Armed with only black charcoal and a newsprint pad, I was told to draw a happy yellow cube, or a sad pink circle. Or every once in a while just to keep us on our toes, a colorful country scene. Welcome to Pratt Institute!

My parents drove me to the school on one of the last hot days of summer in 1960 to start my new life as a college student. After getting me and my belongings unloaded into my dorm room and saying our tearful goodbyes, they left as quickly as they could for the two-hour drive from Brooklyn back to Terryville. They still didn’t like the city. I didn’t mind that they didn’t stay to get me settled. I was happy to finally be on my own in New York City, just as I had dreamt since Ann Pimm had taken me to see the Rockettes.

But the Rockettes visit seemed like a million years ago. I wasn’t a little girl anymore; I was a real-deal college student. So feeling independent and kind of like a grown-up I began unpacking my things. I got my clothes sorted out and arranged my dolls on the bed. I know it sounds childish, but against Mom’s suggestion that I leave them behind, I brought a few of my favorites with me to remind me of home.

While lost in the task and fantasizing about what my new school life would be like I met my roommate. Back at home I was used to sharing my room with Sally, so having a roommate was no big deal and, luckily, Cheryl and I hit it off right away. She was a pretty blond home-economics major who had been randomly assigned to me. I know that home economics as a major sounds pretty silly today, but in 1960 it was still a legitimate thing.

After a day of orientation my priority was to check out the cheerleading situation. I should have done some research before I got there because I was disappointed to learn that Pratt didn’t have a football team. All they had to offer in terms of sports was basketball. After I got to know the school and the other students a little better, I was shocked that they even had that. Pratt was an extremely artsy school even as art schools go, so there was very little competition for cheerleading squad, and I easily managed to get a spot.

A lot of my classmates—mostly the guys, thank you very much—looked down on me for being a cheerleader. They considered it a pretty geeky and even a lame thing to do, something better left to the girls in home ec, like my roommate. They would have been wrong about that as well. Cheryl, as it turned out, wasn’t a geek at all. In fact, she was a pretty ballsy chick. She used to sneak out of our room at night while I pretended to be asleep. I didn’t let on to anyone, not even her, that I knew she was going AWOL. But it was killing me not knowing what she was doing.

After a few weeks as we got more chummy, she finally confided in me, like roommates do. She told me that practically every night she was going into Manhattan and picking up guys for money. Cheryl was a prostitute. I was shocked but also a little bit intrigued. The only prostitutes I knew about were hard-boiled, bigger-than-life characters I’d seen in movies. Not at all like cute, bright, perky Cheryl. Unfortunately, not long after she shared her secret with me, the school found out about her nightly escapades, and she was thrown out. Such a shame. Not only had our personalities clicked and I sincerely liked Cheryl, but she had kept me fully stocked with pastries created in her cooking classes.

Cheerleading Syracuse—“The Orange Girls,” “The Orange Men”

Thunder thighs and pom-poms

At the same time, I was finding it difficult relating to my art-department classmates. My cheerleading just didn’t fit in with their preconceived notion of how an artist should behave. These kids were so pretentious and full of themselves that all of them were convinced they were going to be the next Picasso, and I hated that. I just wanted to do my art and hopefully make a career of it some day.

While I may not have been crazy about some of the students, I did like my teachers, even though they didn’t do much to discourage their students’ attitudes of superiority. The professors were pretentious, too, but at least they had the degrees and experience to back it up.

In some of my drawing classes, the assignments that we were given were very challenging (the happy yellow cube exercise mentioned above) and seemed to come out of left field. I felt as if the teachers were always trying to confuse us, but what they were really doing was daring us to think in new ways. Trying to get us to see the flip side of things.

In addition to my drawing classes I also had a sculpture class, taught by a teacher who was a real trip. He had long hair, which was almost unheard of back then, and he wore old baggy clothes. He looked like a hippie before hippies even existed. I considered him a great teacher because he was the first person who got me to see things in three dimensions, to notice form and function. He taught me how to use a whole different part of my brain, which I know came into play later when I started designing clothing.

Years later I found myself thinking back on these professors. I connected the dots and realized why some of them were so great. Given that it was 1960 and that we were living in New York City, it made total sense that most of them were beatniks, and that kind of beat attitude naturally spilled over into their teaching.

When I first decided on going to Pratt, I thought that I would be able to take my art classes by day and dance classes at night. I still hadn’t given up the dream of becoming a Rockette. That idea went right out the window as soon as school got started. The teachers heaped so much work on us that I barely had enough hours in the day to meet my deadlines. I think that in my heart of hearts I had known that I wasn’t going to be able to do both. I realized that if I was going to take dancing seriously I should have gone to a dance school. If Pratt basically put an end to my dancing dreams, the good news was that after looking into the matter, I found out that I was too short to be a Rockette anyway.

As the school year wore on I became disillusioned with Pratt. I was looking for what I had perceived to be a real college experience, like the kind I’d seen on TV. I wanted a campus and a football stadium, sororities and the frat parties. And Pratt just didn’t have those. My grades were good, I loved my teachers, and I was well liked in some crowds, but to be honest, while I had tried my best, I realized that I just didn’t like it there. It wasn’t only the taunts about my cheerleading and the way-out assignments, it was also the workload. It was simply too much. No one could push me harder than I could push myself; I just didn’t like others doing so. I still don’t. To make matters worse, I was overeating and ended up putting on a lot of weight. (Thank you, Cheryl, for getting me started with all of those goodies from your cooking classes.) Even with all my physical activity, I kept packing on the pounds. Pratt made me fat!

So right after Christmas break, I made the decision that at the end of the year I would leave the school. The staff wanted me to stay, I was a good student, but when I make up my mind it stays made up. My parents were supportive of my choice to leave and helped me find a new school. I wanted the next one to also be relatively close to home, because I enjoyed taking occasional weekend breaks to visit my family. I looked at Rhode Island School of Design and really liked their art programs, but again, no sports teams. I seriously considered Boston University for a while, but after visiting Syracuse University and seeing their football stadium and the quad, I loved the sheer huge-ness of S.U. So many students to get lost among and the feeling to be free to find my own way. I never felt that at Pratt. The choice was clear. Even though it was over three hours from home, I knew I would still be able to manage family visits.

One of the big changes course-wise at Syracuse was that in addition to my illustration classes, I also was able to study fabric design. Back then fabric design was a pretty weird thing to be into, and there weren’t many students in that class. I only ended up there as an extension of my illustration classes. I was looking for skills that would give me some practical application out in the real world and a better chance of landing a job when I graduated.

Not that the fabric design class was perfect. Our assignments were always the same: Create repeat patterns. Believe me when I tell you that designing repeats is so anal and so boring. Repeat, repeat, repeat, over and over again. I could not stand it!

Me being me, I could never wrap my head around doing the work in any conventional way. The art department had small printing presses and silkscreens. By this time I had given up my childhood bad habit of biting my nails and now boasted long fingernails, which I started to use on the screens instead of the carving tools provided to us. I would dig my nails right into the silkscreen or linoleum blocks or whatever other material we had and carve my designs, slashing away and creating geometric and abstract prints. But my specialty was, not surprisingly, florals. It was a really messy way to work. I could never quite manage to get all of the ink out from under my nails.

The results of my method were much wilder, abstract, and somehow more modern designs than those that the other students were doing. I was into a more organic, free-form technique than that damned repeat, repeat, repeat. And in a way, I was kind of lazy and wanted to have fun with it. The teachers never questioned my methods. They pretty much left me alone and even encouraged me to do what I wanted as long as I completed the assignments on time and to their satisfaction, which I always did. I had the freedom at Syracuse to be me, whatever that was at the time!

My experimentation was supported and eventually rewarded by the department. Ten years after I graduated, I was presented with the George Arents Award, which the university gives once a year to alumni who make good. To commemorate the award, a few of my former professors lobbied to have two of the dorm rooms redecorated with my prints. A plaque outside each of them announced it was “The Betsey Johnson Room.”

The prints they chose to decorate the rooms were florals done in extremely vibrant color combinations. I’ve always been drawn to colors that vibrate when you put them side by side. One of the rooms featured a crazy orange and bright pink pattern, and the other was done in glowing turquoise and aquamarine. We’re talking small spaces with bold bedspreads and curtains in these shocking color combos. Looking back, I feel bad for whoever had to try to sleep in those rooms.

I lived in a drab dorm room my first year at Syracuse but in my second year, to round out my college experience, I moved into a sorority. I’d always wanted to have the camaraderie of a group of girls. I thought living in a sorority house would feel like a close-knit family for me, but we sisters never felt all that connected. I did have a roommate whom I liked, a journalism major named Diane. We two were pretty much the outcasts in the house. I was still heavy and still overeating. And Diane was a real studious type with cat’s eye glasses and problem hair. She and I used to raid the icebox at night and gorge ourselves in our room. When the house mother found out, she put a lock on the icebox door, so we started hoarding food in our room, which was strictly forbidden. I remember we would cleverly stuff pairs of pantyhose with all of our contraband and hang them out the window, just like Ray Milland did with his liquor bottles in The Lost Weekend.

One of my only memories of sorority life bonding was when the Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. Our house mother called upstairs to us when the program was about to start, and we all came running down like thunder to claim our places on the couch, chairs, and floor. We all screamed along with the girls in the Ed Sullivan audience before the music even started. I had a major crush on Paul.

Another sorority memory I have was when President Kennedy was shot. All classes were canceled, and our whole house sat transfixed in front of the TV set for an entire day. I and all of my sisters actually cried on one another’s shoulders.

My first year at Syracuse I joined the cheerleading squad, and by my second year I was named head cheerleader. That was a huge deal, as Syracuse was a major football school. As head cheerleader I got to travel with the team to the out-of-town games. They didn’t send the whole squad—just me and the head male cheerleader. At the start of those games I was the one who had the honor of leading the team out onto the field. There’s something very powerful about having an entire team of football players following you. You can actually feel it surging behind you. I would high-step with my thunder thighs and shake my pom-poms. Then I’d turn, face the team, and back flip off the field, signaling the start of the game.

Losing It

Throughout my college career I always dated the jocks. And it was all pretty innocent. In fact, nothing serious ever happened between me and a boy until my junior year when I made a momentous decision: I was finally going to go to bed with a boy. All of the other girls I knew had already made the leap, and I was feeling childishly left behind. I was curious to find out what all the hubbub was about.

My plan was to attend a football game at the campus of our nearest rival school, Colgate University, and to pick up one of the players. I wanted my first to be a guy from another campus because I didn’t want to foul my own nest, as the saying goes.

I went with my roommate and one of the other cheerleaders, neither of whom had any idea about my ulterior motive. We planned to get rooms at a motel and stay overnight, and I made sure I got my own room. Since I didn’t own anything remotely sexy or suggestive I had to borrow an outfit from another friend, a real Sandy Barker type. I still remember the outfit. It was a tight tweedy pencil skirt that came to just below the knee; very nubby, it looked like oatmeal with little yellow flecks in it. I topped it with a tight lacy blouse under which I wore what was known as a bullet bra, one of those satin conical things. Very Madonna, very Gaultier. It was actually a Maidenform bra, and while I was putting it on and stuffing it, I remembered those ads in the magazines and a line flashed through my head: I dreamt I lost my virginity in my Maidenform bra. I laughed out loud, which helped ease some of the anxiety I was feeling. I sat down and put on a pair of pointy-toed kitten heel shoes and I was ready to go.

We made the bumpy three-hour drive in my friend’s battered Plymouth Valiant, which bucked when it started and smelled of diesel fuel. She had affectionately named the car Val. I was uncharacteristically quiet during the ride as I kept playing out the possible scenario in my head. I pictured it being like a fairy tale with the prince, wearing a football uniform, sweeping me off my feet and carrying me up the castle stairs. Slow fade and then cut! I didn’t actually fantasize about the ultimate act itself.

When we arrived we went immediately to the game and, sitting in the bleachers, nervous yet determined, I started looking over the players. I settled on a good-looking guy who just happened to be the tight end. (No pun intended.) I watched him throughout the entire game and really liked his moves on the field and wondered how his moves were off the field. I was really ready to make this happen. I was ready to do it and get it over with.

After the game my girlfriends, who still had no idea about my scheme, and I went to a party at one of the frat houses. I’m sure they were wondering why I was so dolled up for a football game, but I managed to lose them pretty quickly and go in search of my tight end. When I spotted him across the room, I walked over to him and made some small talk. I complimented him on the game, which Colgate had won, and quickly asked him to come back to my motel with me. Well, I didn’t have to ask him twice. Judging from where his eyes were, that bullet bra was doing the talking for me.

My room was appropriately tacky for what was about to happen, but it was all I could afford. It had plastic plants and plastic covering on the couch and chairs and smelled of stale cigarette smoke and pine-scented air freshener. The floral bedspread was stained, as was the carpet, framed pictures of puppies and kittens decorated the walls. The only window looked out depressingly over the parking lot. Hardly the castle I had imagined.

Now, I’m a girl who likes a little romance and I was way out of my comfort zone so I just let him take the lead. I won’t go into detail here, but we took care of business, and I was extremely disappointed. Classic, right? I think I had built up the whole notion of sex so much in my mind and made it into such a big deal that how could it have been anything but a disappointment? It wasn’t the boy’s fault. He was nice enough, but I made him leave shortly after.

As disappointing as the act itself was, I did feel an enormous amount of relief. I had done it. I felt as if I had just joined a special kind of club. When I walked out of the motel alone the next morning—and it may have been the kitten heels—I swear, I felt a few inches taller. I was a woman.