A client this week said she wanted a look with history. Real history. Not a fast-fashion version of it.
I knew immediately what she meant, and I also knew I didn't want to do it. Because the only real history I have in this apartment is a trunk under my bed with six of my mother's old saris in it.
I opened it on Sunday afternoon with the fan going full blast. My whole Bed-Stuy studio smelled like camphor and old silk. There's a deep magenta Kanjeevaram my mother wore to my mamu's wedding. A soft grey chiffon she wore in the only photo I have of her looking genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy.
This is the part of fashion work nobody photographs. The part where you sit on the floor and have a conversation with fabric.
Sustainable styling gets talked about like it's only about landfills and dye. But sometimes the most sustainable thing is the thing already loaded with meaning, the six meters that already lived a life. I've built my whole approach to fashion work around not making new when the old is more beautiful anyway.
Still. Cutting into my mother's sari to construct a look for a stranger felt like betrayal.
So I called her. It was late morning in Ahmedabad. She was drinking chai. I explained the whole thing and braced for a lecture.
Instead she said, beta, a sari that stays in a box is already dead. Use the grey one. I never liked how it made me look pale anyway.
I laughed so hard I scared my downstairs neighbor.
So the grey chiffon is going to become a draped, deconstructed thing for a photoshoot in Red Hook next week. My mother's happiness, restitched into someone else's story.
I think that's the whole job, honestly. Carrying meaning forward without letting it rot in a trunk.
Nothing beautiful should be kept only for the dark.
Love,