My son started kindergarten this year, and I have to admit, I’m having a lot of fun with all the school stuff.  I wouldn’t say I loved school, but I was quite devoted to it (realizing fairly early on that if I did well, I could open a lot of doors for myself).  And both of my parents were school teachers, so even when I wasn’t in school, I was hanging out in classrooms or at teacher supply stores.  Put another way, there’s something totally comforting to me about sitting in a tiny desk chair staring at chalkboards, helping out with homework assignments, filling in Scholastic book orders and hearing about what it takes to get enough marbles in the jar for the next classroom reward.

The images that I associate most with the start of school are those bulletin boards that depict the start of fall (and thus the start of a new school year) with a giant tree that’s shedding a bunch of leaves (and maybe surrounded by some pumpkins or with a schoolhouse in the background) and that have a snazzy tag line like “Fall into Reading” or “Fall Back to School” or “Fall in Love with Learning.”  In fact, I’ve helped my mom put up this bulletin board in her classroom on a number of occasions.  If you think you have no idea what I’m talking about, see if this triggers a wave of nostalgia:

And this is where fashion inspiration can come from literally anywhere.  I saw this Peter Pilotto dress on MatchesFashion (http://www.matchesfashion.com), and the print reminded of these bulletin boards:

It looked like the MOST PERFECT fall dress I had ever seen, and I had to get it because it felt so right for me and reflective of everything I had been thinking about with my son starting school.

I think we all have pieces in our closets that we reacted to because they triggered some comforting or happy memory.  I love that fashion can be emotional … it’s not just making a statement to the outside world, but it’s about how it makes YOU feel.  And this dress made me feel that my son was really starting his life with so many great things (new friendships, school projects, joining a team) to look forward to.