My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance the memory of it.

I remember the 1940s as a time when we were united in a way known only to that generation. We belonged to a common cause-the war.

I really like to look like a history book. I can look 1940s I can look 1970s hippie-chic or sometimes I'll pull that '80s Brooklyn hip-hop kid with the door-knocker earrings.

So I'm a young boy in the 1940s growing up seeing Ralph Bunche on a regular basis seeing Duke Ellington on a regular basis. We know that these people are famous. They're living in the same community as we live in. They go to the same stores and shops.