Katy Perry says she owes her creativity to food stamps

Katy Perry is attributing her success as an artist and footwear designer to the financial obstacles she faced growing up. 

The “Roar” hitmaker’s shoe line, Katy Perry Collections, shared a video of the star  serving as keynote speaker of the PROJECT show in Las Vegas, where she opened up about her childhood. “When I was 13, I was growing up with limited resources,” Katy began. “My family didn’t have a whole hell of a lot. Sometimes, we had food stamps.”

To help get by, Katy said her family depended on the offerings from her church. To further help her family, she would sing for donations. Katy also sang at the local farmers market to raise money, joking she’d earn “about $20 and two avocados.”

The American Idol judge reflected on how that impacted her creativity and sense of style. Katy said she would shop for clothes at second-hand stores “on a shoestring budget.”

“I would go thrifting all the time,” she explained, adding she “trained” her eye to locate stylish items that would suit her. But, because she was rifling through clothes from the ’40s to the ’60s, Katy remarked, “I started dressing like a pinup girl when I was 13, which was interesting.”

However, Katy said that’s what allowed her to cultivate her own style and “stand out in a unique way,” because she wasn’t wearing the latest trends like other girls her age.

Katy also reflected fondly on a pair of dalmatian-shaped flats she bought in a thrift store, which earned her compliments from strangers.

“That was such a big deal,” she said of the attention. “I would wear them everywhere!” Katy says those are the flats that “started my love for shoes”…and of course, the rest is history.

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