We, Ashaki, called our first collection Eden: Arrival because we were in the Garden. New, hopeful and full of promise. We believe Eve and Adam, alone or together, ate the apple, and that this life is not a burden but a gift. There was no original sin.
Our second collection is about what happens next. About living in this world. It is called Eden: Emerge. We invite you to emerge as you are, as the ancients and mystics have long invited us to do. After waking comes acceptance. And somewhere within acceptance is the understanding that serving yourself fully means to serve others.
So we invite you to be selfish. To overflow.
Our new flower is the Water Iris. She is reckless, abundant and invasive. She knows her worth and spreads without apology. We invite you to hold something of that abundance within yourself.
There are places that call to you. Go towards them. There is no place you belong simply because someone else decided it for you. My own life has never followed a particularly sensible line.
I began as a podiatrist. Then came an entertainment magazine, baby brain development, technology writing and executive coaching. I built a life and family alongside my husband as he built Mercury. All of this happened while raising three children, adapting to a new country and eventually beginning a fashion house.
Since starting Ashaki, curiosity has taken me into social media, AI filmmaking, music, ancient scripture and documentary work. I am now also involved in building a monument in San Francisco and helping create a school in Gaza.
I share this not as a list of achievements. I share it because, on paper, none of it makes much sense. I was a girl raised on welfare who married a boy raised on welfare. Somehow, I kept following whatever my soul pulled me towards.
There has never been one box large enough to contain all the things I wanted to explore. Perhaps there does not need to be one for you either.
Follow your inner knowings. Follow the strange longings that keep returning. Try things. Make things. Change your mind.
There is nothing particularly magical about my willingness to do this. I simply do not fear trying, as much as I fear the pain of depression, induced by subconscious paralysis of hidden fear. And I do not feel ashamed about failure.
I would never berate my children for trying something and failing. I would be proud of them for exploring, learning and beginning again. So I offer myself the same grace.
I also believe Eden can exist upon this earth as it once did, and that we can participate in building it. I believe the moral arc of the universe bends towards goodness. I am, perhaps stubbornly, an optimist. The more we can imagine, the more possibilities we create. Belief alone does not build reality. Creation does. So keep creating.
Even physics reminds us that the apparently solid world is far stranger and more dynamic than it appears. Matter is not static. At its deepest levels, nature is fields, forces, relationships, probabilities and constant interaction. That solid layer, the one that doesn’t move, isn’t really there. Nothing is quite as still as it looks. Everything, you, are alway moving, it just our eyes have adjusted. We do not see, just as others do not see about us what we don’t explicitly show them.
And so I choose action and motion. I make things. I move towards things. I leave enough space for serendipity to find me. I am the water Iris. Growing, invasively dancing into becoming myself.
You will also notice Cherry Blossoms in this collection. Cherry blossoms saved my life, and yes in that most dramatic sense. When I was in the depths of hardship, my mind would sway towards the blossoms that would bloom once a year. The delicate dance they would play when the light touched them. So many shades of pink, luminous, mysterious, ethereal. Then when the petals would fall dancing in the breeze. A bitter sweet moment. But so full of beauty, resplendent, delicate and beloved.
In life we have to live unattached for best outcome, and I practice this balance by living between opposites. So with this collection, we ask you to live between invasive and ethereal.
We have also built Eden: Emerge to live with the Ashaki pieces you already own. We treasure what we make, and we ask you to treasure it too. Wear it. Repair it. Layer it differently. Bring it back next season and the season after that. This is our attempt to acknowledge two truths at once: our desire for new beauty and our responsibility to consume less of it.
Lily and I designed this collection from our souls. Our artisans in India brought it into being by hand.
And we listened to you.
There are more pant sets. More scarves. More dresses. Textures chosen with the body in mind. Garlands that detach so you can decide, on any particular day, exactly how much space you would like to take up.
There are more surprises coming over the next few months, as we release our collection slowly.
If you would like to see them, subscribe to our emails. We do not spam. We are mindful of the time we ask you to give us because, time may be the most precious thing, outside of each other, we have.
Celebrate your ambition.
Your growth.
Your hopes and your prayers.
Loudly.
Wear your becoming.
With heartfelt love,
Fatema
Founder, Mother, Wife, Friend.