Back in the 1970s, single motherhood had a couple of things in common with PMS. We didn’t have a name for it yet, and people thought of it as either a horrible fate or a psychological issue. Today having a baby without having a husband is not such a big deal, but back then it just wasn’t a thing.

In 1973 I was dating a guy named Joe. He was an artist. Not a successful artist, mind you, though I think he was a pretty good one. He made large metal sculptures, and whenever I think of him—which is as infrequently as humanly possible—I always picture him wearing one of those big, scary welding masks.

I don’t know what the attraction was, because he was a very cold person. “Icy” is the only way I can think to describe him. In spite of that, or maybe because of that, I was always trying to find out what made him tick, to crack him. I think I had a Florence Nightingale complex, always trying to save the men I dated. And who knows, maybe I even looked for men who needed saving.

I met Joe just walking down the street one day. I was coming out of the Strand bookstore and I saw this super-skinny tall guy. I have always been attracted to guys like that, and this one was wiry like a pipe cleaner. We started talking, and he asked me about the books I had just bought. They were all vintage children’s books. I was designing a line of children’s clothing at the time and used the antique illustrations as references. Joe seemed into me and before I knew what was happening he invited me to his loft to see his work. That’s not my idea of a typical date, but the next afternoon I went over and I watched him cut and weld large metal pieces together. I was fascinated. Sparks were flying all over the place, literally and figuratively. I’ve always loved watching passionate people at work, especially the men I dated.

Joe’s studio was nearby my tiny fourth-floor walk-up apartment on Eleventh Street, right off Fifth Avenue. After a couple of weeks I gave up my place and moved in with him. I don’t know why I moved in with guys so quickly. I was such a romantic and have always believed in love at first sight. In this case, I was at Joe’s studio so much that moving in seemed like the obvious thing to do. Also, it cut our total rent in half, since my apartment had cost $250 a month, the same as his loft.

It was a lot of space for so little money. And it was raw. Joe had metal plates installed on the floors to support the weight. He had some art collectors from Texas who commissioned his work. There were pulleys and winches hanging from the ceiling, and the air always had a burnt metallic smell to it. We slept in a bed in the farthest corner away from where he did his work. It was the only place I’ve ever lived that I didn’t decorate or at least try to make homey. Believe me, a pair of lace curtains or a bright paint job wouldn’t have helped. It was not that kind of space.

So I was kind of happy to be traveling for some of my freelance gigs that I was now doing instead of being tied down to one company. I spent a lot of time in Hong Kong, which is also where I had produced some of my clothes for Alley Cat. I would visit factories, source fabrics, and oversee production, and sometimes I was even able to get some shopping in, as well as a glimpse of the exotic sights and sounds of the city.

At times I was away for as long as six weeks. These overseas trips could be exhausting, but it was coming back to the loft that became harder and harder as Joe and I started to drift apart. It got so that I would dread that four-flight climb upstairs with all my bags and God knows what else I dragged back with me—only to open the door to that burning metal smell and not even a “Welcome home.”

Despite our relationship going off track, I got pregnant. A baby certainly wasn’t what Joe wanted in his life, but it was what I wanted. I was thirty-three years old at the time and I figured if I was ever going to have a baby, I’d better get on with it. For my whole life I’d always known that I wanted a kid.

Circumstances may not have been ideal, but once I found out I was pregnant, nothing else mattered—including what Joe thought about it. I couldn’t be sure of anything else in my life. I couldn’t be sure of having a man or money, even though I was then doing all right for myself financially. There was plenty of work, and I was in demand. As far as not being certain of having a man around, I didn’t care. Nothing else mattered except that I wanted this baby. Nothing was going to stop me from having it. And that included my resolve to not marry Joe.

I was excited to tell my parents, but was also worried about how they were going to take the news. They lived in a very small, conservative Connecticut town, and I figured they’d have to deal with some backlash from their neighbors about my not being married. You know how it goes: people will talk. And I had no intention of being discreet about my pregnancy—I was going to keep going home for visits, no matter how big and obvious I got.

In fact my parents were always very “go with the flow.” Things might rile them at first, but they were ultimately always supportive of me and my brother and sister. I wasn’t scared to tell them I was pregnant, but I was biding my time, getting used to the idea myself. Then one day I picked up the phone and called my mother and just said, “Mom, guess what?” And I told her. She was quiet at first and then said, “Oh, how nice,” or something benign like that. There were a few questions: How far along are you? How are you feeling? Have you thought about a name? Is it a boy or a girl?

But oddly enough there were no questions about Joe. They’d met him only a couple of times, but that was enough for him to make a negative impression. Joe couldn’t have been less charming when I dragged him home to Connecticut or when my parents made a rare trip to New York. Whether he was sitting on my parents’ couch or at the table with them at a restaurant in the city, he would cross his arms and go all sullen, barely saying a word. I swear, in my mind’s eye he pulled on his welding mask any time my parents were in the room. I think my parents would definitely have preferred that I was married to the baby’s father, but I’d like to think they were secretly glad that I didn’t marry Joe.

My mother then changed the subject and started to update me on her world. We hung up, and that was it. It went exactly as I imagined it would. After I’d made it clear that I wasn’t ever going to marry Joe—especially for the sake of the baby—there was silence. That was certainly better than their arguing with me or being passive aggressive. They kept their negative thoughts to themselves, thank God.

But as casual as Mom was at first, in the weeks and months that followed both she and my father started getting used to the idea of my becoming a mother. They were excited at the notion of becoming grandparents again. My sister already had three kids, and my brother two, having gotten a much earlier start than I did. I think the whole family had given up any hope that I would ever have a baby.

One thing they didn’t stay silent about was the name I’d already chosen for her: Lulu. Oh God, they hated that name! They associated it with a woman of, shall I say, loose morals? Lulu was a character in a little ditty my dad used to play for us on the piano when we were kids. The lyrics went something like this . . . “If you’re coming to the party—you can bring Kate or you can bring Nate but don’t bring Lulu.” (These are the G-rated lyrics.) An odd song to be singing around the living room after dinner, to be sure. But we kids didn’t know what it meant, so it was funny.

The real inspiration for the name I’d chosen came from some friends who had just gotten back from Mexico and brought me a little statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I fell in love with the name Guadalupe, which I had never heard before, and even more, its shortened form, Lulu. Also, Little Lulu had always been my favorite cartoon character. I loved her hair and her little red A-line dress with the Peter Pan collar! Plus, she showed her panties a lot and was kinda naughty, and that had appealed to me as a little girl.

No matter how many times I told my parents where I got the name, they just couldn’t get past the woman in that dirty little song! It’s funny that it never occurred to me to choose a boy’s name. It never once crossed my mind that there was a fifty-fifty chance that I might have a boy. Thank God I had a girl, what would I ever have done with a boy?!

Real trouble started between Joe and me around the seventh or eighth month of my pregnancy. Before then it was just minor annoyances, but by then everything was blowing up all out of proportion, and I was nearly ready for him to just disappear. I couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore.

I had finally become convinced he was never going to change. I knew he wasn’t going to lift a finger to help financially with the baby. I knew he wasn’t going to get a job job—a real paying one. In my view, he was too much into the mystique of the starving artist. There were the odd commissions here and there, but no steady contribution to the household. Until then I used to say to him, “You know, even Benjamin Franklin worked at the post office!” I thought, Just bring home a steady hundred dollars a week. Something. Anything. All I wanted was for him to try, but no. I was the one making sure all the bills got paid and the lights stayed on. I was going to be responsible for baby Lulu and I wanted him to go.

I didn’t give much thought to the logistics of single motherhood. I just knew it had to be a whole lot easier without daddy around if mommy and daddy weren’t happy. And mommy and daddy were not happy. So forget it. Get it over with. Too many people say, “We gotta stay together for the kids.” Blah, blah, blah, meanwhile, they’re fooling around on each other; they don’t like who they’ve become; they’re lying, and not only to each other, but to themselves.

As I got used to the idea of raising a kid alone—and believe me, I still had some doubts as to how I was going to do it—a memory came back to me. In 1968 I was in the Amazon jungle with Hideoki, my photographer boyfriend at the time. I was sent there by Braniff Airlines as part of a promotion for tourism in Peru. The tagline they were planning on using went something like “We love Peru. We believe in Peru. Let’s see if these people love Peru, too.” Bill Blass was also along for the trip. I guess Peru was targeting a fashion customer.

It was a pretty fun gig. They flew us all expenses paid for a week in Lima, a week in Cuzco, and a week in the Amazon. We posed for photos all along the way for their PR, which was easy. The only tough part would be meeting with the Braniff executives at the end of the trip to share our impressions of the country. I would have to tell them that I couldn’t possibly promote tourism in Peru. It was too beautiful, too real, too perfect. Tourism would ruin it. Not what they wanted to hear at all.

Anyway, while we were in Peru, along the Amazon River, I saw a native Indian couple walking down to the water, dragging a canoe behind them. The woman was topless and looked to be in the last stages of pregnancy. They were both wearing loincloths, but I couldn’t see hers, because her belly was so big. The man put the canoe in the water and then very gently helped the woman sit in it. I thought to myself, Oh, isn’t this a nice little authentic Amazonian moment I’m witnessing. And then I saw him give the canoe a shove, and off she went down the river alone! I said to Hideoki, “Can you believe that?” It looked as if he was dumping her. I was shocked. But two days later I saw the same woman walking through the village, carrying a newborn baby.

That little seed of an image got embedded somewhere in my brain. And now, so many years later, it came floating to the surface, and I thought, If that woman could give birth alone in the middle of the Amazon, then I could certainly raise a baby alone in the middle of Manhattan. I had made up my mind what I wanted to do.

Right before the baby was born, I told Joe that as soon as I was strong enough after the delivery, I wanted to move out with Lulu. He immediately threatened me. I wasn’t expecting that. He said that if I left, he’d break into my apartment in the middle of the night and take the baby away. I knew he didn’t want a child, so I assumed he wanted to hold on to me as his meal ticket. I couldn’t be sure. I was absolutely frantic. Would he really resort to kidnapping?

Popping out a baby and a children’s line at the same time!

My due date was April 7, which just so happened to be the day of the fashion show for the children’s line that I was producing as another one of my seemingly endless freelance gigs. I remember telling the very jumpy clothing manufacturers who were backing it, “Don’t worry. I’m not having this kid on my due date. It’s not gonna happen.” I swore to them up and down. I simply couldn’t have the kid right then. I was in rehearsal, counting down to the show. I was still sewing, very rapidly, keeping my legs and fingers crossed!

On the morning of the show, I’d gone for my last ob-gyn exam to find out exactly how much longer I had to go. Believe it or not, they told me right then on my due date that I was having twins! Now that really knocked my socks off.

From the doctor’s office I went directly to do the show, which was at a famous old New York City restaurant. It was an upscale, fancy ice cream parlor in the Garment District. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the place.

It was similar to Serendipity 3, where I used to hang out with the Warhol crowd.

Right as the show was about to start I looked at all the kids lined up to walk the runway. I tried to imagine twice as many of them. Could I get used to having two babies instead of just the one that I was prepared for? There was no time to process that possibility. I had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

The show went off without a hitch and without my going into labor. When I came out onstage at the finale, I was wearing a yellow and white-striped T-shirt under my yellow empire waist corduroy jumper with a “Back to School” embroidered patch on the pocket and little puff sleeves. It was an adult version of one of the pieces in the show. The audience audibly gasped. They’d never seen me pregnant, and let me tell you, I was huge. But it worked to my advantage. There was something very real about a woman in the full bloom of pregnancy doing a line of children’s clothes.

The very next morning I went out to pick up a newspaper, and BOOM! I knew I had to go to the hospital right away. I grabbed Joe from his studio, and we found a cab to Beth Israel. Sitting in the back of the car, struggling with my contractions, I had to smile that we had given up on the Lamaze method. We’d discovered that I could never sit still long enough . . . let alone breathe. So that went out the window pretty early on in the pregnancy, which turned out to be a good thing, because now that my water had actually broken, I couldn’t stand the idea of Joe touching me.

As soon as we got to the hospital, the doctors gave me Pitocin to help things along. Ten hours went by, and still no baby. By then it was getting close to ten thirty, and they were preparing to give me an epidural. Next thing I know, WHAM! Out comes Lulu. Just like that! I didn’t have time for the needle. I had no intention of going natural, but I did. And just one baby, hallelujah! To this day I don’t know how the doctor messed up by telling me that I was having twins.

But there she was, my beautiful, perfect baby, Lulu. I was just so happy and so relieved. I knew I had my ultimate best girlfriend. Joe was there at the birth, wearing a mask, but didn’t participate in any way. It was the classic male thing. I don’t remember him even holding the baby. My first words to Lulu were, “It’s just me and you against the world, babe.”

My favorite picture of me and Lulu

The next day Joe was out the door to Mexico, where he had a small commission. I didn’t have much time for recovery, because I had a show for yet another freelance gig that week. And true to my word, I was also packing to move out of the loft.

I didn’t tell Joe where we were going, but he found out somehow. Late one night when Lulu’s nanny was still with me at my new third-floor apartment, she screamed. Looking out the window, we could see Joe trying to scale the building like Spiderman. I let out a scream, too, and then Lulu started screaming. Well, that scared him away, but I didn’t sleep a wink all night. If he was willing to scale the outside of a New York City apartment building, there was no telling what else he might do. I guess I underestimated how crazy he was. The next day I went to the police station and took out a restraining order. Joe wasn’t to come within twenty feet of me or Lulu.

He didn’t attempt anything like that again, and shortly after, I heard through the grapevine that he’d left the city. I never quite believed he was gone, and that we were completely safe. Sometimes I’d think I saw him on the street, and my heart would race. I’d duck into the nearest doorway, but it never turned out to be him. I was just living with that kind of fear.

A couple of years later I got a call from a woman who said that she was Joe’s wife. She told me that she wanted me to support Joe, her, and their four children. I must have developed a much stronger constitution by this time because I broke into hysterical laughter and hung up on her. I never heard from them again.

From the first moment, it was just Lulu and me. I took her everywhere. I nursed her through meeting after meeting with clients. I never thought twice about it. I’d excuse myself and go to the bathroom. People pretty quickly got used to me showing up with Lulu and they loved her. I was just so comfortable with her, and she was such a good baby. I still took care of business first, but now I did it all with Lulu on my hip.

My freelance work was keeping me busier and busier. So much so that at one point I was designing different products for about nine clients: hosiery for Capezio, lingerie for a company called Mistee, shoes for I. Miller and Nina, sportswear and jeans for Adriana Goldschmidt, T-shirts for Michael Millet, to name a few. I was all over the place and so busy! Eventually I did need help with Lulu and I must have gone through at least five babysitters before I found Ada Potata. That’s the nickname that made Lulu laugh.

Ada Potata would take Lulu to her Baptist church in Harlem every Sunday and would sometimes travel with us to Hong Kong when I needed to have Lulu with me. Lulu loved her, and their bond made it possible, when Lulu was only three years old, for me to open my own showroom. This was a major move. I was going to have my own line—one that I designed, produced, and controlled myself. But I couldn’t work from home anymore. So Ada stayed with Lulu. It was the first time Lulu and I were apart all day, every day. The separation anxiety devastated me. When I wasn’t with Lulu, it felt like a part of me was missing.

But I couldn’t take her everywhere once I started my business. I also relied on my next-door neighbor, Keni Valenti, an amazing vintage dealer and an early Barbie doll collector. He was a complete insomniac. When I wanted to go out to the Mudd Club, which was just three blocks away, Keni would settle in at one of my sewing machines to make Barbie clothes all night long while Lulu slept.

The Mudd Club was the crazy/creative–people getaway, and where I went to keep current—to see and be seen. It was the epicenter of the punk/new wave scene in New York City, more artsy fartsy than CBGB’s. Keith Haring curated art shows, and there was live music every night. The Mudd Club was the after-hours continuation of my workday. It was my mid-1970s Max’s Kansas City. Without Keni’s sewing addiction and his help with Lulu, I could not have ventured out to the clubs to see what people were doing and be inspired.

Outside the Mudd Club with the one-of-a-kind Klaus Nomi and Kenny Scharf

And then there were my parents, who were absolutely head over heels in love with Lulu, despite their early misgivings about her name. I once had to go to Asia for a month-long business trip to work with a factory that was weaving the most beautiful peasant-style fabric for me. My parents said that they’d be happy to take Lulu for that long. My father, in particular, was happy for the extra time with her. They had a special bond and were closer to each other than I’ve ever seen either one of them be to anyone else. Maybe Lulu was instinctively looking for a father figure. Who knows, but he was a godsend.

Otherwise it was usually just Lulu and me. I don’t know how I did it. I could never think of myself as the kitchy-kitchy-coo type of mother, the kind who would tickle a baby under the chin and talk baby talk. From day one I always spoke to Lulu like an adult. I was a mother, but I wasn’t very maternal—not the coddling type. There were times, especially when I was on deadline, that I had to let her cry herself to sleep on my cutting table.

I did have fun dressing Lulu up when she was a baby, and she loved it, too. What baby wouldn’t love wearing all kinds of kooky outfits? I made her some real costume-y things, but I also bought her really expensive stuff. I remember dressing her in a lot of white—which I learned is a terrible idea for a baby! I spoiled her with clothes in a way I wouldn’t spend money on my own wardrobe. I don’t know why I acted like a rich grandparent. I suppose I wanted to prove that I could provide for my baby girl all by myself.

Baby Lulu as Raggedy Ann with Aunt Sally and Mom

Lulu at five years old

As fate would have it, when Lulu started getting a little older, she had absolutely no interest in my clothes. As soon as she could choose her own outfits, all she ever wanted to wear were jeans and T-shirts and lots and lots of gray. She would never have been caught dead in pink!

Eight-year-old Lulu hated to be seen with me, because my purple leopard-print hair embarrassed her. She wanted nothing to do with my look. She’d actually try to walk on the other side of the street when we were out together. I was fine with that. She had the right to her feelings, just as I had the right to mine. But there was a lot of eye-rolling going on from both of us.

I somehow always knew that Lulu and I wouldn’t live on different fashion planets forever. The apple can’t fall that far from the tree! So I wasn’t surprised that finally one day, when Lulu was fifteen years old and getting dressed to go out with her girlfriends, she chose a black bustier, miniskirt, fishnets, and high heels. I felt as if it was her way of telling me, “Maybe Mom isn’t such a kook after all.” I was so proud of the way she looked all dressed up to go out, and thought to myself, That’s my girl!