The first outfit I ever put together on my own. My mom knew it was going to be good blackmail later in my life, so she took a picture that could last forever.
My parents have had it pretty easy with me: I love and respect them and have managed to be a well-adjusted contributing member of society—most of the time. Not too shabby, right? But despite my good intentions, I can’t seem to avoid being the occasional disgrace to their gene pool.
For example, take my skills behind the wheel. As is true for many sixteen-year-olds, when I first learned to drive, I left some room for improvement. I gripped the steering wheel too tightly, I drove too fast, I tailgated, and I hugged the right side of the road. Shortly after I started driving myself to work, I got into a terrible car accident on the freeway. It had been raining very heavily, and even though I was not speeding, I shouldn’t have been in the fast lane. My beloved Toyota 4Runner hydroplaned, and I lost control, smashing into the center divider and spinning around three times, hitting the center divider yet again with every turn. My air bag had gone off, and I wasn’t injured—but I was stuck in the fast lane of a major freeway during a complete downpour. I needed immediate assistance, so I did what any normal person would do. I called my mom.
MOM: Hello?
ME: Mom?
MOM: Yes?
ME: Hi, it’s Danielle.
MOM: I only have one daughter, Danielle.
ME: Oh, right. Anyway, I was just in a really bad car accident on the freeway. I’m fine, though.
MOM: Oh, my God! Danielle, are you OK? Are the police on their way?
ME: I don’t know.
MOM: Did you call them?
ME: No, I called you first.
MOM: Danielle Christine, hang up this phone right now and call nine-one-one! Why would you call me first?
I know it sounds silly, but I can’t help it—when disaster strikes, my first instinct is always to call my mom. One time, a man was yelling and screaming at me while approaching my car with a steel baseball bat. I immediately called my mom, and not because she’s Liam Neeson in Taken or anything. She’s just my mom, and I’m (maybe) a little overly dependent.
Anyway, back to the freeway. I called the police, but in the meantime, I was stuck like a sitting duck in moving traffic. The visibility was incredibly low, and I was terrified that someone would rear-end me at high speed and I’d go soaring across all five lanes of the freeway. Only one person stopped to make sure I was OK: Jared Leto. (Yes, in LA, Academy Award winners just show up in times of need. Not really, but can you imagine?) I had never met Jared, but he noticed my destroyed car and pulled up next to me, gesturing for me to roll down my window.
JARED LETO: Hey. Pretty bad accident, huh? Are you OK?
ME: Yeah, it was pretty scary. Yes, I’m OK.
JARED: Do you want me to call the police for you?
ME: I already did, but thank you for asking.
JARED: OK, I hope your day gets better.
Then he rolled up his window and drove away. Jared Leto made me a forever fan that day. Who am I kidding? After falling in love with him as Jordan Catalano, I was already a forever fan, but it was still a very nice thing to do.
After my car had been towed, my mom had come to pick me up so I could make it to the Boy Meets World set for work, and Rider Strong drove me home from work. That night, over dinner with my family, we discussed what we were going to do since I was going to be without a car for a few weeks. I wasn’t old enough to rent a car, so my dad generously offered to let me borrow his brand-new car, and he would drive a rental. The next day, my dad handed me his keys and told me to be careful. I made it to work without incident.
After work was a different story. I decided to stop at a local clothing store on my way home. The underground parking garage was steep and had a lot of turns. Thanks to my lack of skill and my desire to hug the right side of the road, I scraped the entire right side of his car across one of the curved garage walls. In an attempt to remove myself from the situation, I put the car in reverse—more scraping. I put the car in drive and inched forward—even more scraping. In a complete panic, I parked the car and jumped out, screaming for help. A man who was working in valet came over to help me. He was a much more experienced driver and somehow got my dad’s car off the garage wall without any more damage. I thanked him profusely and drove back to my parents’ house.
The whole way home, I contemplated how I was going to tell them. OK, honestly, I was trying to figure out a way I could avoid telling them, but there was none. I parked the car along the right side of the garage and hoped no one would notice before I could explain what happened. I came clean about the fiasco at dinner, and to their credit, neither my mom nor my dad murdered me. My dad put his head down with his fingers on the bridge of his nose, and my mom just looked at me and shook her head. The next day, my dad brought his car into the body shop, and my mom drove me to work. They removed me from their car insurance, and I was never allowed to drive one of their cars again. Gosh, they are such jerks, right? Just kidding. Don’t ever let me borrow your car.
Unfortunately for my parents, I started making their lives difficult long before I learned to drive. When I was a little girl in the neon-hued mid-’80s, one of my favorite things to do was to help my mom get ready for an evening out. My parents didn’t go out alone very often, choosing instead to spend time with my brother and me as a family, but when they did, I was her personal stylist. Usually, she would direct me to her closet and point out which fabulous dress—resplendent with shoulder pads, no doubt—she had decided to wear, and then I was responsible for selecting the appropriately matching panty hose (a must in the ’80s), purse, jewelry, and shoes she should wear with it. This meant that if she was wearing a pink dress, I would find her pink panty hose (oh, yes, those actually existed), her pink purse, her gold jewelry, and her pink shoes. The ’80s took its matching seriously. Playing the part of stylist was incredibly fun, because aside from feeling like I was really contributing to her look for the evening, I also got to play dress-up with all of my favorite clothes and accessories that my mom owned (like her pair of black snakeskin stilettos that dipped low around the toes and showcased excellent toe cleavage—I still dream about those shoes).
One day, my mom came home with a brand-new dress for a party she was attending with my dad. It was gorgeous, and I so badly wanted to try it on—which was ridiculous, because I was no more than four years old, and there wasn’t a chance in the world that this dress was going to even remotely fit me. But the heart wants what the hearts wants, and I wanted to put that dress on my little body and dance around like a grown-up. My mom had always let me play in her closet, so I didn’t see any reason this time would be any different—but it was.
My mom didn’t shop for herself very often, and this particular dress was fresh from the store and still wore its price tag. She wasn’t set to wear the dress for another couple of weeks and certainly didn’t want her sticky-fingered child to play in it before she had even had a chance to wear it. Obviously, this all makes sense to me now, but at the time, none of it made sense. In my eyes, my mom had turned into a child-hating ogre and clearly wanted to torture me by bringing home a gorgeous dress that was off limits to me. I begged and begged to put the dress on, and she kept saying no. After a few fruitless minutes of begging, I exploded into a tantrum and demanded that she let me try on her dress through a stream of never-ending tears.
She lost her patience and yelled, “No, Danielle. How many times do I have to tell you no?”
I was shocked. How could she do this to me? In my brokenhearted-little-girl voice, I replied, “After everything I do for you!” and ran off to my room. I don’t know where I learned that line, but I love that at four years old I was pretty sure that in my relationship with my mom, I was the one doing everything for her. I guess it’s safe to say I’ve had a flair for the dramatic my whole life.
The first outfit I ever put together on my own. My mom knew it was going to be good blackmail later in my life, so she took a picture that could last forever.
As I got older, I became just as obsessed with putting my own outfits together.
You can see that they weren’t always “hits,” but that has never stopped me from loving fashion. Now, when I tell you that I love fashion, I just mean that I greatly appreciate a well-put-together look. I do not mean to imply that I’m particularly good at it. I’m not. I’m terrible at putting together a complete ensemble that looks good on me, but that has never stopped me from doing it anyway (unfortunately).
Fashion lingo has never been a strong suit of mine, either. When I was ten, my mom actually had to tell me that “panty hose” was not plural for “panty hoe.” She was teaching me how to delicately bunch a pair of panty hose down by my toes and slowly slide them up my leg to avoid snags.
“So, I take one panty hoe at a time,” I started.
“Panty hose,” she interrupted.
“Yeah, I know. But I’m doing them one leg at a time, so it’s panty hoe,” I quipped.
She burst into hysterical laughter, because she was instantly aware that her daughter was a moron.
Many years later, I got into a conversation in Bloomingdale’s with a young woman working in the department that sold Elie Tahari. She was very passionate about fashion and clothes, and I was merely looking for a black cocktail dress. I didn’t see anything I liked, but she kept insisting that I try on a few pieces. I declined politely and started to walk away—which she was not happy about.
“You know, Elie Tahari makes some of the highest-quality clothing in this store,” she said.
Not really knowing how to respond to that comment, and certainly not wanting to offend a designer who was nowhere near me, I said, “Oh, I know. I love her stuff.”
Her beady eyes were suddenly filled with hatred, and she informed me, “Elie Tahari is a man.”
Clearly having made a huge faux pas, I did what any normal person would do and ran out of the store, never to return again.
I mean, what is this look about? Nice mock turtleneck and white belt. At least Andrew Keegan looks good.
Long after I had outgrown my Thriller T-shirt, I got to work with some incredibly talented stylists on Boy Meets World. Certainly, not every outfit Topanga wore was a winner, but overall, I loved her style. During the first season of the show, I wore as many dresses (lace! ) with leggings and boots as I possibly could. That was my favorite season one look, and I replicated it in my personal life regularly. In the mid-’90s, Topanga’s style evolved from bohemian chic to modern, and crop tops were all the rage at that time. In those years, I regularly wore high-waisted pants with colorful shirts tied up around my belly button.
Despite a few misses in the wardrobe department, Topanga’s style has proven to be more evergreen than anything the boys got stuck with. Ben and Rider were constantly wearing layers upon layers of oversized shirts, some of them complete with dinosaurs.
Rider wearing at least two shirts and a vest.
By the time I turned seventeen, I had been working consistently for six years. I knew how much money I was making per episode, and I knew that it was a lot, especially for my age. But I never really understood how much money I had, because I didn’t personally handle my own finances. That job fell to my responsible parents, who made investments for me and gave me an “allowance” from my own earnings. My allowance was more than what most children my age were given, but it was still rather menial. They figured that I didn’t really need much money to spend willy-nilly, and they were right. We had lunch catered every day on set, and my parents paid for all the bills at home. My mom called my allowance “mad money,” and I could spend it on whatever I wanted. Usually, that money went to movies, music, clothes, and Ice Blended coffees at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.
I started to think of my money as some unknown dollar amount that lived in a cloud in the sky. When I turned eighteen, I got my first credit card and had way too much time to spend shopping. I developed the irresponsible, bratty, and entitled habit of buying clothes and shoes that I didn’t need, only to let them sit in my closet for months with the price tags on. Eventually, my closet would get full, and I’d have to clean it out and give all my new clothes away to friends and Goodwill so I could make room for more clothes. One year, I bought a pair of leather pants from a super-fancy store on Sunset Boulevard in a swanky area of Los Angeles. These pants cost well more than a thousand dollars, but I intended to wear them to the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), so I rationalized that it was an appropriate occasion to splurge on my outfit. I mean, I was going to be photographed in whatever I wore, so it shouldn’t be something cheap and unattractive, I told myself. I did indeed wear those leather pants to the VMAs, and the minute I stepped out of the car, the zipper ripped wide open. I took a few strategically placed photos on the red carpet and then went inside the venue and watched the whole show with a broken zipper. Let’s say that was the universe telling me never to spend that much money on a pair of pants—ever again.
Another bad habit I developed was not asking what something cost if the price wasn’t readily available on the tag. I just assumed that the item couldn’t be too much, right? Wrong.
When I turned twenty-two, I bought a condominium. My parents had been telling me for years that I should stop paying rent and buy a house, but it just seemed like such a big commitment. I mean, you can buy a pair of pants one day and decide you don’t like them the next and just get rid of them. You can’t do that with a home. But it was time to grow up and invest my money in something that had long-term value—unlike clothes.
Immediately after purchasing my condo, I went furniture shopping. My first order of business was to find a bed I loved. I am a huge fan of sleeping. If sleeping was an event in the Olympics, I would be the Michael Phelps of it. In my opinion, one of the key components of thoroughly enjoying the time you spend sleeping is having a bed that you can’t wait to crawl into. After doing my due diligence and researching all the beds on the market, I ordered a humongous king-sized canopy bed. Naturally, when you’re five-foot-one and single, you need the largest bed readily available. Unfortunately, there was a three-month wait for my gigantic bed, so I was forced to continue sleeping on my full-size mattress—placed, sans box spring, directly on the floor of my bedroom—for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, my new bed was going to require a new mattress. A few months earlier, I had stayed at a W Hotel in New York and had never slept on such a divine mattress. The W Hotel, it turns out, actually sells the mattresses they use in their rooms. (I hope it’s obvious that they sell new mattresses and not the ones other people have slept on, because that would just be yucko.) I ordered a king-size mattress and box spring, two king-size down pillows, and four standard pillows. Was that a lot of pillows? Perhaps, but like most sane people, I like comfort, and therefore, I like pillows. I was drooling at the thought of my bed arriving. I was gonna sleep in that bed so hard it wasn’t going to know what hit it.
One afternoon while driving down Melrose Avenue—a very popular shopping area in LA—I saw a sign in the window of a home-decorating store that said, “Going Out of Business! 75% Off Storewide!” Considering that I had a new home that required some décor and only a fool would walk away from a seventy-five percent price cut, I thought I should check it out.
I walked into the store and immediately liked what I saw. They had beautiful artwork, fancy bathroom faucets, soft towels, and luxurious sheets. Buying luxurious sheets seemed like a no-brainer to me; I had a new bed on the way, and sheets I can’t wait to dive into happen to be one of my life’s greatest pleasures. I noticed that the sheets didn’t come in a set like I had expected them to. Every piece was packaged separately: fitted sheet, flat sheet, and pillow cases. I thought this seemed odd, because I couldn’t imagine a scenario where someone would walk into a store and decide to buy just one piece from what seemed like a set. Whatever. Whether or not I should buy the sheets was not even up for debate; in my mind, I already owned them.
I walked around the rest of the store to see if there was anything else I desired and noticed something a little strange. There weren’t prices on anything. I looked at almost every item they had in the store, and not one thing was marked with a price. For a brief moment, this concerned me, but then I remembered the sign outside the store: seventy-five percent off storewide. Even if something had been ridiculously overpriced when they were in business, how overpriced could something be when it was seventy-five percent off?
It should be known that I was completely out of my element in this store. I had never owned a home, and therefore I didn’t know the first thing about decorating one. I certainly didn’t know what was considered a “reasonable price” for anything. When I lived at home, my parents always paid for any necessary household items, as parents usually do. Then, when I moved out of their house and into a rented apartment, I took my bed, mattress, towels, and sheets with me. One benefit of renting an apartment is that you don’t need to bring a sink or a toilet with you; those items are waiting patiently for your arrival and ready to be used—again. (I do, however, highly recommend changing the toilet seat, because, gross.) For this newly purchased home, I had just paid twenty-seven hundred dollars for my king-size mattress and box spring, and I thought that was outrageous—unless you were a professional sleeper, like I fancied myself to be. Not to mention, you’re supposed to keep a mattress for eight years (mine is ten years old now; am I a disgusting slob person?), so really, it was an investment in the future of my sleep, and I really could not compromise on something so valuable.
I decided that I was going to buy my insanely soft, gorgeous sheets and head home. I walked to the front of the store and put my sheets on the counter. The man who rang me up told me that he was crazy about the sheets I was buying and that I had exquisite taste. I liked him already. I told him that I had just bought a new house and couldn’t wait to put them on my bed. “Girl, these sheets are the absolute best in the world, and to be getting them at such a bargain is insane,” he said. Now I was even more excited. I still didn’t know what the final cost of my sheets was, but I was getting them for a bargain! My mom was going to be so proud of me for being frugal.
“OK, you got a flat sheet, a fitted sheet, two king pillow cases, and four standard pillow cases,” said the nice man behind the counter. “Your total is three thousand dollars even.”
What happened next can only be described as an out-of-body experience. My brain was yelling something like What the hell? Did he just say three thousand dollars? You clearly cannot pay this for a set of sheets! but my body was moving as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. My hands grabbed my wallet and removed my credit card. I actually handed that credit card to the man who thought three-thousand-dollar sheets were a bargain and didn’t utter a word. I signed my receipt and walked as quickly as possible to my car.
I sat in the front seat and started talking out loud to myself. “Maybe three thousand dollars is a normal price for super-luxurious sheets, Danielle. Just call your mother. She will have answers.” I called my mom.
MOM: Hello?
ME: Mom, let’s say you wanted to buy new sheets and you wanted really nice ones—like super-nice ones. The nicest sheets you’ve ever felt in your whole life. How much do you think those would cost?
MOM: I don’t know, Danielle. Really nice sheets can be expensive. How much did you pay?
ME: Mom, these sheets I just bought were incredibly expensive. I didn’t think anything could possibly be this expensive, and I supposedly got them for seventy-five percent off.
MOM: How much did you pay for the sheets, Danielle?
ME: How much would you guess I paid for really expensive sheets?
MOM: I don’t know. What’s the thread count?
ME: I have no idea! They’re really nice. The nicest. You’re gonna want to come sleep in my bed, that’s how nice they are.
MOM: You bought sheets, and you don’t even know what their thread count is?
ME: I don’t even know what that means, Mom! Now, tell me, how much would you expect to pay for expensive sheets?
MOM: Oh, God. You’re really going to make me tell you a price? I already know you paid too much.
ME: Hey, don’t use your knowledge of my ridiculous shopping habits against me. Please, I need you to tell me what I should have paid for these sheets.
MOM: OK. If I were buying very expensive, really nice sheets, I would assume that they were somewhere around four or five hundred dollars.
I swear on everything I love that I almost passed out. I kept reliving the moment I stupidly handed my credit card over to the man behind the counter, wondering how I could have possibly been so insane as to pay three thousand dollars for a set of sheets.
I drove to my completely bare home and sat in a lawn chair that I had put in the family room. I looked around, and the realization that I did not have a couch, a coffee table, or a desk hit me. However, I was the new owner of a set of three-thousand-dollar sheets for a bed I did not even have yet ! I immediately went into self-preservation mode. I started thinking about how I could get myself out of this situation and return the sheets. Even though the man who helped me at the store had already told me that there were no returns or exchanges (because they were going out of business and giving people such great bargains already?), I checked my receipt anyway. Sure enough, “No returns or exchanges” was printed just below my ridiculous total.
Sadly, I did return those sheets. I never had an opportunity to sleep on them and find out if they were so pricey because they turned one’s hair into strands of gold, because I did what any normal, self-respecting person would do in my situation. I lied. I called the store in semifake tears (they were only semifake because I was partially crying about the fact that I was a hideous monster who thought three-thousand-dollar sheets could ever be considered acceptable) and told them this tale.
ME: Hi. I was in your store a little bit ago and bought some very nice sheets. Unfortunately, I just came home and found out that my husband was laid off today. I feel incredibly guilty for spending three thousand dollars on these sheets, and there is no way I can keep them now. I’m very sorry, but is there any way you can make an exception to the no-return policy?
By some miracle, they believed me. The man on the phone was very sympathetic, which made me feel terrible, because I knew I was a big stinky-faced liar. Even though that store should have caved in on itself for thinking anyone (other than me) would be stupid enough to believe that three-thousand-dollar sheets were normal, much less a bargain at seventy-five percent off, I still feel a little guilty that I lied to save myself from my own mistake. I said a little guilty, because, seriously, what were they thinking?
I am now a pretty frugal shopper. I don’t hesitate to buy new things when I legitimately need them, but I no longer hand over my credit card without asking the cost of something. And you’ll be pleased to know that I have found sheets that are equally luxurious at Bed Bath & Beyond for one hundred fifty dollars. Do you know what that comes out to? Ninety-five percent off ! I win, store that’s out of business, so you can shove it.