Why I Start Every Design With a Feeling, Not a Fabric

When I started designing Jharoka-e-Hijr, I wasn't thinking about embroidery. I was thinking about a window.

Specifically, the kind of window that appears in the second act of Romeo and Juliet. A gallery, arched, carved stone, the garden below in darkness. Juliet steps out and the world pauses. Before she speaks, before anything has been said or decided, she stands at the threshold of being seen. That moment — the suspension just before — is what I wanted to translate into a dress.

I should say: I wasn't drawn to the romantic parts people usually focus on. I was interested in the architecture. What is it about a gallery that makes a person unforgettable? It's partly the framing. The arch above, the columns beside, the distance below. The structure makes the person standing in it deliberate, visible in a specific way. That interested me more than the love story.

Jharoka-e-Hijr — Ishq-e-Khaas Collection

From a Scene to an Embroidery

The front panel of the shirt carries a cathedral arch in gold and copper threadwork, with floral vines climbing along both sides. It's the gallery. The arch is the arch. I didn't arrive at this by sketching silhouettes or pulling fabric samples first. I kept returning to images of that Renaissance facade, the stonework, the carved relief, the way a window of that kind is designed to hold something up while also putting it on display.

The geometric grid across the upper body and down the trousers came from that same reference. The latticed stonework that surrounds a gallery is what gives it gravity. I wanted the embroidery to work the same way, to have the arch sitting within a structure rather than floating on fabric.

This is the question I ask with every piece: how do I make someone feel a story without them reading a single word of it? The answer here was colour and thread. Teal, as deep as a night scene in Verona. Gold, warm the way candlelight looks through stone. The embroidery holds the story. You don't need to know where it came from to feel that something in it means something.

The Fabric Has to Be Able to Hold It

Jharoka-e-Hijr is part of the Ishq-e-Khaas collection, which is made entirely on pure raw silk, crafted to order. That decision isn't incidental. For hand embroidery as detailed as this, the ground fabric matters as much as the thread itself. Gold threadwork on a fabric that can't hold its weight just looks like what it is. On raw silk, the embroidery settles. It looks like it was always going to be there.

Raw silk also moves differently. The teal reads differently in different lights. There's something in it that shifts, and that felt right for a piece that's about a moment of transformation, about a woman stepping into visibility.

The artisans who made Jharoka-e-Hijr didn't know the full story behind it. They knew the arch. They knew where the vines should climb. They made decisions about thread direction and stitch weight that I trust entirely. The story was mine to hold. The execution was theirs. That's always been how this works.

What the Piece Is For

I've tried to describe what I hope someone feels wearing this, and I keep returning to the same word: unforgettable. Not in the way of a grand entrance. In the way of standing somewhere and having the light fall right. Of being framed by something that gives you weight.

At Sarah Tareen, the inspiration behind a piece is never just background. It's structural. It's in the arch and the grid and the choice of thread. The story doesn't sit behind the dress. It is the dress.

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