Before I became pregnant, I wondered every now and then how I would respond to the physical changes that arrive with it. From about the age of eleven, I developed a dysmorphic relationship with my body. I possessed a terrible sort of contempt for how I looked, which was never enough, reimagining the reality of my form with a cruelty that even now surprises me as to how a child could be so capable of. Feeling somewhat steady about how I momentarily perceived my body, I did worry about how I would see myself in pregnancy, whether that latent cruelty would once again resurface.

It dawned on me about halfway through the second trimester that I hadn’t really given any thought to my body. Of all the strange new sensations, I was very aware of – my right ear and only the right ear turning boiling hot if my blood sugar dropped; inexplicable pain in my big toe one night; the baby swirling around when laying on my back at the dentist, or drop-kicking me in protest whenever I took an Uber, a true New Yorker of a child – but as my cruelest critic, my thoughts were none. Somewhere along the pregnancy, between the morning sickness and the misery of the first trimester, I made peace with the fact that my body would undergo inevitable changes beyond my control, that I just wasn’t going to be able to wear certain clothes for the foreseeable future, or maybe never again, and I was relieved.

There was a time when looking in the mirror easily brought on a laundry list of disappointments, but now, more than anything, I am filled with a sense of awe and wonder. Over the last two years I lost friendships I held dear, developed health problems that eventually pointed to infertility, began IVF treatments, had a failed transfer, and understood them all as my failures. How bizarre that this body, subjected to more than two decades of neglect and insensitivity still had the strength to withstand it all, to find within it the reserves to grow another life? It isn’t pregnancy itself but rather what it took to get here, what I have gone through, that forced me to acknowledge my own fortitude. What I needed for myself, always, was kindness. And this has finally afforded me the ability to grant my body – and my dear critical mind – a reprieve.

Dressing for two has been one of the greater pleasures of pregnancy. It is rather freeing to know exactly where I stand, not ten pounds lighter or with narrower hips or leaner legs, but to take my body as it comes and as it alters week after week. I no longer agonize over what does not fit. Though it is a tall order to expect each of my clothes and shoes to carry me through all stages of life (wouldn’t that be nice), discovering what pieces are up to the task, what new forms they take, and which designers really do think about encompassing human experiences gives me a thrill.

With the exception of a pair of joggers to wear to prenatal yoga classes and maternity undergarments, a godsend I succumbed to very early into pregnancy and cannot recommend enough, I’ve found that my affinity for tent-like shapes for spring and summer clothing, elastic waistbands, and delaying having pieces altered means that I have a fair selection of clothes to last me through my second and third trimesters. While I used to get flustered at times from repeatedly wearing the same things, making my clothes work for pregnancy has reminded me how much I actually enjoy coming up with ways of wearing existing pieces. Below are some outfits I’ve been enjoying in the second half of my second trimester, most of which are secondhand:

Granny Smith-green Prada jacket; Marni Spring 2019 skirt, the waist of which used to not fit quite right and now does perfectly; Y/Project x Melissa mules.

Dries Van Noten Spring 2019 jacket and skirt, the latter of which I’d been desperately searching for and finally found last, but a few sizes up from what I usually wear. I kept postponing taking it to the tailor and wore it pinned, and now there’s more than enough room for my partner-in-crime to slosh around in; Camper sandals.

A new Comme des Garçons pat-on-the-back skirt which can comfortably worn around the belly but also looks great worn under; Dries Van Noten denim jacket; Prada Spring 2020 sandals.

Simone Rocha Tulip skirt, which like the CdG skirt above can be comfortably worn much higher or lower; Labo.Art jacket; Camper sandals; faithful Fane bag which, in addition to the essentials, also fits a snack pouch of mixed nuts, a granola bar and a pillbox of Tums.

The Dries Van Noten Fall 2017 dress that doesn’t stop giving and deserves to have papers published on its construction. This is absolutely the most-worn piece of clothing I own, pre-pregnancy and now during, with still more room to grow; Spring 2025 jacket; Wales Bonner Mary Janes; JW Anderson Bumper bag highly deserving of a reissue!

Until next time!

A few weeks after my first embryo transfer had failed, I was cleared by my doctor to try for a second round at the end of December. Incidentally, this happened to be the day before my fifth wedding anniversary. Had I not been crushed by the grief of the first failure, I would have considered this timing to be auspicious, kismet even, but infertility and IVF can drain the life out of a thing called hope. I accepted that I would have to submit myself to the cruel game of probability. Might as well get another doomed attempt out of the way, I thought.

On the day of the transfer, I arrived at my appointment with no faith and a full bladder. Following an unpleasant probing in a room full of strangers and a mad dash to the restroom immediately after, the procedure was complete and my husband and I headed home. Afterwards, I ate a lunch of salad and fries from The Odeon.

The next ten days were an exercise in denying myself feeling anything in the lead up to my pregnancy test; there was no room for hope here. Every day I reminded myself that I refused to feel the way I had previously, like a part of me had died. I spoke about a second failure off-handedly to my husband, and began mapping out what my limit would be, and what the course of action would be once that limit had been reached. Unlike before, when I spoke to the embryo I hoped would one day become my baby and fantasized about our not-to-be-life, this time I refused to acknowledge it. I tucked away the image I was given of the embryo after the transfer, along with the first.

The morning of the pregnancy test, I felt steady. I was going to get my bloodwork done and act like nothing had ever happened, and by the time I got the solemn phone call from the nurse, I would brush it off and go about my day. Nothing would upset me, nothing would phase me because I had been expecting it. What I hadn’t accounted for is that it is impossible to deny one’s feelings for too long. A few hours later, I was spiraling, frantically cleaning the apartment, obliterating every last speck of dust while listening to The Prodigy in hopes of exorcising the onslaught of emotion.

Then I got the call, the nurse sounding more upbeat than last time. The test was positive. I was pregnant. This I hadn’t prepared for.

Two days later, the morning of New Year’s eve, I went back for a second blood test which confirmed I was still very much pregnant. I had braced myself for only disappointment so that I struggled to accept that it had finally happened, that it could happen to me. On high alert, every time I got up from a chair I expected to see blood. One night early into the pregnancy, I had terrible pain and was certain something had gone wrong. It turned out to be a bad case of gas. Each morning I awoke riddled with anxiety and looked up the likelihood of losing again with the passing days. My first failure had convinced me that history was bound to repeat itself. Nothing prepares you for the long-term emotional toll of infertility and the ordeal of trying to conceive.

Something else I was entirely unprepared for: just how miserable the first trimester and a half of pregnancy could be. Through the process of trying to conceive and becoming pregnant, I realized how reluctant people are to speak about how hard it all can be, perhaps motivated by taboo or superstition, or a need to project a one-dimensional perfect image of pregnancy, designed to make people feel terribly about themselves. While I’d learned a fair amount about delivery, it turned out I knew very little about the disruptions the first trimester could bring with it. Embarrassingly, most of what I had known about “morning” sickness was informed by TV shows and their limited depictions of high-powered independent women dressed in business formal, their heads in toilet bowls before heading out for the day to take their place in the workforce. Otherwise known as Miranda Hobbes.

A few days into the new year, pregnancy sickness had taken hold. By five weeks, the very thought of food and liquids made me sick to my stomach. Though I was fortunate enough not to be throwing up, I had debilitating nausea and fatigue. Severe food aversion meant that my diet consisted of saltines, graham crackers and bagels with little-to-no cream cheese, foods I’ve vowed to never look upon again – I had anticipated fried chicken-fueled cravings that never arrived. It wasn’t until two weeks into my second trimester that I hesitantly braved scrambled eggs for the first time.

Never had I felt both so helpless and hopeless, unable to do the most everyday of things: I couldn’t read, work, watch television, listen to music, pour myself a cup of water, sit upright on my own, or look at my phone, though this may have been a blessing in disguise, having missed the questionable 2016 nostalgia and discourse on anything ending with the suffix -maxxing. By the time I stopped taking progesterone shots at nine and a half weeks, I had painful lumps and bruises along my hips that made lying down or sitting upright nearly impossible – I slept, when I could, with folded t-shirts under my hips to cushion them. For nearly three months, I was incapacitated, isolated from everything beyond it, disconsolate and deeply resentful.

When the pregnancy sickness quickly became so severe, I was sure something was very wrong. Of the people in my life who had given birth, none had mentioned the common difficulties of the first trimester. Across social media, I witnessed women document and discuss their pregnancies as an ethereal experience, blooming and joyous. Between the saccharine announcements and reveals, rarely if ever were there assertions of how hard pregnancy itself could be. Meanwhile, my skin tone fluctuated between shades of green and grey, and there were days I wondered if I could get by without brushing my teeth. Showering worsened my symptoms, causing me, a former lover of bathing, to dread basic hygiene. Even though pregnancy sickness affects a vast majority of those who have conceived, I felt very much like an anomaly, both lost and losing myself.

In the few moments I could look at a screen, seeking commiseration, I furiously read accounts by anonymous women forced to quit their jobs, who were bedridden or rushed to the emergency room because of how unwell they were, women who felt adrift and inadequately prepared for the degree to which how awful they felt. How could there be no systemic support for a condition so prevalent, particularly in a society where the pressure for women to have children has never abated? The first trimester is about survival, veterans echoed in forums. But with no structures set in place to guide, support, and educate the mother-to-be on the rigors of early pregnancy, she must find a way to survive on her own.

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From the moment I received the news, I couldn’t believe that fortune had worked in my favor. And so I was perpetually suspicious of it (and still am, somewhat) waiting for the moment it would all disappear. The misery from pregnancy sickness was compounded by my belief that in feeling so low, I was being ungrateful, that my inability to bear the suffering with a smile would only further tempt fate. By those who hadn’t gone through what I had, I was reminded that this was a “miracle” and that in another time I wouldn’t have been able to have a child. It’ll all be worth it once you have the baby was a popular guidance, which seemed to me like a great deal of expectation to put upon an unborn child. Having dealt with infertility and a failed transfer, my pregnancy became tinged with superstition and shame. I felt that I had no right to feel the way I did. Guilt consumed me about how unhappy I was when I should have been ecstatic.

Societally, there seems to be a need to portray pregnancy as frictionless. To me, it undermines the immense strength, labour and fortitude that goes into the act of childbearing, and is disempowering for those who are led to believe that their difficulties are a deviation, not the norm. We must either invalidate how we feel or be hounded by guilt. As is the case with most things pertaining to women, in pregnancy, two (or many, many more) things cannot be true. The good expectant mother, we are directed, is one who is beatific and gracious. Any complexities that inevitably arise during this experience should be concealed, pushed furthest away from mind and view. At my first appointment with my OB, I shared with her how horrible my first trimester had been thus far; “People act like pregnancy is glamorous, but it’s not,” she assured me. The unwillingness to betray how messy and complicated it is to bear another life detracts from what makes it a beautiful experience.

The pressure for a woman to be perfect continues to be unrelenting. Everywhere I look there’s a renewed heightened sense of urgency for a woman to erase the things about herself which make her real, even in motherhood, perpetuating a cycle which none of us ultimately can live up to. To take ourselves for who we are and to show up as just that does not fit the arbitrary schema of perfection. But aren’t our truths what make us uniquely, wonderfully human?

It is only now, halfway through my pregnancy, that I’ve finally come to realize that the past few months have been a testament to how resilient both my mind and body are. In early pregnancy, I thought often about how I had lost control over myself, agonizing over how useless I had become. I was cruel to myself when what I needed was compassion. I wish I could have understood then that my body was doing something incredible, and that the difficulties were just as much a part of the process.

Motherhood for me so far has been anything but perfect, which is to say, it has been exactly as it should be.

Despite the biting cold and the SADs, December is my favourite time of the year. I love seeing Christmas trees lit up in the windows of peoples’ homes, the same decades-old seasonal music playing in shops and restaurants (and my home), and hot chocolate walks. When my husband and I lived near Downtown Brooklyn, we’d take frequent walks through Brooklyn Heights to “rate” exterior Christmas decorations on a scale of 1 to 10 Jingle Bells – 10 being the highest order of Jingle Bells – then head into Dumbo for a hot chocolate treat to reward a walk well done. No matter how the rest of the year may have panned out, whether utterly dreadful or just fine, the romance of Christmas makes the impending send-off ever so bittersweet, and all I wish to do is to make the very most of what time remains.

My taste for New York, like most yearning for this city, was informed early on by films like Home Alone II and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the usual suspects. In my imagination, New York was a magical place, loud and bright and frenetic, and Christmastime in New York was certainly unparalleled. The first time I visited New York as an adult was when I was 20 years old. My parents and I drove up from Maryland during the Christmas break for two days and stayed with relatives. We had no clue of where to go or what to do, but I knew names like Soho, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Tiffany’s, and Central Park. I was far too intimidated to enter Tiffany’s, but my mother was hell-bent on getting a photo of me by the entrance of the store. I look self-conscious and embarrassed in the photo, mainly because I was wearing so many layers to keep warm, producing the effect of a marshmallow, and not looking terribly chic in an incredible Givenchy gown and tiara.

Before heading back home during that trip, my parents and I drove into Soho, no address, just “Soho”. It was Christmas evening and all the shops were closed, the streets exceptionally quiet, but for the few minutes we walked around the area, I felt as though The Greatest Thing in the World had happened to me. At the time, I had so desperately wanted a Kate Spade bracelet with a fun and a silly phrase engraved, but couldn’t afford to do so on my pitiful sales associate salary. We went up to the store on Broome Street anyway just so I could peer in through the windows to satiate my desire. Who knew at the time I would be spending the past eleven Christmases living in New York!

Each November, I make a list of things I’d like to do in December. The list is almost identical to that of previous years, but nonetheless it feels essential to jot down, and it always begins and ends with movies in which Christmas is a guest star, interspersed with hot chocolate walks (Thierry Atlan is currently preferential), a bold and mad attempt at viewing the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, breakfast at The Odeon (the booths by the kitchen if one is blessed), and the sounds of the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Without further ado, some of my favourite Christmas films set in New York, where the season is unparalleled!

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Moonstruck (1987)

A few nights ago I rewatched Moonstruck. It is easily my absolute favourite romantic comedy of all time. One of the challenges of this genre, I think, is holding on to one without betraying the other, maintaining symbiosis so that both the romance and comedy elements have equal time in the spotlight without seeming controlled or deliberate. While watching Moonstruck, however, I find myself swooning and laughing out loud at the same time.

Cher plays the pragmatic Loretta Castorini who accepts like instead of love in her life after spell of Bad Luck. That is of course, until she falls under the spell of la bella luna! and is quite literally swept off her feet by Nicholas Cage’s Ronny Cammareri while she exclaims, mystified by her own fate, “Oh god! I don’t care! I don’t care! Take me, take me to the bed!” Loretta’s long skirts and sensible grey herringbone coat are replaced by a burgundy velvet and taffeta dress and red heels, a transformative moment in the character’s development visually mapped out by costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge. Aldredge also worked on a film that made me dream of becoming a glamorous divorcée at the age of six (and the first film I remember seeing at a movie theater; my parents did some things right!) - The First Wives Club.

Ronny Cammareri is a sensitive and petulant opera-loving baker with one wood hand who has also had a spell of Bad Luck. Ronny flips tables one moment and makes bedroom eyes the next, looks devastating in a tuxedo, and he has few loves, but that which is loves, he does so passionately, hilariously. One of the greatest lines in Moonstruck is when he bellows, “I ain’t no freakin’ monument to justice!” In this household, we love Ronny – the character’s love for the opera, the Puccini soundtrack, and the shots of the Lobmeyr chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera inspired my husband and I to go see La Bohème earlier this year.

While the presence of a Christmas tree is conspicuously missing from the Castorini household, scenes of New York, the shops, and the restaurants, are peppered with wreaths and poinsettias and festive lights. There are shots of Hicks Street and the Castorini home is on Cranberry Street, both of which were part of our former hot chocolate walk route.

Falling in Love (1984)

For something that doesn’t tug quite so much on the heartstrings, Falling in Love is an excellent Christmas-in-New York comfort film. At the time of the film’s release, several critics were frustrated and comically upset over how the stars of Sophie’s Choice and Taxi Driver had wound up in a cozy easy-viewing romance, but I’m not one to complain. There are fewer pleasures in life than watching Meryl Streep shrug and Robert De Niro play a romantic, with Christmas in New York as the guest star, from the comfort of one’s home on a freezing cold evening. The former Rizzoli location is the site of the duo’s meet-cute, and Grand Central Station and the Metro-North serves as the conduit for their romance, and there are plentiful walks down, in, and around Fifth Avenue, Saks, and Chinatown. What more could you need?

Carol (2016)

I can no longer recall just how many times I’ve watched Todd Haynes’s Carol. It is absolutely one of the most beautiful love stories captured on film, right up there with Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love and Jane Campion’s Bright Star. There isn’t one thing I don’t love about this film, from the swell of Carter Burwell’s score, to Sandy Powell’s costume design and the way Cate Blanchett’s Carol Aid pronounces “Harge” and “Therese”, and of course, Christmastime in New York.

My husband recently bought a limited release Collector’s Edition blu-ray of Carol from a French video publisher for “us”, but really it’s a gift for me. The package just arrived and it comes with a vinyl of the score as well as songs from the film by artists such as Billie Holiday and The Clovers; a look-book that catalogs visual inspiration (department stores and fashions from the 1950s, stunning pops of red, and Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter); a 100-page book with an introduction by Todd Haynes for which I’ll have to bring my horrendous French out from retirement in order to read; a poster; a letter of reconciliation to Therese from one Mrs. Hargess Aird of Ridgewood, NJ, and “photos” of Carol by Therese.

While I was recovering from surgery in the summer, I re-read The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith and finished it in one sitting. The book and film take different twists and turns, but in both instances I emerge in a daze, tears fresh and heart full. I realize that there aren’t very many books set during Christmas – some might argue the Bible but I personally find it a bit cumbersome to fit in my handbag – but I would definitely recommend it to anyone in search of a seasonal read.

Until next time!

As we were preparing for IVF, my doctor recommended that we start off with a fresh embryo transfer. Given my age and overall health, she felt comfortable in us not taking the more common path in America of genetically testing embryos and doing a frozen transfer. In the days leading up to the transfer, we patiently awaited news of whether we would be doing a Day 3 or a Day 5 transfer. At a Day 5 transfer, the embryo develops into a blastocyst, giving it a better chance at implantation. One blastocyst would be selected for transfer, and the remaining would be tested and frozen.

When I received the call from my doctor that we would be doing a Day 5 transfer, I felt exalted. From the very onset of this process, I was extremely fortunate to not have had a terrible experience. There were no raging hormones and climbing of walls, and for the very first time, I happily surrendered myself to any and all changes to my body. I had grown comfortable with the early morning appointments, the daily pricks of needles, our dining room table briefly transformed into a miniature science laboratory each evening while we mastered our shot-massage-clean up routine with the deftness of a synchronized team sport. There was a purpose to this rigor, and I welcomed it. I felt steady and calm; what once irritated or angered me now left me feeling unfazed. My egg retrieval had gone astonishingly well; I was certain that none of my eggs would mature, so that when the numbers had turned out positive, I cried hysterically from shock and relief. All the doubts I had about myself and my body, that it had failed me and would go on failing me, began to recede. My dues seemed to have been paid in full and the light had begun to enter. The walls went down and the optimism slowly crept in.

Early in the summer when I first learned that I would never be able to conceive naturally, what I found hardest to accept was that I would not experience the romantic spontaneity and surprise of pregnancy, nor the blissful unknowing. From day one I would be hyper-aware, vigilant and nervous, like walking on ice: one misstep and I could go under. This denial took longest to overcome, and I did so by telling myself how lucky I was to even have IVF as an option, as those who hadn’t experienced what I was experiencing were prone to reminding me. What was a moment in a lifetime, afterall?

At the hospital on the day of the transfer, I was given the cap, gown and robe – the closest I’ll ever get to donning graduation attire – and a pointless pair of blue cotton pants, worn for only a handful of minutes before having to remove them. After a long wait, my time came quite suddenly, so suddenly that as the nurse was leading me to the next room, I realized I hadn’t hugged my husband, or kissed him, no goodbye or good luck. A woman in a hospital bed was being wheeled back to the recovery room. She was looking at what seemed to be a postcard she held in her hands.

When it was my turn, I climbed onto the bed and placed my legs up and open in a pair of stirrups. There was something comically absurd about the environment in which this transformative moment was taking place: the bright fluorescent lights; my head tilting back and downwards; the presence of the nurses and doctor and embryologist; the silly blue cap on my head; the realization that I should have shaved; Titanium by David Guetta and Sia pulsing in the background. One day I would have a good story to tell, I thought. A spell of mild discomfort later, it was over, and I was given my own postcard. A picture of our blastocyst with my name and the date on it. Positive thoughts! the doctor called out as I was being wheeled away. Later that evening I ate a mountain of fries.

Now we entered what some refer to as the dreaded 10-day wait, and most unlike myself, I continued to feel serene. Yes, I was very much aware of what was inside of me but, in a way, it made me feel special. How fortunate was I to experience this intimacy so early on, to have a co-conspirator of my own. I spoke to it throughout the day, apologizing to it when I made the shower too warm, suggesting to it we take a rest when I felt tired, whispering goodnight and sweet dreams before each sleep. I borrowed a term of endearment my husband had come up with for our cat, little one. I knew she wouldn’t mind. My husband and I made a dinner date for the day after we would receive the pregnancy test results, and thoughts of burgers and fries, pies and shakes filled my mind. I would finally pull the trigger on a dress I had wanted for years as a treat. I pictured my parents’ elation, and entering a new year while the little one continued to grow.

A day or two before I was due for my pregnancy blood work, I noticed that some symptoms I had experienced earlier on after the transfer had subsided. I no longer had the overwhelming need to round off every meal and snack with an apple, nor was I excessively thirsty, nor tired. During IVF, the body becomes a highly unreliable witness. Every and any bodily reaction could be nothing, and so I thought it best to think nothing of it.

Five or so hours after I had my blood drawn, I received the call with my results. The transfer had failed, I was not pregnant. At some point in time, the little one had ceased to be. Maybe it had happened before we had even reached home, before the mountain of fries, maybe after a goodnight. There would be no celebration, no co-conspirator, no secret of ours to reveal, no story to tell. At some point in time, I had continued speaking to it, but it was no longer listened.

What no one tells you about IVF is how crushing the devastation will be when it fails. The lights go off and the walls go back up and over. The abrupt withdrawal of the hormones you become accustomed to ravages through anything resembling joy and hope, and all that is left is pain. Laughter comes in the form of hysteria, the tears are limitless, and any happiness that is not yours can become a violent affront. I held secret hope, so sure that a mistake had been made. When I would receive that call, I planned to be forgiving, benevolent. And then there was no denying it, my body delivering confirmation. In the days that passed, I continued to speak to it. I had questions, demands, maybe if I bargained or pleaded. Where did you go? I loved you so much, why did you leave? How could you go? I woke up each morning crying.

How do you grieve that which you could never hold, when there is no date or time or place to affix to a loss, when there is not even a form? A void begins to open where hope once resided. Positivity and optimism must be approached with caution, perhaps shelved for another time. Slowly the rage and tears dry up and become a steady heavy sadness no one else will be able to comprehend but is yours entirely. And maybe you will grieve this forever, but somehow you pick up what remains, and try again.

*Header image credit: Etel Adnan, California Coast (1982)

The first time I did buy something from Zara was sometime around 2010 or 2011. I had moved to America that summer and worked thankless retail jobs, clearing out piles of clothes customers had strewn around their fitting rooms and picking up clothes they’d knocked off hangers and onto floors. One day, while I was in a Zara at a local mall, I saw a coat I desperately wanted. It was a collarless beige coat with a rough tweed texture and sharp shoulders. I tried it on, and my mother insisted I buy it, I worked so hard, I deserved it. As much as I wanted the coat, I thought of its practicality. It wasn’t particularly warm and I’d only be able to wear it during the fall interlude. Eventually, I bought it. I sized up so that I could wear multiple layers under it to somehow get me through the winter, and when it warmed up, my mother could wear it too. It was a splurge, and I needed to get my money’s worth.

Several months after I bought the coat, which turned out to be a terrible defense against cold snowy days, 30 factories in Brazil where Zara outsourced parts of its manufacturing were accused of having slave-labor working conditions. Worker safety was perilous, a fire extinguisher that had expired in 1998 was found, and Bolivian migrant workers earned $569 a month at the time for working no less than 12 hours a day.1 The Zara seal broken, I commenced shopping there, particularly during the store’s end-of-season sales. Sweaters, trousers, scarves, I was oblivious to the facts. In a 2015 report, the abuses against Bolivian workers persisted.2

On the 24th of April, 2013, Rana Plaza, a building in the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, that housed factories responsible for manufacturing for brands such as Mango, Walmart, The Children’s Place, and Zara, collapsed. Its aftermath was horrifying. One of the most devastating images to emerge was that of a woman and man, crushed under the rumble, in a final embrace.3 For days, my grandmother visited the site of the catastrophe, armed with tiffin carriers full of food and water bottles to hand out to grief-stricken strangers. My grandfather dedicated his daily prayers specifically to the victims and their families. Disturbed by the horror of what had happened, I voiced my anger in a small publication for and by South Asian people. Now able to buy things beyond H&M and Forever21, I continued to shop at Zara, labels bearing “Made in Bangladesh”.

In 2016, I got a Big Girl Job which had a business-formal dress code. I hit the Zara near Bryant Park, and picked out two cropped collarless jackets with metal fastenings, one in black and one in navy; a pair of black wide-legged trousers; a grey and black tweed mock-neck top; and a synthetic-soft white shirt with gold buttons. I wore a combination of those pieces on rotation, mixed in with another pair of black trousers, a brown-faux leather skirt, and a few sweaters and shirts, mostly from Zara. That year, more than 40 artists accused Zara of plagiarizing their work.4

The year I got my Big Girl Job, I exited it, stunned by toxic corporate culture and my own naivety. Some time later, I made an attempt to complete my university degree (sorry Mum and Dad). I took a class on fashion and sustainability, and while much of the semester was spent listening to representatives from certain troubling brands talk abstractly about their grand plans for their Sustainable Development Goals, it also introduced me to the works of scholars like Naila Kabeer. The more I read and learned about exploitation at the hands of fast fashion, the less I could evade my guilt, the clearer it became that I played a role as perpetrator.

From my readings I learned, for example, that the strangely common belief that people from lower income groups were the biggest fast fashion spenders was untrue. Middle and high income groups love their fashion fast. By this time, I had stopped shopping at Zara. Nothing about giving my money to one of the wealthiest men in the world5, a man who amassed wealth at the cost of human life, made sense to me. I was no longer patching together paychecks, and I was financially stable enough to make smarter and more responsible decisions with how I spent my money.

If someone is in a financial position where shopping at Zara is a splurge, there is no shame or judgment in that. I have been in that position. But it is easier on the conscience to demonize a minority group who factor for a nominal piece of the equation, than to look in the mirror. What is difficult to fathom is how people who have the means to buy luxury designer clothes and accessories have the gall to also shop at Zara, and encourage others to do so, or how people of generously comfortable means can partner with a company so totally and completely morally bankrupt. Endless shopping newsletters are littered with affiliate links to Zara “dupes” to recreate one’s impersonal style, with a side of Phoebe Philo and Prada. For the brand’s 50th anniversary this year, over 50 fashion industry heavyweights participated in campaigns to celebrate what I can only imagine are the brand’s historic human rights violations. A link, a campaign, or a collection from influential figures in the fashion and fashion media industries signals that despite all of Zara’s crimes, they continue to co-sign the brand.

Since my first purchase at Zara in my early twenties, garment workers in Turkey attached notes to clothing in Zara stores across Istanbul that read, “I made this item that you’re going to buy, but I didn’t get paid for it!”6; Zara sourced materials from China’s state-imposed labour transfer programs using Uyghur forced labor7; Zara sourced materials from a farm in India using child laborers8; Zara partnered with a cotton producer in Brazil known for human rights violations and the deforestation and destruction of natural habitats9; Zara worked with a manufacturer in Pakistan with poor safety regulations, resulting in the deaths of 250 people10; and Zara has continued its expansion in a place where its government has been accused of committing crimes against humanity11. In this time, Amancio Ortega, founder of Zara parent-company Inditex, has accumulated an estimated net worth of 124.4 billion dollars.

Am I a perfectly ethical and responsible shopper? Not in the least – I assure you, I am the furthest from a sanctimonious high priestess atop her high horse as I write this. Most of what I own can hardly be traced, and the majority of brands are not transparent about how or where sourcing and production takes place. But of the brands I once regularly used to shop, Zara’s crimes have become inescapable, with regular headlines of having been persistently linked to human rights violations. The audacity of this persistence reads entirely like flagrant disregard for the lives of the people who make the items we’re going to buy, as well as for the rules that safeguard those lives.12

It took over ten years and countless catastrophes since I first coveted those Zara boots to finally be unable to look away and ignore the facts, to recognize myself as part of the problem. When it was the most I could afford, it made certain things less of an impossibility. From my position of privilege now, one of the simplest things I do to hold fast-fashion behemoths like Zara accountable in protecting and upholding human lives is to continue my divestment, and to encourage others like myself to do the same. I suspect that when it comes to billionaires, money talks, so hit ‘em where it hurts.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I spent three nights in Antwerp, and though our trip was brief, I’ve thought of the city and all that we did nearly every day since our return. It’s impossible to not feel inspired by a place that values creativity. Before I launch into my ode “O Antwerp, how I love thee”, here are some of my highlights from our holiday, which, it turns out, is everything.

We took the Eurostar from London to Brussels, and then transferred to a train to Antwerp. The first leg of the trip takes less than two hours, which is about the time it takes to finally settle on whether to listen to a podcast or a playlist. Crucial for this part of the journey is a Prawn and Mayonnaise sandwich from Marks & Spencer. It doesn’t matter how early your train is, get the sandwich. You’ll feel smug satisfaction while taking a bite of creamy pre-packaged goodness while everyone else pokes at their dehydrated train meals. A mad dash through Brussels Midi/Zuid will get you to the trains that run to Antwerp. Another 30-45 minutes and you’ve arrived!

To-Do

• MoMu - Fashion Museum Antwerp

I’ve wanted to visit MoMu for years, and it may have been one of the main reasons I suggested to my husband that we take a trip to Antwerp. Over time, as I became more and more obsessed with interested in learning as much as I could about Dries Van Noten, all roads led to MoMu. The museum is home to more than 38,000 items, and showcases works of designers not commonly shown in America. On display in the permanent collection at the time were pieces by both emerging and long-established designers, from Meryll Rogge to Martin Margiela.

At MoMu, I learned about the fashion designer Ann Salens, considered the godmother of Belgian fashion, known for her silk crochet designs. On display were a few of Salens’ knit and fringe pieces, which have inspired Dries Van Noten’s own takes on the techniques.

Elsewhere in the permanent collection were works that explored floral motifs, particularly roses. A blurb on this section reads, “Over the centuries, the rose has become deeply entwined with mythology and religion, as well as with themes of beauty, sexuality and gender identity. What stands out is how strongly designers today are drawn to the rose as a symbol.” There were designs from the queen of roses, Simone Rocha, as well as Prada, Noir Kei Ninomiya, Bernadette, Dries, and Dirk Van Saene. Serendipitously, I was wearing a pink rose-patterned dress from Dries Van Noten’s fall 2017, a revisiting of the designer’s work from his debut womenswear collection in 1994

Also on at the museum (and still on view) was an exhibition titled, GIRLS. On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between, which thoroughly investigates the trajectory and complexities of girlhood. The show opens with a pink ballet-slippered bursting sculpture by Sofia Lai, followed by a singular wax and human hair Mary Jane shoe by Robert Gober. This was undeniably the most thrilling exhibition I’d been to in a while, and I thought it was radical to dedicate something of this scale to the experience of girlhood.

There were bedrooms as imagined by designers Jenny Fax and Chopova Lowena, Lux Lisbon’s prom dress and nightgown, a plush toy dog handbag from 1936, white socks and their gendered politics, and books by authors who have touched my own girlhood and womanhood, such as Toni Morisson, Francoise Sagan, Bernadine Evaristo, and for those of us old enough to remember the glory days of Tumblr, Theory of the Young-Girl by Tiqqun. A compilation of films regarding the theme of girlhood included Bande des filles, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Bonjour Tristesse by girlcrush, Durga Chew-Bose.

Closing out our visit to MoMu was the RESOLUCIÓN exhibition, an audiovisual installation composed of over 90 years worth of clips spanning Spanish cinema and its incredible actresses as they talk on the phone, avenge themselves, remain composed, implode, and say no, side by side and decades apart. Whether it was intentional or not, both exhibitions and the permanent collection seemed to tell a story: first the seeds of girlhood, then its flourishing, and finally emerging from girlhood and into womanhood.

• Plantin-Moretus Museum

Once a publishing house and residence of the Plantin and Moretus families, helmed by the women of the families between the 16th and 18th centuries, the museum houses antique printing presses and the first modern atlas. While it’s a veritable playground for publishing and typography nerds, there’s a great deal of inspiration to be found everywhere and for everyone, from its beautiful courtyard to ornate wall panels – a little birdie told me the museum inspired elements of Dries Van Noten’s Men’s Spring 2022 season.

While I was walking through the museum, I came across costume displays by REantwerp, a project that redirects excess and scrap textiles from fashion houses, which are then reimagined and given new context by refugee and recently-arrived migrant artisans and designers. Some of the labels REantwerp collaborates with include Christian Wijnants, Raf Simons, Haider Ackermann, and of course, Dries Van Noten. Seven costumes were specially created to honor the lives and work of the women – daughters and domestic workers alike – who powered the publishing house for 300 years.

To Feast

• Camino

Following our Prawn and Mayonnaise train sandwiches and exploring the city for a few hours, my husband and I had built up quite the appetite, which is the perfect time to go to Camino, a cozy Asian-inspired restaurant. We got the BBQ corn with yuzu koshu, fried chicken wings in nam jim gai, mussels in red coconut curry, and Dandan, and for dessert, the coconut cream and mango-passion fruit sorbet. Our only regret was not packing our extra stomachs with us.

• Bar Misera

For our last night in Antwerp, we had dinner at Bar Misera. When I learned that they offered eggs with caviar and smoked eel, I knew I was in heaven. We also had the potato croquettes, the most elegant salad, and fish to share. After returning to New York, my husband and I have discussed our meal at Bar Misera at length and agreed that it was one of the best meals we had on our holiday, right up there with the St. John.

To Shop

I’ve already droned on in-depth about how incredible the shopping is in Antwerp, regardless of whether you’re looking to make some serious financial damage or simply to feel inspired (or for some of us, simply to feel) but to recap:

• Concept shops: Graanmarkt 13 (there are 13 lush trees in the main square just outside the shop); The Menu; Renaissance; Step by Step

• Secondhand shops: Rosier 41; Labels Inc.; Vrijdagmarkt 6 (menswear paradise); Ensō Vintage (their upcycled range, made from vintage Italian pieces, is ingenious!)

• Motherships: Dries Van Noten; Christian Wijnants

• New and vintage houseware: Every shop along Kloosterstraat will have you rationalizing packing a chair into your carry-on.

• Chocolatier: Perhaps the height of tourist behavior, but I couldn’t go to Belgium and not bring back chocolates for my family (and perhaps myself). I settled on a few mixed packages of white, milk, and dark chocolates with puffed rice and nuts from Elisabeth, and have been discreetly working through my loot whenever my husband is on a call.

  ---

  While some might say two nights is a good amount of time spent in Antwerp, I wish we could’ve stayed so much longer. It’s a wonderful city to get lost in, and every space I entered and every space I passed made me want to explore its ins and outs for hours. On the train back to Brussels, I shed a tear of five, surprised by how deeply our stay and the beauty of all I had the privilege of experiencing moved me.

  Until next time!

While some may play a round of Sudoku to keep their minds sharp, my brain game was challenging myself to come up with the many outfits stemming from pieces such as a felted tweed suit or a crisp white cotton skirt. Now, if I’m considering buying something, I have to think of four or more ways of wearing it in a manner that holds my interest.

With the constant turnover of trends and seeming-disposability of clothing, ways of wearing is an exercise in appreciating not just a garment, but the work and resources that go into creating it.

While I was in London a few weeks ago, I dropped by very determinedly headed to the Dries Van Noten store in Mayfair. Located in a listed Victorian building across from the Hanover Square garden, this location joins the roster of recent Dries Van Noten store openings in New York, Milan, and Tokyo, and its interior feels less like a site of commerce, and more so the convivial home of an extremely fashionable eccentric.

When the fall collections began trickling into shops on and offline, I’d spotted a heavy tan wool skirt with a flair for drama. One thing about me is for certain: I do appreciate a big skirt. It had debuted on the runway for Fall 2025, Julian Klausner’s first collection for the label, but the awesomeness of the skirt’s structure had been somewhat concealed by a fantastic chenille sweater. I thought about the skirt for some time, and then tried to forget about, but I couldn’t. Instead, I imagined how it could evolve with me. Before I even decided I would buy it, I thought of how I could wear it: with a pair of bulbous lilac mules, and when it got cooler, with tall brown boots and a heavy pink coated canvas jacket.

After my husband and I made plans to take a trip to Antwerp and London, I told myself that to commemorate my purchase, I would buy it at the Het Modepaleis location. On the very day we arrived at Antwerp, after freshening up and pretending that I didn’t have an agenda, we entered the mothership. As I was perusing, acting as though I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, I was approached by a sales associate asking if I needed assistance. I had done a full turn about the store, unable to locate my skirt. Surely my eyes were deceiving me. I let the associate in on my predicament, who – cool, calm, collected – replied, they had none left in stock. How could this be? What of my visions of all the ways I would wear this skirt? Where could I possibly go from here? Not knowing what to do with myself, I panic-bought a pair of wide leg jeans (be assured, gentle reader, that I had been entertaining buying similar versions for years). Returning from Antwerp, I would have to take solace in my new incredible elastic-waist Dries jeans.

On our second to last day in London, we had a blissful itinerary planned: the Nigerian Modernism and Emily Kam Kngwarray exhibitions at Tate Modern, followed by lunch at Nina; stocking up on far too many books from Daunt; onward to the Bella Freud and Margaret Howell shops in Marylebone and then…what’s this? How did the Dries store sneak onto this itinerary?

The Dries Van Noten store in London is composed of two levels. The top floor houses womenswear, perfumes and cosmetics, and feels like an extraordinarily opulent dressing room. Nothing about it is remote, unlike the interiors of many designer shops, and the people who work there are lovely. Simply walking through the store is a great way to get inspired. Downstairs, in a monastic small network of rooms, is home to menswear and an enviable collection of vinyl records. Of the Dries stores I’ve been to, London was my favourite.

Back upstairs, I’d once again been unable to find my skirt. I took this as a sign, but my husband, who knew he would be the one-man audience to my grievances and lamentations, insisted that I inquire about my skirt. An associate told me she might just have it. I entered the fitting room with another skirt, my heart set on The One, eagerly hoping and waiting. And now I am convinced that there is indeed something as divine intervention, for lo and behold, my skirt had found its way to me. Perhaps my poor husband had manifested it, worn down by how anyone could possibly be so hung up over a singular piece of clothing.

I put the skirt on, and like all things that are meant to be, it was only love at first try. Emerging from behind the canary-yellow curtain of the fitting room to show it off, I must confess, I felt quite regal in the skirt, even though I had paired it with my worn-out black thermal top and rain-soaked socks. I wasn’t going to be coy about it any longer, I was absolutely going to buy it.

While waiting to check out, I spoke to Haider, an associate who works there, and we discussed our mutual admiration for Dries and Julian Klausner. I confided that I was “a Dries super fan” (I really shouldn’t be allowed out in public), and in return, I was gifted with any choice of a travel-sized perfume. Of the two perfumes I own, Fleur du Mal is one of them, and I love it so much, that while packing for our trip, I sprayed the inside of my suitcase with it so that my clothes would retain my favorite scent. Now I could always have my perfume with me.

Now, without further ado, some ways of wearing this epic saga of a skirt!

I.

As I had first envisioned it, my skirt with a black sweater and bulbous lilac mules from Martine Rose’s collaboration with Clarks. The sweater with the skirt could easily become a bit too tasteful and ordinary; incredible and ugly (incredibly ugly?) shoes keep things off balance and on the odd course. Earlier in the summer, I bought this lilac silk-satin purse with silver and gold embellishments from Dries Van Noten, which I thought would go well with a black and gold sari I was going to wear to my cousin’s wedding. I realize now that this outfit is a casual variation of its formal counterpart.

Fun fact: When I was a child, my version of hell was either spending the weekend at Ikea or being dragged into Clarks in Croydon by my mother, and thus it must be said: praise be Martine Rose for delivering me from my childhood trauma!

II.

When it comes to knitwear, I’m not the most imaginative of thinkers. Usually, I tend to fall back on a rotation of black, navy, and grey sweaters, and let the bottoms and accessories do the heavy-lifting (exhibit I). In an attempt to shake things up a bit, last year I bought this vintage cardigan set by John Galliano. It’s incredible and ugly (incredibly ugly!), with patches of fur, velvet, silk tartan, and sheer metallic panels. It pairs perfectly with these vintage Miu Miu Bowie mules I bought for $30 when I first moved to New York.

III.

In Antwerp, I bought this Dries Van Noten jacket from Labels Inc., a secondhand shop that has massive selection of Belgian and Japanese designers. Based on the label on the jacket, it’s most likely from the 90’s. I thought it would be interesting to play around with the proportions, as ordinarily I would wear just wear something that ends at my natural waistline. There’s something a bit late 80’s/barely 90’s rom-com heroine about the overall look I quite enjoy!

IV.

Another constituent of my Weird Knitwear delegation is this JW Anderson cardigan from Fall 2024. The first time I tried it on, I thought it was so deeply unsexy, a cartoonish take on an old English granny’s essential with its puffy quilted silk-satin brown lining, which meant that it was perfect and right for me. Life’s too short to not dress in ways that amuse oneself!

These cracked silver Tabis are a prized possession. I bought them on eBay in 2019 from a seller who had nabbed the wrong size at the Barney’s closing sale for – breathe with me reader – $250. May I never cross paths with the Tabi thief!

Until next time!

To visit a city because of a designer isn’t the sort of reasoning you can give to normal people in possession of a good head on a set of stable shoulders. But it’s why Antwerp had been one of the cities I’d wanted to travel to for quite some time. And the designer in question? Dries Van Noten, of course.

Antwerp, I casually insisted, without betraying a hint of my agenda.

After checking into our hotel and re-painting my face, we set out. Our first stop was Rosier 41, a most meticulously organized secondhand designer shop. One might say it’s rather unorthodox to choose a shop as the first destination in a new city, but I’d argue, unless that city is Antwerp. The Rosier 41 windows are dedicated to beloved designers, as well as young graduates from the Royal Academy of Arts. Earlier in the summer, the windows displayed a private collection of Martin Margiela’s AIDS awareness t-shirts from Autumn/Winter 1994. During our trip there, pieces designed by Selena Wang, a student at the Royal Academy, stood in the windows.

Inside the shop, the clothes are organized by designer: Christian Wijnants, Ann Demeulemeester, Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garcons, some Prada, and an abundance of Dries Van Noten. A second room showcases racks of pieces from contemporary brands. It takes an incredible amount of self-restraint to not walk out with everything, though one is bound to have regrets for not doing so. I left Rosier 41 armed with a wispy lurex printed skirt from Dries Van Noten’s Ophelia/Summer of Love collection.

The following day, on our way to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts – reader I assure you we didn’t just go for the shops, we did also see art and eat excellent food, which I’ll get more into next week – we stopped into Labels Inc., a consignment shop offering the Belgian and Japanese greats, among other designers. While both Rosier 41 and Labels Inc. draw from a similar roster of designers, their temperaments couldn’t be more different, the former being more vibrant and eccentric, the latter decidedly moodier. Labels Inc. has an ongoing collaborative project with the Royal Academy of Arts, where student collections are displayed. The shop also regularly invites artists to reimagine their windows. And yes, I left with a menswear-inspired brown jacket by Dries Van Noten from the 90’s.

A stone’s throw from the Royal Museum is The Menu, a multibrand shop which carries an extensive selection of some of my favourite women-owned labels including Renaissance Renaissance, Super Yaya, and FANE (all of whom have undeservedly-limited presence across shops in America), as well as accessories and houseware. I immediately knew I had to go in when I spotted a purple and white polkadot skirt by Super Yaya, and the chocolate brown FANE bag beside it. Not far from the central shopping district is Renaissance, the younger sister to Princess located next door, which was originally founded in 1953. On the particular day I wandered in, the dress forms lining the entrance were outfitted in August Barron’s fall collection. Inside, one can find an enviable amount of Julie Kegels, Bernadette, Dries Van Noten, and Meryll Rogge’s recently launched B.B. Wallace.

While walking past shops in Antwerp, I began to understand just how significant windows are. In the morning, before doors opened for the day, I noticed people in shop windows readjusting displays or setting a new scene. Passersby stoped to take in the windows, a pair of shoes, a skirt, its price. As we stood in front of one of the elaborate windows of Dries Van Noten, an elderly couple crossed the street to discuss a men’s suit that had caught the woman’s eye. Window shopping becomes a way in which to learn, discover, and fantasize.

In New York, the exteriors of standalone designer shops and the city’s few remaining multibrand spaces can be quite remote. Some windows display marketing campaigns of the moment and very little of what’s in store, while others are shrouded in mystery, signaling cold exclusivity. Those who walk by are not encouraged to investigate and admire.

Despite shopping being a significant element of Antwerp’s tourism industry, noticeably absent is the presence of luxury’s heavy-hitters. Many spaces, it seems, have a particular fondness for emerging and young designers, and those of designers such as Christian Wijnants, with its leafy atrium in the background, invite in, rather than intimidate. The window is transformed into a platform for collaboration and community, fostering awareness and underscoring appreciation of designers new and treasured.

Antwerp is home to the awe-inspiring fashion museum MoMu, its collection ranging from the works of Ann Salens, to that of Martin Margiela and Simone Rocha. Its presentations seek to inform and pique curiosity, and I suspect, inspire. The shops of Antwerp are not unlike the museum itself, keen to offer new ideas, not more of the same. Window shopping here is an exercise in broadening one’s horizons, making a case for the exceptional work of designers beyond household names, offering the curious among us to get up close and enquire.

When I moved to Dhaka at age six and a half, I joined a school where the curriculum was taught in English. During my parents’ childhoods, these schools were few and far between; by the time they had a child of their own, it was considered the height of fashion. At my school, we were occasionally cautioned that speaking Bangla outside of our Bangla language class was an offense. The poetry of Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam flew right over my head, and I could scarcely make sense of their words. It was not until I was in my twenties that I would know Satyajit Ray as anything but a writer of the detective series Feluda. I could not wait to be in the sixth grade, the year Pride and Prejudice would be on the syllabus. To read this mythic novel was a rite of passage for twelve year old girls at my school. The boys could take it or leave it.

I have now lived the majority of my life far beyond the boundaries of my motherland. English has become the dominant language. It is the language I use to communicate to my husband I love you or you’re getting on my nerves. It is the language I continue to read and write and think in, though there is less time for play. Bangla punctuates my day in brief spells. When I am on the phone with my parents, we speak in Bangla. If I am speaking to an aunt or uncle, I insist on using Bangla, and they carry on in English. To my cat, I speak in Bangla, though she is not much of a skilled conversationalist. Despite the prevalence of English in my life, there are certain things I am only able to communicate in Bangla, and there is a life so hard to conceive of in the former yet so ordinary in my life in Bangla.

Recently, I wore a silver necklace given to me by my mother and grandmother. On a trip to Dhaka a few years ago, my mother found it at an antique shop she and I used to frequent when we still lived there. It was located on the second floor of a market where we would buy, for a steep price, imported Lays (as a treat) and Lurpak butter (to be used with discretion). The antique shop was not just so – it was also a place where custom leather jackets and shoes could be ordered, mainly by foreigners whose careers brought them to the city for a year or three, and they had a jewelry display by the entrance where one could not only find antique jewelry, but have custom jewelry made with pearls and beads. One year, I amassed a collection of long pearl necklaces.

When my mother came across this necklace, time had leant it a dull patina. A few stones were missing and others broken, but my grandmother assured her it could be salvaged. My grandmother knew a person whom she referred to as rupar lokh, directly translated as silver person, or silversmith. My grandmother had known his father, then the son, from the time my mother and aunts had married, and it was from them she had her daughters’ jewelry made, and then, when they had fallen out of fashion, returned to melt them down to be made anew. The silversmith, and then his son, knew my grandmother not by her name, but by the number of the road she lived on, so she was Road 5 aunty, which sounds not even half as amusing as paach numberer khalamma. In fact, I was so used to my grandmother being referred to as paach numberer khalamma, and it seemed so powerful that she should be known as a sort of doyenne of that road, that her real name sounded alien to me. The necklace was polished and restored, and my mother and I decided that we would have the stones replaced in America, once she returned.

Now where in America would we have the stones replaced? Jewelry stores were exorbitantly expensive, and craft supply stores too artificial. In Dhaka, it was strange not to have a lokh. There was of course, the rupar lokh, but one might also have a gaser lokh, for when the kitchen stove kicked up a fuss, or an aamer lokh, who procured the best mangoes of the season. And then there was the maacher lokh, from whom my grandmother would buy her fresh-caught fish.

The title of bhai, or brother, and in my case, uncle, was given to those from whom we bought fabrics for clothing and furnishings, and to those tailors responsible for bringing our poorly-sketched fantasies of new outfits and draperies to reality. It was most ordinary to have clothes made to measure and in one’s own vision than to walk into a store to buy something ready made and mass produced. Even at Bongo Bazaar, where clothes rejected by Gap and H&M and Zara were resold, each piece had its own idiosyncrasy: one sleeve slightly longer than the other, a back pocket stitched to the front, mismatched buttons.

So, on another trip to Dhaka, the necklace went back with my mother, and she and my grandmother returned to their rupar lokh to have green stones set where they were once gone.

As I removed the necklace and returned it to its pouch, nestled amidst the jumble of jewelry contained and kept out of view in a glass mirrored box, I thought of how it had come to be in my life. The antique shop on the second floor of Gulshan 2 market, if it is even there anymore; the rupar lokh capable of silverwash and other forms of magic; my late grandmother, known to me as Nanu, known to others as paach numberer khalamma. Onno ekta jibon, a different life, as my mother would often say after we left Dhaka.

There is a life so hard to conceive of in the former yet so ordinary in my life in Bangla. Onno ekta jibon.

Earlier in the summer, I was asked by Vogue Australia to write an essay about what it means to dress as a woman for their September issue. I wrote this in the throes of my grief upon learning that I would not be able to conceive naturally, wrestling with my comprehension of my own womanhood. Upon completing this assignment, I had a sense of catharsis, but I suppose writing about Miuccia Prada and Begum Rokeya, the early 20th century Bengali feminist and writer, will do that for you! You can read it in the digital issue, or pick up a copy from your favorite esoteric magazine shop.

Two weeks ago I underwent surgery to remove my left and right fallopian tubes, which were blocked and filled with fluid. When I first saw images of the state they were in during a scan, between my tears and the shock of it all, I couldn't help but think they looked like Gossamer, the hulking hairy red character from Looney Tunes, or a cartoon rendition of sausage links. The procedure itself had been a bit more complicated than expected, with extensive adhesions fusing the left ovary to the left tube. When I awoke from my anesthetic sleep, having been instructed to eat, I discovered a latent love of plastic-packaged graham crackers and pretzels.

For the day of the surgery, and for a few weeks to follow, I was instructed to wear loose and comfortable clothing. Because there would be incisions in my stomach and both sides of the hips, and gas would be used during surgery causing me to swell like a helium balloon, this meant that my trousers and skirts would be out of the running. If there were ever a time to own McQueen bumsters! Eventually, I settled on a long black dress and a loose black tropical wool jacket with a zipper running down the center of the back, both by Yohji Yamamoto, and a pair of mary-jane Salomon sneakers.

It probably seems rather ridiculous to give so much thought as to what to wear to a hospital, only to have to change into a standard-issue cotton gown upon arrival. Clothing has long offered me a sense of security, and since childhood, it has been one of the primary mediums through which I express and assert myself, but it has also been a way to shield my private self in my outward presentation. Sometimes they have said exactly what I mean, and at other times, the total and complete opposite.

The clothes I wear have certainly feigned courage on my behalf when I myself lacked it, but they have also, on occasion, served as a means of escape. As children, why do we wear costumes of beloved characters, or dress as ballerinas or astronauts we hope to – but eventually may not – one day be? In a good dress, I could briefly elude the reality of the grief I felt somewhat buried under.

What I hadn't thought about was what I would and wouldn't be able to wear post-op, and I was unprepared for how it would make me feel. Like many women of and around my age, I have long had a dysmorphic relationship with my body. Bouts of cruelty in how I view myself are interrupted by moments of compassion. The way I dress has partly been shaped by the parts of myself I would rather not think about, and those I hesitantly love.

But now my body had taken on a new form; much of my clothes which were once a source of security, I could now not wear for some time. This temporary interruption (temporary, I have to repeat to myself like a mantra) is also a crude reminder that my body is not blooming with new life, but has instead lost a part of it. Gone was a part of myself I had before never given any thought, something now of great consequence.

A few days after the surgery, I finally understood what the source of this amorphous grief I had been feeling was, one that I had, till then, difficulty putting to words. I would never experience the spontaneity of the first stages of pregnancy, the not knowing and then the secret knowing, the uncertainty and the miraculous surprise. My experience would be different from those more commonly told, different from that of my cousin, my mother, my aunts, my grandmother. From day one, I will be holding my breath, expecting the worst and privately, shamefully, hoping for the best. It is an incredibly fortunate thing, to be able to do IVF, that it is even an option and that I have the resources to follow this course, but a lack of societal understanding and acceptance makes for an isolated experience, as if the process to and of motherhood is not sufficiently isolating.

My acceptance of such radical physical and emotional changes has not been easy, and I am exposing my vanity in admitting that I have struggled with seeing myself as I presently am. When the time came to change out of the nightgown I had been wearing far too long, the thought of what to wear next was more paralyzing than it ought to have been. I didn't want to wear loose-fitting comfortable clothing as advised by my doctor, the nurse, and the guidance I had been sent home with. I wanted to wear what would be too taxing on my healing body, I wanted to hide the evidence. Suddenly my roomiest dresses were not just that, but rather a magnifier of my weakness. It is not so simple to feel empowered when the armor no longer fits, when the shield is lost.

Ten minutes before I had to leave for my follow-up appointment a week later, and the first time I had the strength to leave my home, I was in a frenzy over what to wear. “Who do I want to be?” I asked, as I have done whenever I have felt uncertain of myself. I wanted to emerge in the disguise of someone untouched by my pain, whose life was following the trajectory we are told, in a body not so unruly, in something tough and assured.

But I couldn’t be anyone other than myself, my body was still healing, and there were no other possibilities. I reluctantly picked an airy pale blue and brown checkered dress by an Italian designer named Sara Lanzi, and pulled on a pale green jacket from Lemaire, which I had bought in Paris a few years ago on impulse and with a modicum of guilt. At that moment, she was not who I wanted to be, but I had to accept that this was who I would need to be.

Accepting my vulnerabilities has been difficult, and wearing them on my sleeve even harder. The clothes we wear are commonly perceived as protection, a defense from intrusion, but they can also leave us feeling quite exposed, forcing us to confront that which we may be hiding from. To deny my reality will make the process of healing only that much longer, so I am surrendering. This is who I am now, and I am slowly, surely, growing quite fond of her.

Header image is Etel Adnan’s Sans titre, 2012.

One morning this week, I stepped out for an appointment when I was met with a wind gust, which in no uncertain terms, was positively brisk. I wore a mid-length skirt and a solid t-shirt, a pairing which had become my unofficial uniform for this summer, and wished I had brought a light jacket or a cardigan with me. A cautioning of the season's impending end.

Some of the more enduring memories from my childhood and adolescence originate in the summertime. For a period, the summer holiday meant a respite from school – where I remained hopelessly uncomfortable until my last day – and the opportunity to travel, to see my cousins, to see places familiar and those entirely new. On visits to London to see my aunt and two cousins I had grown up with, my mother packed our suitcases with mangoes, custard apples, jackfruit, and dried fish. In exchange, we returned back to Dhaka with Dairy Milk, Digestive biscuits, and pungent and delicious bags of Monster Munch.

There was the summer my parents and I visited Toronto for the first time, and on that same trip, to what we referred to as America for the first time since I was a baby. I was eight years old at the time, and there are photographs of myself on the glass floor of the CN Tower and in front of the White House. When my father had begun the process of migrating our family to America, my summers were composed of phone calls to a boy which lasted early into the morning (and trying not to get caught by my mother), playing The Sims and inhaling the first two seasons of The O.C. with my cousin while our mothers were at work, and exploring the world with the aid of our newly installed broadband.

This summer has felt somehow abbreviated. As I was just done hanging up the last of my summer clothing, the call came for layers. If you live in New York, with seasonal change comes the exhausting task of rotating out linens for knits, every last bit of storage bursting at the seams. Before I pack away my pieces, I wanted to share some of my favorites from summers present and past.

It was during one of my last summers as a teenager that the works of Miuccia Prada had really resonated with me in some lasting way. By way of a magazine at a tailor's workshop, I had come across Prada's Spring/Summer 2004 campaign, photographed by Steven Meisel, the models depicted in a watercolor late-summer haze. The collection and campaign were already a few years old by that point, but I didn't care, and twenty-one years later, I am yet to tire of it. I suppose one could say that this points to the way Prada, both the designer and the brand, has the rare ability to transcend time, setting trends while bypassing them entirely. What is old becomes new again, a valuable lesson with regard to how we view our clothes.

The spring and summer collection from 2004 remains my longest fashion relationship. So enamored I was by it, that as a teenager I had a dress made to replicate the feeling of a tie-dye dress worn by Daria Werbowy in the campaign. It fascinates me to think that the outline of my tastes as they are today had begun to loosely form over two decades ago. There were minor interruptions along the way, an unfortunate dalliance with skinny jeans, but somewhere the idea had taken root that as a fully-formed flesh and blood adult, that was how I wanted to dress: big-in-spirit skirts and mid-length dresses, interchangeably ugly and beautiful.

Traveling in time back to 1998, Miuccia Prada produced one of her most cerebrally sexy (to me) collections. Absent from it were nostalgia and longing, the latter of which not be confused with desire. The collection seems to have been born in that very moment, perhaps even ahead of its time, and nearly thirty years later manages to still remain modern, even more than what many brands have to offer today. On their own, the drab beige hemp tops would look simply ordinary, but the addition of sheer latex panels transforms them from dull to perverse.

Prada’s Spring/Summer 2003 show was regarded with divisive reception. The appearance of little knit shorts and mini skirts ruffled the feathers of a fair number of editors, one alleging that it would make women feel as though they were being “shunted off to the junior department.” It’s an interesting take, as the collection seems to have a foundation set in the 1960s of Cardin, Rabanne, and Courrèges, as well as the women’s liberation movement. What I appreciate most about this collection is how a range of diverging ideas, from couture fabrics to the essence of sportswear to chunky childlike plastic appliqués merged to create a collection that is unmistakably Prada: the beautiful and the ugly, conflict and contradiction.

One of my earliest secondhand purchases was a brown and white skirt from Spring/Summer 2001. Of this collection, Miuccia Prada told journalist Cathy Horyn, “The moment you start being in love with what you’re doing and think it’s beautiful or rich, then you’re in danger.” It was Prada’s confrontation of her discomfort with the 80s. It was a departure from the 1940s romanticism of the previous fall season, almost entirely devoid of prints with the exception of a few stripes and repetitive floral patterns in yellow and brown, and one that the designer and her present co-conspirator Raf Simons have referenced frequently in recent collections.

Over the past year or two, hot on the heels of Y2K (the Bush years, the ceaseless wars) came the vintage Prada trend. Overnight, it seemed people were shelling out small fortunes on Prada from the mid-nineties to mid-aughts to make thirty second-long videos ending on a leg pop. Did sentimentality guide these purchases, or a connection to the ideas or styles they communicated? For some, certainly, but my cynic suspects a good number of people were buying to belong, the whiff of virality, or supplanting an identity with stuff. Here, longevity has no place.

The pieces I collect, though I hesitate to use the term “collect”, comes from a place of sentimentality, and yes, at times, desire. It begins with an image in a magazine from a very long time ago, and how I made that image my own. As an adult, the clothes we buy and wear should not be dictated by an algorithm, but because of how they make us feel, and how we feel in them. I wear these clothes relentlessly because they bring me pleasure, and because I dress to please myself.

My last entry was a quippy number about dressing for the sweltering heat while on my period and chuckling my way through the disappointment of learning that I was – once again – not pregnant. The following week, my husband and I had an appointment with a fertility specialist. Women over the age of 35 are encouraged to see a doctor after six months of unsuccessfully trying to conceive. We had tried for three, and I was anxious to confront any potential issues sooner rather than later. Had I known better, I would have seen a specialist the very first time I was certain I would one day like to have a child, but women are never given this sort of guidance.

At our first appointment with our smart and tough doctor (I am the child of immigrant parents and do not respond to coddling), we were given a run-through of our options and were required to do bloodwork to give a clearer understanding of our health. The doctor performed a transvaginal ultrasound to assess my ovarian reserve, and after months of diligent pelvic floor physical therapy, I'm happy to report that it felt almost less invasive than inserting the tiniest tampon. My reserve was low, she observed, but not alarmingly so. Based on our medical profiles, the assumption was that we just needed a tiny bit of help in the form of a trigger shot to induce ovulation, or maybe even intrauterine insemination (IUI). Ever the cynical pessimist that I am, I was mentally prepared for these forms of intervention long before we had even begun trying.

The final stage of fertility testing was a hysterosalpingogram (HSG) procedure. If you think it must feel as awful as it sounds, you're entirely correct: a dye is injected into the uterus and fallopian tubes to determine their health and induces the worst imaginable cramps while you have to stay still as an x-ray hovers over your pelvis to take images of your insides. The procedure is brief but extremely unpleasant, however our doctor was performing it and I felt well cared for. What I was not prepared for, as someone who takes pride in her over-preparedness, was what would come after.

As soon as the HSG was complete, still cramping and spotting, I was instructed to sit up to have a look at the images. The test concluded that I have a condition called bilateral hydrosalpinx, most likely congenital, which means that both my fallopian tubes are blocked and filled with fluid, making fertilization extremely difficult to impossible. Had I gotten pregnant, the chances of an ectopic pregnancy would have been high and possibly fatal. Additionally, the fluid from the fallopian tubes could leak into the uterus and create a toxic environment for an embryo. I learned this while still dressed in my sad beige hospital gown, my husband unaware in the waiting room.

Trigger shots, IUI, and natural conception would no longer be an option; my fallopian tubes would have to be removed and I would have to undergo IVF to conceive. Not even the apex of my pessimism could have prepared me for this. Before I could begin to process what I was being told, I began to cry. Here I had thought the journey would come to a close, one that had seemed endless with what had felt like speed-dating gynecologists through New York City who would take my pelvic pain seriously, a year of physical therapy with limited results and then searching and moving on to a new physical therapist, getting my husband on board with having a child and recognizing my urgency, all to blindly board a brand new rollercoaster. After going over the results, my doctor said to me, "We're just going to have a baby another way."

What was the locus of my grief? It wasn't one thing in particular, but rather an amalgamation of fears long imagined and those I'd never conceived of. The laparoscopic procedure I would have to undergo would be my first surgery, and I was terrified of losing consciousness and control. I had never once felt particularly attached to my fallopian tubes and had never thought that natural conception was what legitimized one's role as a woman. Yet I felt as though something was irreparably wrong with me, all my inadequacies confirmed, and that I was now less than a woman. I was the outlier. No one I knew had ever spoken about struggles with infertility, none of the generations of women in my family, nor friends, nor acquaintances, which is odd because roughly 1 in 6 people globally are affected by infertility.

The next morning, I awoke believing that the previous day had been a nightmare, but it was our new reality. At the follow-up appointment, another ultrasound was conducted to confirm my ovarian reserve, which was higher than the previous scan, and what our doctor referred to as a "beautiful" number of eggs. It is not uncommon for women to be told that once they approach the age of 35, fertility dives off of a cliff, but according to both my gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist, my age was not a concern. When I first asked my gynecologist about this, she exclaimed, "Every pregnant woman in Tribeca is over the age of 35!"

The surgery to remove my fallopian tubes was scheduled for the beginning of September, and after a period of recovery we would begin IVF. My treatment would require a small dosage of hormones and my eggs would be frozen upon retrieval. It would be required of us to attend an online class about the IVF process, and optional genetic counseling was offered, allowing us to determine things such as the gender of the embryo, which we declined. The greatest concern while I was scheduling my surgery was that it fell on the same day as a Nine Inch Nails concert we had tickets to. My husband stared at me bewildered.

I am someone who has found solace in knowledge; the more I know about something, the pros and cons, risks and successes, the more comforted I feel. Often this means having the curiosity to investigate on my own, and by the time we were on our way to the follow-up the day after the HSG procedure, I was briefing my husband on everything I could find about bilateral hydrosalpinx, IVF, and alternative pathways to having a child, just in case. What I learned also made me wonder why knowledge-sharing about women's reproductive health is so sorely lacking, when it is the most vital system required – and not to sound too dramatic – in the creation of life. One would imagine that the topic of commonplace complications within reproductive health would arise when we are first taught about it, or that women would be educated by healthcare providers on understanding their bodies alongside their very first pap smears. Instead we proceed with limited knowledge of our reproductive systems and experience fear, panic and isolation when our bodies fail to respond the way we have been misled to believe all bodies do.

Knowledge and awareness with regard to infertility isn't just crucial for those experiencing it, but is also essential to foster empathetic and supportive environments by those who are not. Much of my own fear, panic and isolation is not rooted in what I know, but in what others do not. I had not anticipated a gamut of comfort from older members of my family, given that speaking about sex and reproduction has long been a cultural taboo that has only recently begun to be chipped away at. There is a palpable sense of shame I am aware of that I do not feel myself. What did take me somewhat by surprise was the response I received from friends and family closer to myself in age, which ranged from aloof to uncomfortable. The common thread between them all was the absence of knowledge, and as a result, the absence of empathy.

Speaking to strangers has been one of the greater sources of comfort to me. Frustrated by being unable to reconcile the data and information I was learning about infertility and IVF with what I saw online and around me, I decided to ineloquently share on Instagram what I was going through in hopes of being able to connect with someone who understood. A stunning number of people sent me private messages over the following week: people who had conceived through IVF, their partners, people who were going through similar heartbreak, some who had the exact same condition as myself. These were people who had beautiful and interesting lives, and from the outside, one could never tell that they had experienced such grief. We live in a society, after all, that has determined there is very little beauty in grief and life's trials.

It has taken me a good long month to come to terms with this next chapter. There are still moments when I am gripped with a suffocating grief, and in the first few weeks I would erupt into unwarranted and uncontrollable laughter. I no longer ask myself how this could have happened to me; it happens to more people than we know, but we are not yet at a place where we can freely say so.

The privilege I have in being able to afford health insurance that covers three rounds of IVF and grants me access to intelligent and kind doctors is something that is not available to so many, a reminder that returns me to the real world. I no longer view the basal body thermometer, the ovulation strips, tracking my cycle like an amateur detective across apps, and diligently recording my temperature as a waste of money and time. When I don’t begin sentences with, “My therapist says,” I begin them with, “According to my acupuncturist…”

Talking about it is what has kept me from feeling like an outlier, a means through which I have found connection in the unlikeliest of places: a pious uncle whose frankness made my jaw drop; the facialist I am devoted to but see sporadically; a woman in Australia I may never have the fortune of meeting. I joke to my best friend that I am wearing my, “I”m starting IVF, how about you?” t-shirt.Talking about it, no matter how much discomfort it may cause, has made me realize that things like IVF and infertility are very normal and natural junctures of life.

Some time ago, a woman who had gone through her own struggles said to me, “IVF is the worst club with the best members.” It’s going to be one hell of a party.

On a 91 degrees Fahrenheit feels-like-1000 day (32+ degrees Celsius for the rest of the world), Aunt Flo arrived for her monthly visit, like clockwork. Of course, the arrival of my period coincided with the day I could not shirk my responsibilities and absolutely had to leave my apartment in my role as a fully grown adult. I was tasked with not just dressing for the suffocating heat, but also for a body that wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole. How does one dress when it is hot enough to fry an egg on the surface of exposed skin and one’s uterus is pulsating so hard, it would be right at home at Berghain?

Quite thankfully, I was a late bloomer. When it was finally time for my time of the month, I hardly felt as though I had transformed into a woman or a blossoming flower. To me, it was nothing but a major inconvenience. A few years ago, I spoke to a woman who told me she felt euphoric each time she got her period. After several years of a strict diet, including the total elimination of chocolate and treats, her flora and fauna were in total harmony, and from then on, she was only ever grateful to receive her period. It would be total sacrilege to the essence of my being to summon such discipline and do away with sweets. My monthlies continue to be a major inconvenience.

When I was not a girl but not yet a woman, nothing was worse to me than when I got my period in the summer. Clothes that would cling were unbearable; what I needed was to feel nothing against my skin, and preferably anything that could manufacture even the slightest breeze. Having spent most of my childhood and adolescence in Bangladesh, where the weather during summertime was not unlike fresh hell, I’ve learned a thing or two about dressing for extraordinarily hot temperatures during that time of the month. For example, cotton is your best friend, spandex is a heat stroke, and nylon is a death sentence. Volume is ideal for when the body becomes engorged, and excess fabric doubles as a fan when in desperate need of air. Length will save you from the horrific sensation of feeling a stranger’s lingering sweat on a subway seat, and one simply cannot shave their legs so often!

In spite of my preparedness, the arrival of my period this time around was more than a major inconvenience, it was a major disappointment. The first 91 degree day (of many) of this week also marked the third cycle of trying, and failing, to conceive. For some, three months of trying is hardly anything to fret about, but for me it’s been several years of obstacles, plus three months, in addition to Not the Greatest News from a fertility specialist. My hope of becoming pregnant by now had been so high that whenever I bought new clothes over the past six months, they were pieces that would work with a changed body in mind. In summation, it has seemed like a lifetime.

Loved ones vacillate between telling me that I am still young (helpful, despite everything and everyone around us desperately trying to convince us that women in their mid-30s are just about eligible for retirement) and that wanting something too much makes it harder (unhelpful). When I brought up the bogeyman that is the reproductive system of a 35 year old woman, my wonderful gynecologist first scoffed and then exclaimed, “Every pregnant woman in Tribeca is over the age of 35!” And somewhere in the middle of that are my ovaries, marching to the beat of their own drum.

Even though I had done bloodwork that indicated it was unlikely I was pregnant, so that I knew what to expect, getting my period was still crushing. All I wanted to do was wallow and sob hysterically like a mid-film 90’s rom-com heroine down on her luck, but I had to put my mask on and pretend to get on with it. Now, how does one dress not just for a major inconvenience, but a major disappointment too?

A few morsels of wisdom I have earned in my 35 years is that I have more or less come to terms with what clothes work for me, what clothes do not, and that it is always more satisfying to wear what pleases me. To get myself out of the house without feeling like too-much of an emotional mess, I instinctively reached for my trusty black dress by the Perugian designer Sara Lanzi. Made from cotton, it has a voluminous pleated skirt, deep pockets, and accommodating adjustable ties just where the shoulder blades end and low on the waist. Since the designer gifted it to me when I met her at her studio sale a few years ago, I have worn it countless times over the summers. In it, I feel protected and pretty (I need to add that Lanzi’s designs have Rei Kawakubo’s seal of approval).

For all the designers and brands that exist today, it is total madness that so few offer clothes from their summer collections that can actually be worn in the summer. It is as though the hotter the earth’s core gets, the greater the inclination to sell wool jackets and sweaters that have no place in the season. When it comes to clothes for the summer, I first turn to vintage, and when I say vintage, I mean from before the 1990’s. For the most part, the quality of vintage clothing appears to be better the older it is, and cotton offerings were more abundant. My search begins with Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, particularly from the later 1970’s and the 1980’s: roomy dresses and loose smock tops that are equal parts sexy and silly, and most importantly, made of cotton. When my vintage search is complete, I set my sights on Loretta Caponi.

And for my finale trick, you guessed it: Dries Van Noten. I know I am parroting myself, but not enough brands have cultivated an understanding of women’s desires and women’s needs. The success of Dries Van Noten, both the designer and the brand under the creative direction of Julian Klausner, has been driven by the acknowledgement that clothes need to support us, like armor, but that they can be protective too. As I write this, I am wearing this very skirt below, which is from Spring 2005, where an extravagant dinner table served as not only a dining surface for the guests, but a runway for the models.

That concludes Menstrual Fashion Week! It’s been a tumultuous season, but it is my belief that ultimately, the fashion delivered.

Effortless means the absence of effort, which, in my personal opinion, does not sound all that wonderful. It should be used to describe a poorly conceived account or essay, for example, “What on earth is this woman even talking about? It’s so god damn effortless!” But alas, the condition of Effortless is regarded with utmost esteem. One capable of work, action, or effort without the exertion of effort is one who is highly regarded. The greatest accolades for Effortless are reserved for the Beauty category. These acknowledgments and distinctions are, of course, reserved for women only. No one is saying, in reverent tones, “Joe Bro is such an effortless beauty!”

A subdivision of Effortless Beauty is Effortless Hair. Often, it is the crown alone that determines whether one shall gain entry into the hallowed halls of Effortless Beauty. Effortless Hair typically occurs in the summertime: one moment hair is a tangled nest suffocating under an itchy wool hat, and the next, voilà! The hat is removed to reveal beach waves. Other terms that are synonyms of Effortless Hair include tousled, shaggy, beachy, wavy, waves, no matter that there may be nary a beach in sight.

Last year in the fall, I cut my hair short. It was a Big Deal, as my hair had not been that short in thirty years, or since my mother had come to realize that she should not be allowed to cut my hair. For six months after that first dramatic chop, I let my hair grow out, unsure of whether I wanted to go back for more. A month ago, I decided that I did in fact want more. Seated before the hairstylist I had first submitted myself to nearly eight years ago, and guarded with a Pinterest board of Shaggy Bobs, I motioned, hand at just below the chin, shorter.

When the cut was complete, what looked back at me in the mirror was an Effortless Hairstyle, a Shaggy Bob good enough for my own Pinterest board. It was wavy and tousled and beachy, even though I was seated at a hair salon on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, the murky East River and the industrial Gowanus Canal the nearest bodies of water. However, there was a caveat: it took four different products and prolonged applications of both a hair dryer and curling iron to achieve this effortlessness. The actual hair styling portion of my visit to the hair salon took just under one and a half hours.

By the time I reached home, my very fine and straight hair, which no heated instrument has stood up against, hung limp. I cursed myself for being too self-conscious to take a commemorative picture of my new ‘do at the hair salon.

One evening a few weeks ago, my best friend called me over FaceTime. “Your hair looks amazing!” she exclaimed. I thanked her, I wasn’t going to deny it. “Now, let me tell you what it takes to get my hair to look like this,” I continued.

First, I wake up.

The earlier I take a shower, the better for my Effortless Hair.

After showering, I begin the process of letting my hair air dry. If I use a hair dryer, my hair will hang straight. For my hair to fully dry, it can take anywhere between two to four hours, depending on the humidity for the day.

During the air drying process, there are a few interventions. The first thirty minutes, the hair is left to its own devices. Then, it is imperative to gather as much hair as possible at the top of my head, twist it around itself multiple times (which can be tricky at this length), and finally, secure it with a clip. The remaining hair is twisted into a miniature version of the top layer and also fastened with a clip. Having damp hair tied up like this often gives me headaches, but that’s alright. Allow the buns to rest for half an hour.

An alternative procedure: when the initial thirty minutes have passed, brush the hair to reveal the natural part, which is slightly off center, from left to right. Sweep the shorter “face-framing” pieces of hair from the left to the right, and secure it with a pin just above the right ear. Separate the hair in two even sections down the center. Twist the hair on each side tightly (as mentioned above), and secure each bun just below the ears with large clips. A too-large clip will not provide the required definition, and a hair tie is hopeless. Allow the buns to rest for half an hour.

After the specified time, unfasten the clips and continue the air drying process for another thirty minutes. When I was a child, my grandmother used to tell me that tying my hair before it was fully dry would make it a breeding ground for lice. Whether this was fact or fiction is something I haven’t gotten around to clarifying, but I alternate between letting my hair down and twisting it all back up every thirty minutes in an act that I have allowed myself to believe will keep the lice at bay. The contracting and releasing of the hair is also essential to create waves.

Today has been a very humid day, and as such, the time required for air drying was approximately three hours. Once the hair is fully dry, I spray texturizing spray over and around my head. Time is of the essence here, and before the vapors have settled, the hair must be bound according to either outlined procedure. Switching to a different procedure at this stage of the process is discouraged.

The longer the hair is bound, the greater the chances of achieving effortlessness. Keeping the hair in their respective twists and clips for about eight hours post-texturizing spray will provide optimal results.

This means, on days when my hair looks so good, my Effortless Hair has had no contact with the outside world. I get to experience its effortlessness for an hour, before I tie my hair to wash my face in order to go to bed. And what a blissful hour it is.

Et voilà! How to get Effortless Hair!

Why would you not want to collect these pieces? In my opinion, few if any of Dries Van Noten’s collections have faltered, even those he claims were critically divisive, such as Fall 2001, where monochromatic looks took center stage, or Fall 2009’s Francis Bacon show. Yet Spring 2019 achieved something that I cannot quite put to words, something akin to attitude. Perhaps this could be because Van Noten and his team were principally concerned with communicating an attitude, rather than an era or a strict theme. “The way that you dress, the way that you gesture, the way that you stand,” shared the designer with editors after the show. Attitude.

My gateway piece from this collection was a breezy cotton bright blue dress patterned with hazy pink flowers. Though I have never been one for a cold shoulder, there was something both humorous and sensual of a thick bungee cord tied just below the nape of the neck giving way to a sliver of skin. Its cut and color resembling bioluminescent jellyfish, it was certainly not designed with the heterosexual male’s desire in mind, ever a rarity in Fashion, and even on my most unforgiving days, it has the unique ability of allowing me to feel the better parts of myself.

In reviews and references to this collection, “couture” is frequently mentioned without going into specifics. While attempting to infer what elements recalled couture, I came across a silk navy-violet opera coat by Cristóbal Balenciaga from 1954, inspired by Japanese kabuki coats, on the Victoria and Albert Museum’s website, and saw parallels with Van Noten’s collection some sixty-five years later. And at Sotheby’s auction of socialite Alixandra Fitzwilliam-Tate Baker’s extensive couture collection, I found a pink matelassé Balenciaga dress topped off with a dramatic pleated cape, which reminded me of the sleeves of my blue dress. Balenciaga, who refused to expand into ready-to-wear, would have most certainly turned his nose up at Van Noten’s accessibility, and for that notion alone I find Van Noten’s work ever the more alluring, his ability to draw from the most beautiful elements of couture to craft clothes for the modern woman and her everyday.

One of the most memorable pieces from Van Noten’s runway show was from the opening look: a canary yellow sleeveless mesh top with large plastic “feathers” sewn on, paired with a crisp white cotton lab coat, and a jumpsuit with its top undone and gathered at the waist, worn as trousers. By some stroke of luck and madness, I was able to source it last year on Vestiaire Collective. While it is slightly larger than what I usually wear, as the great Celine Dion once said, “I’ll make them work. I’ll make them fit.” Van Noten’s use of faux feathers, which at first glance could be mistaken for crystal or delicate glass, is perhaps his way of making light of the staid ways of the couture houses of yore, who catered only to the wealthiest of women. These are feathers meant to be worn to dinner (the reservation under your name, of course), or if you are feeling bold, to work.

As I continued excavating to find connections to couture, I discovered a blog written by a woman from Brisbane who had moved to Italy some time ago. In the midst of accounts on travel, she had also written about a visit to the Balenciaga Museum in Getaria and shared photos from her trip. What stood out was an image of a few Balenciaga gowns in shades not unlike Van Noten’s 2019 palette: diamine green, black, white, and canary yellow. These colors, in addition to bold stripes and checks, were popular with other haute couture designers as well, such as Jeanne Lanvin, Hubert de Givenchy, and Christian Dior.

It was not only by way of color that Van Noten evoked haute couture, but through technique too. The voluminous gathered waist has become the designer’s signature, which he returned to in Spring 2020 for his collaborative collection with Christian Lacroix, and for Spring 2025, the brand’s studio team put forth a similar style, but now with a narrower silhouette and a slit up the front. In an editorial for Vogue Paris in 1963, Audrey Hepburn wears a canary yellow Givenchy gown with a similar detail at and around the bust. How clever is it that Van Noten recontextualized this couture element not with finicky boning that would be impossible to reproduce at a larger scale, but by simply leaving the tops of jumpsuits and dresses undone and with the aide of bungee cords?

On the V&A site, I also stumbled upon a black Christian Dior silk evening dress from 1957, its shape and volume constructed with metal coil boning and silk and nylon petticoats. In Van Noten’s interpretation of the quintessential little black dress, excess is done away with, and material is skillfully draped and manipulated.

“What’s more beautiful than workwear?”1 said the designer of this collection. There is a reason why clients and fans of the Dries Van Noten brand are devout: his designs, simultaneously uplifting and grounding, are meant for living life in. And in a landscape where far too many designers neglect the technicality that is Life, what’s more beautiful than that?

Leaving my shoes at the door was an inherent part of my upbringing. It signified how I regarded myself and my home, as well as those around me. It was an indication of respect for a home and its occupants: in most cultures that are not Western, introducing filth from outside (if you live in New York, anything that touches your soles once you leave your home can only objectively be classified as filth) desecrates the sanctity of the home. The home should be a sanctuary. My home is most certainly my sanctuary. It is here where I live with the person I love. It is here where I favor spending time with loved ones, with take-out in front of the television or a home-cooked meal around the dinner table, my preference being the former.

On a less spiritual and more practical level, the removal of shoes is also about a quaint custom known as “being considerate”. For those of us not wedded to billionaires or aristocrats, the daily upkeep and maintenance of our homes cannot be outsourced to anyone else other than ourselves. Cleaning flooring – whether your method be mopping, vacuuming, Swiffering, or industrial ride-on floor scrubbers – is yet another task we undertake in our exhausting lives; decorously removing one’s shoes upon entering a home saves one the headache of bringing out the mop and bucket. Well, there’s no need to clean your floors so often, you may argue, to which I reply: there is, however, the matter of fecal matter.

But what collectively irks us so much when an incredibly privileged person puts their proverbial foot down and states their refusal to remove their shoes inside the home, or that guests should not be asked to take their shoes off? It’s not just the declaration itself, as bothersome its delivery may be. For me, most importantly, it is the disregard and ignorance of cultural customs and the lack of consideration regarding what one’s home means to them. People of color living in the West have such limited space to exercise their cultural practices outside of their homes and contend with cultural ignorance on a daily basis: confusing Eid for Kwanza; touching one’s hair; assuming all brown people are either from Mexico or India; Namaslay; being asked where you are from and how you speak English so well; the only South Asian character in And Just Like That getting in bed with her shoes on (I think not!); Africa is a country, and so on.

Home is one of the few places we get to fully be ourselves. An invitation into one’s home is not meant to be taken lightly: it is an invitation into one’s private sphere, and boundaries must be respected. For people of color, whose traditions and values are constantly ridiculed and denied, the home couldn’t be more sacred. Crossing the threshold with shoes on when that is not the house rule – a quick glance at the row of shoes at the entrance or the host in their bare feet, slippers or socks will save one the oblivious question, “Shoes off?” or the awkward confrontation “Shoes off, please!” – is incredibly disrespectful. And is this not why fancy socks exist, to be paraded in front of others and admired, not sequestered in sweaty sneakers?

The expectation that one should take off their shoes before entering a home is not a denial of their right to shoes. As someone who wrote about shoes just last week and spends an inordinate amount of time really thinking about shoes (and more money buying them), I’d be the first to admit that I have a thing for shoes. Yet, I value the sanctity of one’s home and its inhabitants more than I do my shoes. If I am concerned about the well-being of my shoes or that I may be in the presence of the Tabi thief, I would ask to store my shoes somewhere separate. If that will not suffice, I would bring a bag to put my shoes in and carry it for the duration of my visit, then I would book the earliest available appointment with my therapist to work on my trust issues.

After all that, if my shoes are stolen, I’m registered at Manolo Blahnik!

When I took my trusty Mary Janes from The Row to be resoled, the gentleman at the shoe repair shop dramatically held them over his head to inspect the sole, laughed and shook his head at the sliver that separated my foot from New York’s delightful pavements, and told me to return in four days. I could still walk in them for hours, but my back had begun complaining to me about getting some more support over the past few months. I had bought them when Tiina the Store in Amagansett was closing down (which has now been replaced by The Row), and the shoes had been shockingly marked-down. Such luck does not strike twice, so I thought it best to let the shoes and my back rest.

(If we haven’t been previously acquainted, allow me to introduce myself: I love Mary Janes. My love for Mary Janes has garnered me a degree of notoriety, so much that last December, Marie Claire’s fashion features editor let me prattle on about my beloved form of shoe on their site.)

Any kind of Mary Jane won’t do; they must fulfill my wants and my needs. They are now virtually everywhere, yet very few are good. Some are too clunky, others are far too narrow, and most soles give new meaning to becoming one with the earth. But last summer, one particular pair caught my eye: Camper’s Casi Myra Mary Janes. Because I am a very…specific shopper, it took me nearly a full year to buy them. My reservations were that I was not head over heels in love with the microscopic Camper branded tag on the side of the shoe, and how visible the black soles looked against the pairs that weren’t black. I told you, specific.

Over time my apprehension wore off. If necessary, the tag could be cut off – shocker, I haven’t been fussed to do so – and the hardly-visible soles are a testament to adequate and much-needed support. For their first trip, I wore them straight out of the box and walked in them for several hours, and by the end of the day there was nary a pinky toe rubbed ever so slightly raw, nor even the beginning of a blister.

To add to its glowing review, the Mary Janes are made of supple leather that lend it a Martiniano-the-outline-of-your-toes-are-just-barely-visible effect, the toe box is gently squared, and the vamp sits high. They have the tiniest heel and the insoles are OrthoLite. Also worth nothing: the traction is so superb, it’s fair to say New York’s cobblestone streets have finally met their match. I wore them to physical therapy and tested them on cobblestones, and the Mary Janes passed with flying colors. Design-wise, I have to admit, I do love the look of these more than The Row’s Ava Mary Janes.

“Do it!!” is my professional opinion.

With summer hot on our heels, a few honorable mentions that have kept me cool:

• Prada leather sandals. I have two identical pairs of the leather buckled sandals which were first designed for Spring/Summer 1996, which I have worn so much over the years that I think my family now know them better than my face. This style has been reissued for Spring/Summer 2025. Another tried and true pair are from Spring/Summer 2020, which were put to the test on the sloping roads of Monte Argentario.

• Barely-there sandals from JW Anderson. To be worn anywhere but New York City, but do have excellent traction. We must talk more about traction!

• Birkenstock Madrid sandals. These remind me of the little sandals from Prada’s Spring/Summer 1998 collection and my grandmother’s Dr. Scholl’s. They are great for walks on pebble and rock beaches, and I like to wear them with melodramatic dresses on the beach.

• FANE’s Bra bag. It currently houses my keys, hand sanitizer, lipstick, phone, wallet, sunglasses, and Jane Austen’s Persuasion. The long and thin straps accommodate the my widest sleeves and heaviest coats, and it fits discreetly under my arm.

Shoes take up a significant chunk of my mental real estate. It’s not enough that I have myself sorted out, I need to also know what well-heeled fellow walking enthusiasts are wearing (and where they’re going). Now that I’ve droned on about my Camper quest for long enough, without further ado:

Anja Tyson is a New York-based consultant and creator of Food Is A Mother, an annual recipe and art zine.

These shoes are made for walkin’. Almost all of my shoes are purchased with the intention of being able to take a stroll. I am lucky enough to live in a walkable city, and so I intentionally plan on the day to day to be mobile whenever it's possible, so that I can enjoy my life and reap some of the benefits of living in this ridiculous town. I cannot think of something dumber than wearing a pair of shoes in my day to day life that don't support me being able to live my life to its fullest, and I have always felt this way, even when I was 20 and I considered Louboutins "walkable".

My two go-tos are: 1) Loeffler Randall ballet flats and Mary Janes. These always have a very flattering toe box, a little longer and more elegant than many alternatives that can leave outfits feeling a little childlike or disheveled. They're well-made and long-lasting, and as a bonus, they consistently make an ACTUAL size 11 (Italian 41, French 42), which so few brands do. I wear these with skirts and trousers in situations where it's not appropriate to bear my toes. 2) More "fashiony" sandals with a functional heel. The two in heaviest rotation for me right now are a pair of caramel brown Prada sandals with the bone buckle across the strap, and a pair of patent leather Miu Miu block heel sandals, and both of them are about 20 years old. They're both very comfortable, and high in sentimental value for me.

One of my other favorite brands for my shoe size is Aeyde. I have a few of their sandals, mary janes and low heels, and they’re always well-constructed and chic. I am always complimented when I wear their shoes.

I don't really have a different set of shoes for when I am spending time with my daughter, as my whole motherhood journey has run in parallel to a busy career and personal life, and a true belief that I can retain my style and the joie de vivre of getting dressed alongside raising a human. I should also note that my daughter is a pre-teen now, and she values strolls and mobility as highly as I do, so we regularly walk miles and miles together around town, enjoying life.

Favorite bags (or lack thereof). So actually, I have a whole thing about this. When I was in my teens and twenties, I carried so much stuff around every day. It was a combination of reasons: one was I didn’t always live right next to work and I might need to freshen up before dinner or a night out, but another was because at that age, like so many people, I really defined myself by my personal possessions, and the other thing is that I was already 23 by the time the iPhone was invented, so I was regularly carrying around a cell phone, an iPod, a date/address book, a big billfold, and all the other stuff that was consolidated by iPhone adoption.

When I grew up, my biggest dream was that I would be able to walk out of the house without a bag. I absolutely LOVE days when I can just throw my phone and my keys in my pocket and go, and not lug around a huge sack of my personal possessions. I think I literally wrote in my diary about it when I was 18 or 19. Now it’s a happy in-between. I want a medium-sized bag that fits an appropriate amount of stuff, but doesn’t tempt me to jam everything I own in it. I try to remember to carry a collapsible carry bag in case I have the chance to stop by the farmer’s market or pick up a package, but other than that it’s just wallet, keys, phone and lip gloss.

My current favorites are a stamped snakeskin Miu Miu bag that I lusted after for two decades and then finally found this winter on eBay in Japan, and now that it’s nice out again, my small assortment of Marni market bags that I’ve collected over time, which are very durable, colorful, and capacious.

The best route. When I have a free stretch of time on a nice day, I love to hop across the water to meander through Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. Brooklyn is truly where my heart is, and because I live in such a tourist-jammed neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, I frequently need to get someone more peaceful and down to earth to fall back in love with the city. I am thrilled at the chance to walk on streets where every single building doesn’t have a commercial storefront with a line outside, and where there are few enough tourists that you don’t notice when they are walking four abreast at the pace of molasses down the sidewalk. I can easily log a few miles anywhere in Brooklyn, but just in terms of peace and scenery, that’s one of my favorite ways to flaneur.

Durga Chew-Bose is a writer and director, and resides in Montreal.

Shoes for simple strolls and long talks. I'm not the smartest when it comes to the shoes I wear for long walks! You never know when a simple stroll to the market can turn into a one hour phone call! If I know I'm going for a long walk, intentionally, I'll usually wear my Kiko Asics or Nike Zoom Vomero sneakers in all black. On a recent trip to New York, where I invariably walk a lot, I was wearing these black Wales Bonner Mary Jane sneakers. I was very comfortable. I'm not sure I should be going on long walks in my Clarks Wallabees but I do.

A banana bag for an apple. I've actually been trying to walk without a bag, but that's very hard to do! Keys! Chapstick! Phone! Hand cream! An apple! Sometimes I carry The Row's banana leather bag. Mine is so worn and floppy now—it's been to beaches, dinners and day trips, playgrounds, you name it. I learned early on you can even fit a diaper in there. My trusted everything bag is my very sturdy all black Pacific Tote Company tote.The most durable canvas. I'm not even sure they make or sell the all black version. My friend Chris Chang gave it to me.

Waterside walks. We live near a canal. That's an ideal walk, to be accompanied by water. I do like walking...somewhere, though. Even if it's to buy fruit or fill a prescription or come summer, find some ice cream. It's nice to arrive somewhere.

Arpana Rayamajhi is a multidisciplinary artist living in New York.

Faithful to her moto boots. I’ve been almost exclusively wearing Christian Louboutin Horse Moto Biker boots. They’re super comfortable and I love the way they look. I have skinny ankles and legs – good boots that fit well don’t come by so easily.

Keep it simple (or spikey). I should probably get into handbags more but right now, I just have my mesh bag by Mango and sometimes I also use this old vintage leather bag. For an accessories person, I'm not big into purses – I haven't seen many that are amazing or worth the price (to people that love and invest in luxury handbags I probably sound nuts but yes, I mean it when I say I haven’t seen a lot of amazing handbags). I loved the Gucci (Tifosa) spikey ball purse.

Take a walk on the westside. I walk a lot in the city. I go to the westside by the water quite a bit. On average I walk around 10 to 11 thousand steps a day especially when it’s warm. My ideal route is Union Square to the West Village where it’s quiet and pretty, and then to the water, in the sun.

In Walk A Mile In Their Shoes Pt.1, I spoke to Naomi Accardi, Jalil Johnson, and Aydha Mehnaz.

In February of this year, Renaissance Renaissance was selected as a semi-finalist for the competitive LVMH Prize. The brand’s stockists include Dover Street Market London, SSENSE, and Harrods. Cynthia’s works have been worn by Lady Gaga, Caroline Polachek, Dua Lipa, and Chloë Sevigny, and she has designed costumes for director Durga Chew-Bose’s debut film, Bonjour Tristesse. In an industry known for swollen egos, with such prestigious accomplishments under her belt, Cynthia is astonishingly humble. What is, however, most stunning, is that these achievements are born of the efforts of just three women: Cynthia, Laura, and their seamstress, Nona.

Tasnim: How are you doing? Are you in Beirut?

Cynthia: I'm good. I'm in Beirut at our atelier. This is where my mom worked for about thirty years, and this is where I'm working now with her.

T: How are things right now in Lebanon?

C: It's gotten much better since there was a ceasefire. When there was a ceasefire back in November…well, it's not really a ceasefire; there’s still bombing every day. But when that happened, it gave me hope for the first time in a long time, and I was like, okay, let's do this, let's move back. It's been very difficult because you face all the same challenges that every other designer faces anywhere else, plus you're in a country that has a very corrupt ruling class, and so there's basically no infrastructure for anything. We don't have electricity full time here. We don't have running water full time. We don't have the internet full time.

A lot of things that maybe are taken for granted in the West, here we don't have. It's kind of crazy how much that actually affects your ability on a day to day basis, just to function and work and keep up with the rest of the world. I think what is really special here is despite all the hardships we've faced, especially in the last five years, it's amazing how kind and helpful people still are, and how quickly they adapt. We had Covid and a financial crisis where we literally lost our money overnight, myself included. Then there was the explosion. It all happened in the same year. We had very violent protests and crackdowns on protests.

There was a lot of uncertainty and huge inflation. We had absolutely no supplies, because there was no money, no gas for cars, or electricity. Then the wars in Gaza and then Lebanon. It was one after the other. I think if only one of those things happened anywhere else, people would go crazy. Here, it's really beautiful to see how people still maintain their humanity despite all of these things. I mean, it's not a perfect country, but it's still really nice to work here, even with everything going on, because of this aspect of humanity.

T: What gives you the motivation to keep pushing forward with the brand and the work?

C: Because I don't know how else I would do what I love. I started this because I really love fashion and creative direction. It made sense to start a brand because I didn't see anyone like me running a brand. I didn't see many other options, so I was like, let me start my own thing.

T: You originally studied visual communication at Central Saint Martins; what inspired you to change course and become a fashion designer?

C: It was very natural, having grown up in this space. This is where I spent a lot of my time as a child, but I also loved storytelling. My favorite things to do as a child were reading books, dressing my sisters, making up stories and directing my sisters in them. Then I had this epiphany one day where I thought, this feels really shallow. I was also becoming a teenager, and reading a lot about imperialism, capitalism, American hegemony, et cetera. So I thought maybe I should do something else.

I was trying all kinds of creative endeavors, but realized that I love everything. I love directing. I love having a big story to tell and being able to draw on a lot of different tools to tell that story. When I was doing visual communication, it was very limiting. It was very frustrating because every avenue felt limited, and there was no fashion in them. I was starting to get back into fashion when I left Lebanon because I finally had access to things that I didn’t have before. I had outgrown teen fashion magazines, and my mum wouldn't buy serious fashion magazines for me. When I got to London, I was like, yes, I'm free to buy Vogue now.

In London, I had the opportunity to find other magazines like Pop, for example. I was obsessed with Pop because it wasn’t just about fashion, it was also intellectual, with amazing essays in it. I was finally able to expose myself to things like that. I immediately got back into fashion, but it became kind of like a thing I had no one to talk to. In visual communication, no one cared about things like the new Balenciaga collection.

I'm really happy I didn't study fashion at Central Saint Martins, because I think it's a very specific program. Having taught in fashion schools since coming back to Lebanon, the thing about fashion school, you’re told to do whatever you want, but it's also implied you have to do what we think is good or else you don't make it into the show. Or you don't make it because you don't get the same opportunities that other students had, especially at Central Saint Martins.

It just seemed like there was a very specific way of doing things, and if you don't do it that way, you'll basically be forgotten. By the end of my studies, I realized I was really into fashion and creating. I didn't know what creative direction was, which is so stupid that no one told me it was a job. All the times I had meetings with my teachers and they told me to choose: Do you want to do illustration or do you want to do film? I liked them all. I realized what I wanted to do and that I wanted to do it in fashion. There were no Arabs, no women in any of these fashion houses. So what were my chances? I didn’t have a fashion portfolio. I didn’t have any of the stereotypical credentials or connections to get in the door.

It was a matter of what the fastest way to getting to where I wanted was, and that was coming back home. So I came back. I worked to make money so I could start this brand. When I left my full time job after two years, I was doing a million other jobs to support myself.

T: How did you know how to cut patterns?

C: I had to learn everything. I approached it like I was going back to school again, except I was creating my own curriculum. It wasn't easy in the beginning; I was feeling very insecure about the fact that I didn't go to fashion school, that no one was going to take me seriously. I even tried to apply for a master's at some point, and thankfully got rejected. And then I was like, fuck this. I don't need to go to school again for someone to tell me I'm good.

T: Were you picking things up as you were spending time in your mom's atelier or were you doing classes outside of that?

C: I was doing classes. I have ADHD, and my mum is not a very patient person. I can barely concentrate on things that are very repetitive or manual, so that makes it even harder for me. She'll explain something and I can't absorb it. She's been doing it for thirty years. We're just on totally different wavelengths. It's like someone who was a physicist talking to a kindergartner. I took pattern making classes, which helped me understand the logic behind things. I took drawing classes, practiced during my free time, and watched a lot of videos to try to figure out how to do something.

My mum would take something that maybe already existed or was a straightforward cut, but for her it was more about the fabrics and trimmings. Whereas I'm thinking about the construction of the garment, about the silhouette, and creating a certain shape that doesn’t exist. So we have to make it from scratch, and my mum’s not used to working on a pattern totally from scratch. I had to learn how to execute things, because she would be like, oh, that's not possible. And I'd be like, yeah, it is.

T: When I spoke to Durga (Chew-Bose), she said that you have this really great eye for couture and costume. Where did that come from?

C: The couture aspect is related to my mum and having grown up in this environment where you have a very acute awareness of how things are made, and how things are made well. She’s really into quality, making things that last, making things properly, getting the right fabrics. It's not about quantity, it's about quality. These things have been drilled into my head. She has, in a way, that traditional sense of making things.

I’m not traditional in the way I think or as a person. My mom is traditional about craft, this is done like this because X, Y, Z. And I’m like, but why? If you say the words raw edge in this atelier…it took maybe three years for that to be accepted here. That was a crazy, crazy idea.

T: I'm curious: when you were younger, how did you like to dress up?

C: Oh, my god. I was very specific. Something that used to drive me crazy was that my mum would like to dress us up, and I hated that. I was very specific about the things I liked. Those are probably some of my most traumatizing memories, if I wasn't allowed to wear the thing I wanted to wear. My concept of fashion was so bizarre. I'd be convinced that something was so cool, and I’d go to school and no one thought it was cool.

T: Well, that's how you know it's really cool. When you were younger, was your mom making clothes for you?

C: She didn't really have time. She had three kids and her own business, so she didn't really have time to make things for us. The only time I asked her to make something for me was because of the Tom Ford Gucci collection with the velvet suits. I became obsessed with having velvet suits.

T: Did she make it for you?

C: She made me velvet bell-bottoms. I was very picky about it.

T: I was obsessed with a Tom Ford top. I saw a picture at a tailor’s shop when I was a teenager, and it had long bell sleeves. In Bangladesh, we didn't have the kinds of materials that Tom Ford was using, so I bought this black cotton fabric that had a raised textured pattern that looked similar. My mum and I went to the tailor maybe five or six times to have it made. And then once it was made, I never wore it. It was just the satisfaction of having it. I still have it.

C: I wish I had those pants now. But what fucking weirdo eleven year old wants to wear a velvet suit? In my head, I was like, this is so cool. It's Tom Ford, but nobody in my school knew the reference or got it. Everyone's in jeans and you're there in little velvet outfits. But I liked it. I felt like I looked really cool.

My style was very weird, and I didn’t have a big selection of clothes. I have two sisters, but one sister is four years younger, and my older sister was very attached to her things. There were a lot of hand-me-downs, and my closet was a mishmash of things. It's kind of funny because my closet is still kind of like that. I would love to have a curated closet, but I still can't afford to have it.

I don't want to spend one hundred dollars on a cotton T-shirt because it's the “best” cotton t-shirt made. I'll go to the Cotton Mall here. It’s my heaven; they have boxers, flannels, long sleeve t-shirts, kids t-shirts. I'll go to the kids section and buy ten T-shirts for five dollars, and they're as good as those expensive t-shirts. I get special pieces from my friends, other designers, from their line sheets.

It was actually great that my parents couldn't afford to buy us things or wouldn’t just out of principle. They'd say, it costs so much money just because it's Puma, but we don't care, so figure it out. I had to just try to use whatever I had to make a look.

T: It forces you to think creatively. How can I replicate it with the budget I have?

C: There was one magazine called Elle Girl, which I was obsessed with. They had a section where they would photograph people around the globe. Street style outfits. It was super inspirational because it was just people in their normal clothes. I’d think, maybe I can do that. I was just trying to make do with what I had.

T: How did your mom get started with setting up her atelier?

C: When she was a kid, she just sat on a sewing machine and started sewing. She made little outfits for her dolls, and was into crochet and sewing her own clothes. She lived in the States for a period of time, and when she was there, she had access to lots of patterns, and could go to the discount store and buy fabrics for really cheap. She made her own clothes. It’s been her passion.

When she moved back to Beirut, people were asking her, where's your outfit from? At the time, there was a civil war going on, and she set up her atelier. It was a great time to start a business, because there wasn’t anything else, there weren’t a lot of foreign brands here. People were buying from local designers, more than they do today. Even though there was a civil war, people still living their lives. Wherever there would be a safe zone, people would be partying and living their lives there. Then it gets bombed and then that zone moves. People were going out, having dinners and parties. People wanted to dress up.

T: It’s fascinating that with everything that’s happened in Lebanon and seeing how you've also started up your business in the midst of it. If something like that were to happen in the West on that scale, I think society would collapse. There's this inherent resilience in people, in you, in your mom. There is so much going on, but we still need to live life. That's a beautiful thing, that you don't give up on living life to the fullest.

C: I think here we are more realistic about things, because the exploitation is very in your face. Versus in the West, it's very hypocritical. They're exploiting people, but it's usually not in your own country. When it does happen, it's not seen or it’s segregated in a way, in specific areas. Lebanon is a very small country. Everyone's in everyone's face. It's not the easiest place. You can literally see everything falling apart in front of you.

Maybe that's better in a way, because we see things for what they are. Everything is just a bit more out in the open. When things were really hard here, I would think that my mom lived through a civil war. Her mom got kicked out of her own home and had to leave for Lebanon, then also had to live through a civil war. Same with her mom. So I think, they've been through worse, I'll survive.

T: Your great grandmother Laurice Srouji was also a designer of great renown in Palestine, before she was displaced during the Nakba. What kind of work was she doing, and who were her clients?

C: She had her atelier and was doing couture work. She had clients that would come in and ask for dresses for bridal trousseaus because their daughters were getting married. Women would kind of come from different parts of the country to work with her. It was a British mandate at the time, so some of the British mandate wives would also come. It's really sad because we don't have anything left of that place. We just have a picture and a bag full of things like trims and little pieces of fabrics.

T: What was your experience designing costumes for Bonjour Tristesse like?

C: It was a very interesting process. I'd never done a film before, and had no idea going in. I love films. It was always my dream to include film in my brand universe, whether it was producing or directing a film, or even costumes.

T: I came across some articles you wrote a long time ago for Rookie about some of your favourite films.

C: What!? Deep cuts, deep cuts! What did I write about?

T: You did these journals of when you were in Indonesia and there were images from Lebanon, too. Then there were the movies you’d written about. They were these really great, kind of esoteric films that your average person would have never heard about. I thought it was so interesting. So I completely understand just how much you love film.

C: I wrote my thesis on it. I love it. It's a big part of me. I did an interview before we started, and I was saying how film is the closest thing to fashion, in terms of creative direction, because you also have to kind of create a whole universe.

The process with Durga was really nice. I don't know if all films are like this. I doubt it.

T: Was she the one who approached you?

C: She did. David (Siwicki, whose company does PR for Renaissance Renaissance) was already in contact with her and was like, hey, why doesn’t Cynthia do this? She had already heard about the brand and really liked it. It was really flattering. At first I thought, there was no way it could be real. She could probably get any big brand to do it. It’s Bonjour Tristesse, it's a classic French novel. Don't get your hopes up. They’ll probably pick a bigger brand and it'll be over and they'll call and be like, sorry, maybe another time. When things actually started happening, I thought, oh my god, shit. This is happening. This is real. It’s a dream coming true.

It was very collaborative between me, Durga, and Miyako, who was the costume designer, who is amazing. I personally love working that way. We spoke a lot, Miyako would send mood boards, and I would send back ideas. I had a couple of in-person meetings where we just tried things on Miyako and got ideas there.

The process of thinking of just one person versus a whole collection can be really liberating, because when you're designing a collection, there are specific commercial things you have to think about. And when you're thinking of a movie, it's just so intimate. It's trying to understand the psychology of the character. It's kind of easier because it's just one person. You have to think only about that story. You don't think about, for example, if clients in China are going to wear it, or if people don't buy yellow. You have your limitations of the character, but it's also more free.

T: Were you sourcing materials in Lebanon for the costumes?

C: Yes, because we had a very limited budget. For Lily’s (McInerny) dress, there was a very specific shade that Miyako had in mind. She knew that that scene was going to be shot in the dark, so she thought we should make it from something quite light, like a pale yellow or cream. We tried to find a lot of different options for that. I searched here. She searched in New York. We ended up finding the fabric for that dress in New York, but the rest I sourced here.

T: How did you come up with the idea for the dress with the cape? Chloë Sevigny’s character Anne talks about a dress resembling a dandelion, and when I saw the dress with the cape, I thought how it really did look like a dandelion. She looks like she's about to float away.

C: I was experimenting with making this dress maybe three years ago, for Fall/Winter ‘23. I was trying to make a vest with a bubble peplum. The lining wasn't stitched to it, and when I tried it on, the lining fell out. I was like, that's such a cool shape! I should do this with a bunch of other things. I liked this idea of one piece attached to another and that you could wear it in multiple ways. That's something I love to explore in my work. It became a cape, then a cape dress, then a cape jacket.

We decided the dress was already so perfect, and adapted it, adding the tulle element that it didn't have before to make it look more like a flower.

T: How much time did you have?

C: You don't have much time. Apparently we actually started way in advance. We did a lot of research and discussed ideas. Then it’s like we need everything in a week, so you're making dresses overnight. You have to be super resourceful and work with whatever you have, try to find things that already exist you can adapt. I thought of what I could adapt that would work for Anne’s character and work for Chloe's body type as well? I have to think of the women, the actual women, Chloe and Lily, who are going to wear these garments, and they also have to look good in them. They have to feel comfortable when they're wearing it, while also reflecting the character.

T: Anne’s sketches in the film, did they already exist or did you illustrate them for the film?

C: I sent them a bunch of things that existed and also sketched new ones.

T: I saw some of your illustrations on Rookie’s site, as well. It was wonderful to see the evolution of your work.

C: My god, I forgot. I was talking to a friend recently who said she was obsessed with Rookie. I was like, how do you even know what Rookie is, because she's Lebanese. I was really surprised that she knew what it was. It compelled me to go look at the site.

I loved Rookie. It was an amazing community. That’s where the OGs started: you had Laia (Garcia-Furtado), who's at Vogue now. My friend Dana Boulos was a photographer for Rookie in the beginning. There was also (artist) Maria-Ines (Gul). We all ended up meeting somehow and becoming friends. It was a very, very rare community.

T: I don't think something like that exists anymore.

C: No, because there's only one Tavi Gevinson in the world. There aren’t any other twelve year olds starting a magazine.

T: How did you get into Rookie, and how did you start doing work for them?

C: I just emailed them. I don't remember how I found out about it, maybe through Tavi’s blog. I loved what she was doing and wanted to be involved somehow. Never in my life did I think they would answer me.

T: I wanted to write for them, but I was afraid to email them.

C: No, they actually answered. I was so shocked. Everyone was on an email and everyone was so excited. I did an illustration for them that said “Rookie”, and they were like, that's the logo!

T: You're behind the logo! That's so cool!

C: All the fonts, all the handwritten stuff, the logo. I did lots of little icons. For the first iteration of the site, everything was handwritten.

T: Can you share what your inspirations are for the Spring/Summer 2026 collection?

C: I was thinking about what I miss and what I like about fashion sometimes is that it's aspirational, like the way we were talking about our childhood. I love that fashion was aspirational, creating these characters, something not really reachable. What's aspirational to me right now at this point in my life? Sleep. That is my major aspiration in life: to get some sleep, to get some fucking rest. That's probably the biggest luxury right now.

T: I was reading about how for Fall/Winter 2025, you had an alter ego.

C: I was looking at this idea of alter ego, exploring my queerness, and this idea of are you in love with her or do you want to be her? I came up with the story of this woman who is very buttoned-up and elegant. She starts seeing this other woman around town as she's doing her errands. The other woman feels a bit more relaxed, more free with herself. The first woman becomes obsessed with her and follows her around town, eventually following her into a club, where she comes face to face with her and realizes, it's her.

It's this idea that you're both these people. I looked at it through the construction of the garments and how through one garment you can transform it from very strict to something loose and unbuttoned. The way you place the button on the garment can turn it from something very free to something strict.

T: I think it’s very interesting how women observe each other, not exactly consuming each other. You don't know if they're in love with each other…

C: You don't know if they admire each other. Or are you in love with her? Do you just want to be her? I think we have a lot of power as women that we don't realize. I'm starting to see more and more women dressing for themselves, which is really interesting, moving out of the patriarchal norms.

My older sister was here for a week and she's very straight and she asked me to style her. I'd style her and didn’t realize it wasn’t attractive to men, because I'm not thinking what's going to be attractive to men when I'm getting dressed. I'm thinking, what do I want to wear? What I feel. What's my mood? Am I feeling boyish? Am I feeling girlish? Am I feeling lazy? Am I feeling like I want to get dressed up? I put my sister in a t-shirt, jeans, and black loafers, and she said, I don’t feel sexy, I look like a man. And I said, but you look so sexy!

There's also a lot that we can learn from each other's idea of what is and isn't sexy. I think it's a lot more fun when it's loose, and you can play around from both sides. I play a lot with the idea of what is sexy in my work. It's something I ask a lot, because what is sexy when you're removing it from the male gaze, when it's not in relation to a man. We're so used to sexy being something that's sexy to a man. But what is sexy for a woman?

T: I have a pair of black trousers made by you. I was fatigued by trying to find a good pair of black pants, and when I tried them on, I thought, this is somebody who actually thinks about a woman’s body when they're designing clothes!

C: I think about fit more deeply because of the way I grew up. My role model is a woman designer, my mum. If I don't think of something, she will think of it. I learned about fit from my mum, and that way of thinking is invaluable. She started her own business, she did everything on her own. I grew up with two sisters and my mum, my dad was working abroad, and my grandmothers were around all the time. It was a very matriarchal environment.

We talked about what my mom would force me to wear as a kid. I also didn’t ever want to go through that again, things like itchy fabric or something cutting you in the wrong place. When I wear something, I want to feel free. And I want every woman to feel free, even if she's wearing a ballgown, like that dress that Cécile’s wearing in the movie. It's super light. It's designed to be really comfortable. She can still move. She can still dance. I do a lot of things that are a bit dressier, but they're still very comfy.

I can attest to this because I've worn a lot of my things when I go to events. I want to feel good, but I want to feel comfortable. The last thing I want to be thinking about is the outfit. I don't want to feel itchy or that I'm sweating in it or it’s cut in the wrong place. This is what goes on in my mind. I’m very sensitive to those things.

T: It's a very brilliant mind.

C: No! Ask my mom, it's not. She’ll laugh. She’ll be like, okay…

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Because I dress according to my mood, and my mood has been gloom, my more exuberant clothing has taken a back seat. While I love a good crystal clear sky and the radiant warmth of the sun, I must say that melancholy May has grown on me. Some of the greatest romantic stories and films, after all, are not set on the sandy beaches of Ibiza or Santorini (these places are expressly intended for flings, debauchery, and cold cases): imagine a Mr Darcy declaring to Elizabeth Bennet, “I love you…most ardently,” with the sun beating down on them, David Guetta thumping in the background, him in Speedos. Preposterous. True love and melodrama is only to be found where long skirts drag in the mud and downpours are torrential; this is where the Janes Austen and Campion triumph.

I was recently looking at pictures from Miu Miu’s Spring 1997 beautifully gloomy collection, in itself a deviation from the brand’s usual whimsical and effervescent self. Both at Prada and Miu Miu that season, Miuccia Prada showed collections informed by the silhouettes of the 19th and early 20th centuries but looser, liberated from corsets and caged hoop skirts. Surprisingly, Miu Miu was the more prudish of the two; there were heavy canvas floor-length skirts worn with ribbed black bateau sweaters and turtlenecks, and pristine long white dresses and skirts just shy of a bustle. Smart capri pants were paired with sturdy cotton seafaring tops, and contemporary Edwardian underpinnings were layered only to reveal more than they concealed.

Perhaps I have been thinking of Jane Campion too much lately, but I couldn’t help but imagine that Prada had drawn some degree of inspiration from Campion’s extremely influential (and gloomy day essential) The Piano, which had made a great impression on designers such as Dries Van Noten for his Spring 1999 collection, and Alexander McQueen for Fall 1997. The sheer white layers from Miu Miu reminded me of scenes from the film in which mother and child are in bed in their white cotton chemises, tickling each other and collapsing into a fit of giggles or laying side by side, deep in sleep. The long dresses and skirts and fitted short jackets would not at all be out of place in the marshes, in the pouring rain.

Very little exists about the collection aside from Women’s Wear Daily reports of the brand having moved its show from New York to London (paging Miss Austen), and a snippet from Little Book of Miu Miu, in which its author , referencing Miuccia Prada, writes that the inspiration was the story of “a very young girl working at the circus.” It thrilled me that Prada had conjured an image of a circus girl from a seemingly distant time and explored how she would dress, instead of a remote feminine ideal. There is something very satisfying in dressing for the female gaze, the joy of receiving a compliment from a woman on an outfit well done, or admiring a woman dressed for herself. While the male gaze often relates to sexual desire and the feminine ideal, that of the female’s is complex and not easily defined; what appeals to my own is when one wears an outfit that announces, I have done this only for myself.

Inspired by Miuccia Prada’s story of the circus girl, I turned to my closet to see what would transpire with pieces that spend most of the year untouched, but which are perfect for brief not-yet-warm-but-not-entirely-cold sulky spells: light wool tops, a sleeveless knit, and a canvas skirt from Spring 1997 (my version of the circus girl is set in a grey coastal town by way of the big city).

A few years ago, I’d been possessed by the need to find this skirt. While some of the more commercial pieces, such as the sheer printed dresses, occasionally made an appearance on secondhand sites, it seemed as though the skirts from the collection hadn’t even gone into production. After months of intermittent searching, I finally located it on eBay and bought it for $70, $78.85 with shipping and fees.

I’m ashamed (but also delighted?) to admit that the first time I wore this skirt was to the beach. It dragged against the sand, some collecting along the hem so that each time I brought it out to wear, yet another granule would drop. Everything about it felt very romantic, and had I seen The Piano then, Michael Nyman’s soundtrack would have been playing in my head.

Next in this circus girl’s trousseau: Simon Porte Jacquemus’s clown couture. I am still a fan of the designer’s early work, which toed the line between ridiculous and reality, the clothes catering to the female gaze, its wants and its needs. I had been bowled over by these two tops from Fall 2017 that were at once kooky and chic. After tracking down the first top on Vestiaire Collective, I was gutted to discover upon its arrival that it was too small, but I held on to it in the delusional hope that it would one day fit. While cleaning up my closet last year, I decided to no longer let it haunt me and listed it on Instagram. A saint of a person who was following me sent me a message saying that she was selling the exact same top in my size. Years and much pining later, the top is finally mine!

The melodramatic sleeves and oversized sailor collar make these tops not entirely ideal for the cooler months, as my heavy wool coat can crush and flatten them on contact. But, they are perfect for melancholy May; wearing them makes me feel as though I should be gazing wistfully into the horizon in between turning cartwheels on the shore.

For the seafaring circus girl at the end of her rope, both literally and figuratively, there can never be too much of it. I purchased this knit top from Céline’s Resort 2015 collection on Poshmark at the upper end of my price-limit, a tidy $300, though having seen how much pieces from Phoebe Philo’s tenure are being resold for, I’d consider it a bargain. This is the first piece I reach for on neither-here-nor-there days, and it also serves wonderfully on cool summer night on the beach.

Last but not least, a lightweight sweater from Prada’s Spring 2001 collection. I bought from The Real Real right before leaving for a trip to Italy last fall. Because I was traveling to three cities and two islands in less than ten days and would have to take trains and ferries and do a fare amount of walking, I was searching for a light knit that wouldn’t take up too much space and weight in my luggage that was also suitable for milder evenings. When this sweater popped up, it seemed serendipitous. My favorite way to wear it is inspired by the runway version, with a voluminous white skirt, no accessories, and an attitude. From shipwreck to 19th century circus!

My great grandmother passed away the day after the Twin Towers fell. Her daughter, my grandmother, my aunt, cousin, uncle, and a few other relatives filled their bags with whatever clothes were airing out for the evening, clambered into my aunt's white Toyota, and under the blanket of the night sky, made their way to the village where my great grandmother lived, where my grandmother as a young girl climbed trees and raised chickens. My mother and I stayed behind to be there for my grandfather, who was unwell, but also because we were frozen by what we saw on the television, terrified for my father who had just recently left for America to forge a new life for us. In the seventies as a student in Lafayette, Louisiana, people shouted at him from their cars to go back to where he came from. In the aftermath of that fall, it would be almost ten years before we were to finally be reunited as a family under one roof, no more sporadic trips and tearful goodbyes.

Coincidentally, ten years had elapsed from the time my great grandfather boarded a ship to forge a new life for his family in England to when he returned for them. He left when my grandmother was six and came back when she was sixteen; in those ten years she had continued to climb trees and raise chickens. Soon after her father's arrival, my grandmother's marriage was arranged to my grandfather. A beloved pet chicken of hers was sacrificed to the altar of impending marriage and cooked into a roast to be served to her in-laws-to-be. For their honeymoon, my grandparents left the village for the town to see a film at a theater, my grandfather's relatives in tow.

My great grandmother was married when she was three years old, to my great grandfather, who was four. Each day, my great grandmother was carried in a palanquin to her husband's village, and the two would play as children do in a nursery, and was brought back home, in her palanquin, in the evening. This journey continued until late adolescence. When she moved to London with her family, including her now-married daughter and her husband, my great grandmother, not speaking a word of English, ran the front and back of a restaurant her husband had founded, a Bangladeshi restaurant that had become a hub for Bangladeshi revolutionaries, himself a founder of an association to unionize Bangladeshi cooks in England. Ten years later my great grandfather closed shop and moved his family back to Bangladesh; a war for liberation was imminent and he wanted to be there for it.

Early into the war, my grandmother fled with her family – my mother then ten years old – from the capital to the village where she grew up. There were moments when a message would arrive late in the night that violence would soon descend upon that quiet place, and my grandmother would rouse her seven children and help them and my grandfather, who was partially paralyzed from an illness, onto a dinghy on the shore of a large pond they lived near, and all nine of them would lay flat and still in the middle of this body of water until the darkness passed and day broke.

After the war ended, the nation had been liberated, they returned home. Soon after, my grandmother retrieved the few pieces of gold jewelry she had put away in a safety deposit box at a bank that belonged to her and her mother; they were mostly gifts from her father, who, though they did not have much, indulged his only daughter, and imagined one day his granddaughters would wear them too. On the evening of this retrieval, a gang entered the family's home and, with my grandfather held at gunpoint and the little children terrified and hiding, they stole everything of any value, including the jewelry, with the exception of an ornate gold filigree kanpasha that took the form of the ear and had been hidden away. Beyond the balcony where my mother hid, she saw the face of the man who had given the order, a man she knew.

In the early eighties, my mother's older sister was the first of their siblings to marry, and friends and extended family were generous enough to loan my grandmother jewelry for her daughter to wear on the occasion, and of course, there was the kanpasha. But my great grandmother, a formidable woman of great pride, resented that her granddaughters would not have something of hers that they would not, if they chose, have forever, a small token of her love for them, an heirloom to be passed on. From a gold bangle she wore, she had five identical delicate earrings made for her five granddaughters. Long after they were all married, my aunts traded their earrings for something of their own choosing, but my mother chose forever.

A few days before I got married, my mother gave me a small white leather jewelry box we had bought together some years prior. It contained what looked like a pair of fine hoop earrings that were actually two tiny gold bangles my eldest aunt and her husband had given me when I was born. There was a long chain that belonged to my grandmother which had been bequeathed to my mother after my grandmother had passed, as well as a set of jhumkas my mother had bought when she was about my age. When I was a child, I would sometimes play with them while my mother was preoccupied, tapping on each domed drop which would softly wiggle to the touch, pretending they were tiny ornate full-skirted dresses, instead of earrings, worn by a tiny ornate person or a wiggling worm.

Also inside the box were the earrings my mother held on to, my great grandmother's gift to her. Set in the center of it are four small stones, two green, two a deep burgundy, repurposed from the original gold bangle; each earring has a petite dome drop with the same stones along the edges. This is perhaps my most prized possession, these little earrings that have seen four generations, conceived by a woman most resourceful – rode a palanquin, raised three children alone for ten years, ran a restaurant in England with no knowledge of English, had an impish smile – and from whom came women who endured.