Connections
The link between a person and a garment can never be planned for, but has lasting impact when a garment becomes a life-long companion. It reveals the potential for change in each individual and often marks that in the associations with a piece, for single, small actions can have big effects.
Family healing
"Both of these dresses were made by my grandmother from fabric that my great aunt brought back from her travels. And so one dress is a Thai silk from the 1960s. The other one is an Indonesian batik that she also bought in the 60s.
[Both dresses] are hand sewn and they’re just really amazing craftsmanship. And my grandmother passed away a year ago and I went out and helped my mother clean out the house and the closet… and we were going through and I was trying on the dresses and I realized I was exactly the same size as my grandmother.
My mom told me all these stories about how she remembered exactly the night when my grandmother finished sewing the pink dress and she had to finish sewing it really quickly because her and my grandfather were going out dancing. They would go dancing all the time. And she just remembers so much… it was just this really beautiful moment with my mother who was also a fashion designer to hear about her memories of my grandmother and see my mother healing through discussing the dresses and the fabric and the stories behind them.
And so my mother then gave me these two dresses and they’re some of my favourite dresses and I brought them to New York as special pieces. But you know they’ve been a blessing in my life. One day when I first moved to New York and I was having a really hard day in New York, I put on the pink dress and I went to the Met and I took myself on a date to the Met wearing this pink dress and a pair of high heels and it made life a little bit better and the New York adjustment. They’ve been a special part of my life since…"
New York - January 2013
Photograph by
Ellinor Stigle
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