Big Summer(4)
“Tell me what got you interested in fashion,” I asked.
“Well, it took a minute,” Leela said, smiling her charming smile. “I’ve always been drawn to… I guess you’d call it self-expression. If I were a better writer, I’d write. If I were a better artist, I’d paint or sculpt. And, of course, my parents are still devastated that I’m not in med school.” I saw a fleeting expression of sorrow, or anger, or something besides arch amusement flit across her pretty features, but it was gone before I could name it, erased by another smile. “High school was kind of a shit show. You know, the mean girls. It took me a while to pull it together, but I made it out alive. And I figured out that I know how to put clothes together. I know how to take a ten-dollar T-shirt and wear it with a two-thousand-dollar skirt and have it look like an intentional whole.” I nodded along, like I, too, had a closet full of two-thousand-dollar skirts and other components of intentional wholes. “So I found my way to working as a stylist. And what I found,” she said, lifting her shoulders and straightening in her seat, “is that women still don’t have the options that we should.” She raised one finger, covered from knuckle to knuckle with gold rings that were as fine as pieces of thread. “If you’re not in the straight-size range, there’s nothing that fits.” Additional fingers went up. “If you’ve got limited mobility, you can’t always find clothes without hooks and buttons and zippers. If you’re young, or on a budget, if you want clothes that are ethically produced, and are made by people who are paid a living wage, I don’t want women to ever have to compromise,” she said, eyes wide, her expression earnest. “You shouldn’t have to decide between looking cute and buying your clothes from a sweatshop.”
I found myself nodding along, feeling a pang of regret for every fast-fashion item I’d ever picked up at Old Navy or H&M.
“Once I started looking at what was available, it was obvious to me—I wanted to design my own clothes,” Leela said. “I know how great it feels—and I’ll bet you do, too—when you put a look together, and it just…” She paused, bringing her fingertips to her lips and kissing them, a clichéd gesture that she somehow made endearing. “It just works, you know?”
I nodded. I did know. Once I’d started searching out clothes that fit and looked good on the body I had instead of the one that I wanted, I had discovered exactly the feeling Leela Thakoon was talking about.
“I think everyone deserves to feel that way. Even if you don’t fit the skinny, white, long-straight-blond-hair mold. Even if you’ve got freckles, or wrinkles, or wide feet, or you’re one size on the bottom and a totally different size on top.” She put her hand just above her breast, like she was pledging allegiance to inclusive fashion. “All of us deserve to feel beautiful.” She looked at me, her eyes meeting mine, and I nodded and found myself unexpectedly blinking back tears. Normally, I would have had a hard time mustering much sympathy for a woman whose worst problem with clothes was that they were too big. You could always get your pants cuffed and your shirts and dresses taken in. You could even pick up things in the children’s section, where everything was cheaper, but if you were plus-size, there wasn’t much you could do if the size of a designer’s offerings stopped before you started. Still, I respected Leela’s attempt to offer kinship, to point out that even tiny, exquisitely pretty world travelers with famous friends didn’t always fit into the box of “beautiful.”
“So that’s why!” She smiled at me brightly, asking, “What else can I tell you?”
I smiled back and asked the open-ended question I used at the end of all of these conversations. “Is there anything else you think I need to know?”
There was. “For starters, I don’t work with sweatshops,” Leela began. “Every single item I sell is made in the USA, by union workers who are paid a living wage.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“We use fabrics made from natural, sustainable materials—mostly cotton, cotton-linen blends, and bamboo—that’s been engineered to wick sweat and moisture and withstand five hundred trips through the washing machine.” She paused, waiting for my nod. “We recycle as much as we can. We’ll have a trade-in program, where you can exchange a worn garment toward credit for something new. We’ve designed our manufacturing and our shipping with an eye toward keeping our carbon footprint as small as possible, and with annual goals for reducing it as well.”
“Also great,” I said, and found, again, that I was impressed in spite of myself.
“We are, of course, a woman-led company with a non-hierarchical management structure.” She gave a small, pleased smile. “True, right now it’s just me and my assistant, so it’s pretty easy, but as we grow I’m going to keep it that way. We’re small at the moment,” she said with that beguiling smile, “but when we expand—not if, but when—we’re going to be as inclusive as possible. That means race, gender, age, ethnicity, and size. I want to make clothes for everybody.”
“That’s terrific,” I said, and meant it.
“Best of all,” she said, reaching across the table and giving my forearm an uninvited squeeze, “the pieces are luscious.” She popped to her feet, picked up the garment bag, and held it in both hands, offering it to me. “Go on. Try them on.”