Memory as Material

Memory is the fabric. Design only shapes it

A piece of fabric is never just cloth.

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It holds the fragrance of cupboards,
pleats folded without mirrors,
heirlooms tucked into aluminium trunks,
coconut oil on a mother’s braid.

Veena's grandmother draped without a mirror.
She knew where each pleat belonged — not styled, but remembered.
A single tuck, instinctive.
It wasn’t performance, it was confidence.

The way Veena once held a sari to sunlight, just to examine the weave.

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Design did not begin for her as a calling. It began as noticing. The glint of synthetic threads.

The way cloth feels when passed from hand to hand. The smell of cupboards long unopened.

She carries balm in her bag for the scent alone — eucalyptus, leather, petrol. Even fabric has a smell, she says. Not perfumed, but human. These small details are not decoration. They are the material of memory itself.

This is where her work comes from: paying attention. To fabric, yes — its texture, its weight — but also to relationships. The invisible choreography of familiarity, trust, exchange.

Through Sakkath, Veena holds this invisible network of gestures —
between weavers and vendors, women and memory, body and cloth.
Each weave remembers where it came from.

Every garment is memory in motion.