pop diva, who didn't hesitate to wear her mother's vintage Halston, Alaia, or Yves Saint Laurent to a Spring Fling party, or even just to a bar on the weekend. A classmate whose father was a real estate mogul wore Ralph Lauren's Bohemian collection to lunch only days after I'd seen it in Vogue. When I asked her how she got hold of these clothes so quickly (we were in Providence, Rhode Island, after all), she said, "Oh, I flew down to the city last weekend to have my hair cut by Frederic [Fekkai], and I picked up my spring order at Bergdorf's." I was floored.