The Wink

A quick, amazing story from this past summer: I was in Manhattan visiting one of Indigo Handloom's private label scarves customers, and it was a crazy hot day...a record high 107 degrees! After the meeting, I stood on the corner of 17th Street and 5th Avenue—talking on the phone and sweating like crazy—until I got completely distracted by a woman walking by in a blue dress.

This wasn't any blue dress—it was actually a sample from the Indigo Handloom clothing line, circa spring 2008! We only made two of these blue and white handloom ikat cotton "prayer" dresses and sold both of them at a sample sale. The fabric of these dresses is truly striking: the weavers wove the prayer "Om Namah Shivaya," which loosely means "I honor the goddess within me," into the cloth using the ancient dyeing technique of ikat.

Of course, I got off the phone and stopped the woman. The proud owner of the dress, Melissa Milgrom, recognized me almost immediately and said, "Aren't you that designer from Dumbo?" The "prayer" dress, she said, was her absolute favorite summer dress, and that she "gets compliments every time I wear it." She had paired it that day with some adorable blue and white wedges, big sunglasses, and a sun hat. Perfect styling!

She also said that she and her friend, another customer, "mourned the end" of the Indigo Handloom store in Dumbo. I was so happy to tell her that I would be up and running under my new label, Smita Paul Design, very soon.

Launching a new project, while exciting, is always a bit scary—this little "wink" from the universe came exactly when I needed it the most.