This week I styled a thrifted sari for a rooftop shoot in Bushwick and I have not stopped thinking about it.
I found the sari months ago at a estate-sale-adjacent shop on Atlantic Avenue, tucked between polyester tablecloths like nobody knew what it was. Deep ochre silk, gold zari border going soft with age. Somebody wore this to weddings once. I paid eleven dollars.
Styling a thrifted sari is a whole different job than styling new clothes. New clothes have no opinions. This one had a whole life.
The brief was contemporary, editorial, a young line doing sustainable South Asian silhouettes. The model was Bangladeshi-American, tall, born in Jackson Heights. We shot on a rooftop off the Jefferson stop on the L, water towers everywhere, the Manhattan skyline doing its thing in the haze.
I didn't want to drape the sari the traditional way. I wanted the old and the now to argue a little on the body.
So I belted it. Structured it over a crisp white shirt, pleats sharp, pallu thrown back like a cape caught in wind. When I got the drape right the whole crew went quiet, which is the only compliment that means anything on set.
Here's what I believe about styling a thrifted sari, or any vintage really: you're not costuming, you're translating. The garment already said something to somebody. Your job is to let it say something new without shouting over the original.
We lost the light around six. Golden hour in Bushwick is unreasonably good, the brick going pink, the L train screeching in the distance like punctuation.
The model looked at herself in the monitor and said her nani had a sari almost exactly this color. That's the moment. That's the whole reason I do this instead of buying new.
Eleven dollars and a hundred years of somebody's Sundays. Fashion, at its best, is just remembering out loud.
Love,