i was sixteen when my grandmother began handing down her keepsakes, almost a decade before her passing. she had just undergone cancer surgery, and my mom and i had moved in to care for her. i didn’t know it then, but she was preparing me for her absence. i wear those things now: gold aquamarine earrings, our shared birthstone. lambswool scarves from scotland that still carry traces of her powdery jasmine perfume. butterfly hair clips she used to pin her bangs back during warm summer months, pulling weeds in the backyard. they hold her presence in ways i sometimes struggle to articulate in words. objects, especially the ones worn closest to the body, absorb the residue of a life well-lived.

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but we don’t think of clothing this way anymore. we live in a system that teaches us to discard everything, including meaning itself. fast fashion, trend cycles, and a culture of disposability have severed our emotional ties to what we wear. capitalism manufactures desire as an insatiable hunger, conditioning us to seek fulfillment through acquisition rather than attachment. this constant churn of consumption has stripped garments of their meaning. instead of holding stories, they become waste.

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as both a writer and designer, i am drawn to the ways storytelling shapes our understanding of objects. because of this, i approach clothing as both text and artifact, searching for new ways to reconnect what we wear with the stories we carry. my work moves between fabric and narrative, between memory and material, exploring how garments can hold and preserve a life inside them.