I've been carrying my Nani's sari around for two years, folded in tissue paper, too scared to wear it and too scared to leave it in a drawer forever.
It's a deep maroon silk with a gold zari border, the kind they don't really make anymore. She wore it to my parents' wedding. It still smells faintly of her — sandalwood and something I can't name.
This week I finally decided to do something with it, so I took the L train into Williamsburg to go thrifting for the rest of the pieces I'd need.
Thrifting in Williamsburg is a sport. I hit the spot on Bedford first, then walked down to the L Train Vintage on Grand. There's a method to it: you ignore everything on the racks for the first ten minutes so your eyes adjust to seeing, not buying.
I was looking for a structured blazer to deconstruct. Something with good bones — strong shoulders, a clean lapel — that I could take apart and reline with my Nani's silk. Sustainable fashion isn't a trend for me, it's just how I was raised. Nothing in my house ever got thrown away. Saris became petticoats became cleaning rags became something else.
I found it eventually. A boxy 90s blazer, wool, eight dollars, a small moth hole near the hem that I'll hide under embroidery. The woman at the counter complimented my rings and I told her my whole plan and she said that's beautiful, and I think she meant it.
Back in my apartment I laid the blazer and the sari side by side on my bed. East and West, not fighting, just lying next to each other.
I seam-ripped the lining slowly. There's something meditative about undoing other people's work, finding the choices they made inside a garment. Then I started pinning my Nani's silk into the empty shell.
This is the part of fashion work I love most. Not the runways, not the trends. The quiet making. The way a blazer thrifted off the L train can hold a grandmother who never left Gujarat.
When it's done I'll wear it to a meeting and no one will know my Nani is lining it. But I will.
Wear your history where they can't see it.
Love,