001: The Return

Back to basics

A New York skyline still (ten years later and I’m still a sucker for it) from a pre-New Year’s viewing of When Harry Met Sally from my sofa

Rejoice! For I have returned, sound of mind, my imposter syndrome given a stern talking-to. For the past year, I wrestled with my role in the industries I’ve written for, namely fashion and beauty. The more I thought about where I stood, I felt in a way that I’d fetishized my own cultural identity for just a sliver of my foot through the door, breaking down intimacies of my life and my thoughts to render it a sort of manual on the South Asian Immigrant Muslim Woman to cater to a gaze coded white. In centering that gaze, I’d abandoned what I’d always to achieve through my writing: to write for us.

I’d so internalized this instructional way of writing, instead of perhaps allowing the reader to do their work of discovering, of engaging their curiosity, I did all the work of laying it out very plainly. I realize now why for so long it pained me to return to something upon its completion. And so when I put pen to paper (or clumsy fingers to keys), even with the intent of writing only for myself, I kept reproducing this clinical way of contextualizing my life, my ideas, my surroundings. The romance of it had been drained.

For several months, I did not write, not for pleasure, not for self. Yet I couldn’t stop the whooshing in my mind, the staring off into the distance in the same manner as my cat and percolating. I grew sad, undefined in a way that didn’t feel freeing but rather stifling. It turns out that I quite enjoy telling stories, and I never should have abandoned the little girl in me who discovered MS Word on her father’s computer, shooing away the ever-annoying Clippit, typing out stories, printing them out and tucking them away in her Pocahontas folder, in exactly the way she wanted.

As an unyielding pessimist, I am surprised to learn that for the first time in a very long time, I am deeply optimistic to be reunited with my words. I no longer aspire to fit into a mold unworthy of me, but to create a home for all that I’ve wanted to explore, and to honour and have more faith in my readers. Here will be a home for fashion (for it is my passion!), monthly round-ups of my 2 a.m. secondhand window-shopping spirals, and conversations with incredible individuals I’ve had the joy of meeting over the years.

A preview of things to come:

Etel Adnan painting; Me! wearing a secondhand Jil Sander skirt (Pre-Fall '18); Ted Muehling Mexican Fire Opal earrings; my sweet princess on board with the tangerine theme; Lee Krasner; Marisa Berenson photographed by Irving Penn; my Octave Seeing Eye stone necklace (a little treat) layered with a pendant my mum gifted to me when I was 16; a Bonnie Cashin burnt-orange suede suit; cat brooch!

To those of you who have continued to support me over the years through my winding platitudes, starts and stops, thank you.

See you tomorrow!