One thing you should know about my sister, she is always loved jeans. Even before we talked about sustainability, she was cutting them up, redesigning, adding details, turning old denim into something bold and fresh. So when we decided to shift towards sustainable fashion, that love for upcycling, genes became our starting point for our first show in May, 2024.

She actually designed a full mini collection using upcycled denim. Each piece was creative, playful, and meaningful, and you could feel it. People weren't just impressed. They were connected. They saw fashion that wasn't faithful. They saw storytelling in the stitches. But after that show, we knew we couldn't stop there.

My sister lives in Tehran, and she started digging deeper, looking for beautiful natural materials. She discovered linen, hand-printed cotton pattern fabric made by artisan in small cities, and she poured all of that into her next collection. But we were building and started to feel bigger. It wasn't just a fashion project anymore.

It was a way to combine beauty, creativity, and care, not just for style, but for the planet. And for the first time, I felt like our path, this path was the right one.

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You know, I didn't plan to enter the fashion world. I was actually just trying to help my sister. She is a designer back home in Iran, and one day she sent me some of her pieces. They were beautiful, really feminine, playful with this poetic vibe. I started showing them around and to my surprise, women loved them.

It became my way of connecting with other women, like, Hey, this is my sister's work. And immediately with start talking about design color, the story behind it. At first, it was just clothes, just art. But something started to feel off for me, as I learned more about the fashion industry, especially fast fashion and textile race, I couldn't unsee it.

I looked at a shirt and think, what this made ethically, what is it made of? Is this contributing to the problem? So I told my sister, what if we made this sustainable? She was all in, and that was the beginning of something new. Not just beautiful fashion, but thoughtful fashion. Fashion with conscious.

That's how my journey started, not by trying to be a designer, but by sharing my sister's story and slowly realizing that maybe this was becoming my story too.

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After coming back from the retreat, the very first thing I realized was. Okay, I need to sell my bags, and if I want to sell them, I need to know people. I need to connect. So right after the retreat at the beginning of August, 2023, I decided to join the Railroad Chamber of Commerce. And honestly, that turned out to be another really.

Fulfilling an interesting step. I threw myself into so many different programs. They offered try to learn everything about running a business. It wasn't easy, I'll tell you that, but it was fun and fulfilling. Almost every day I would catch myself thinking I am so grateful. I got the chance to follow my dreams.

Grateful for my husband who always encouraged me and said, go for it, and grateful for my friends who kept cheering me on, but even with all the learning and all those good vibes. The selling part. Yeah. That wasn't really happening. I tried Etsy. I tried local markets. I went to different events. I showed up, I smiled.

I explained my story, and finally it clicked. I noticed so many people had no idea about textile waste sustainability. It wasn't really something that had a place in their day-to-day lives. That's when I realized maybe I was starting from the wrong place. Maybe instead of just selling bags, I need to first share this story, show people why it matters.

Maybe to get there, I could try something new, something that brings in even more beauty and meaning. So in the next episode, I'm going to tell you how I decided to bring in my sister's sustainable clothing line and how that opened up a whole new chapter of this journey.

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📍 From July 11 to 15, I officially kicked off my business at the yoga retreat, and honestly, it felt like a dream. The weather was beautiful, the music was soulful, and I met so many amazing, like-minded people. Everything was under control. My website was up. I had, uh, everything ready for the business. I was over the moon.

Everything about those days just fills me up. But you know how it goes. The fun part of business doesn't last forever. I came home full of hope and energy only to realize now I actually have to sell all these bags and yoga towels I made, and that's when things got real. As I started explaining my product to people, I could feel it.

They didn't see them the way I did that hits me. It was like, oh, I've started a journey. That's definitely not going to be easy because it's not just about the bags, is it? How do I explain why someone should buy what I've made? Why it matters and why they should be okay paying a little bit more. That's what I started to realize.

My job isn't just making things. It's sharing this story, the why behind it all, and honestly, that's what I wanted to talk about in the next episode.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.