The Stories We Wear

Reflections from a wardrobe, where fabric becomes memory…

There are certain places that hold memory in ways we rarely speak of.

A garden in late summer—golden, fading, unrushed. offering an ethereal quiet as the days fold into autumn.

A writing desk with papers, photographs, and books stacked just so, waiting for another story to unfold.

And a wardrobe, quiet and unassuming, where fabric holds the imprint of years. Journeys taken. Selves once inhabited. Small moments stitched into the seams.

When I open the door, the scent of time rises—cedar, wool and traces of perfume. Pomelo, tuberose, lime, blue agava, gardenia. The scents of a lifetime.

Light filters in slowly, catching the shimmer of a beaded sleeve, the soft wool of a coat that once braced against a Sydney winter.

There is no rush here.

Only recognition.

Hanging in the half-light, a jacket embroidered with stories from Vietnam.

I found it in Ho Chi Minh City, in a narrow shop tucked between market stalls, where the scent of jasmine tea and roasted coffee lingered in the air.

It was a time when I often paused for a cà phê sữa đá, Vietnamese iced coffee— dense, bitter sweet, with hints of chocolate and smoke.

A city I once called home.

The shopkeeper smoothed the fabric with practiced hands. She told me it was hand-stitched by women from the Sapa region in the northern highlands. I ran my fingers over the beadwork, feeling the weight of someone else’s time and artistry.

I had no occasion in mind. But I knew, as I held it, that every time I wore it would become one.

Next to it, a silk scarf.

It’s a collage of photographs, the colors of Vietanm pressed into the silk. When I look at it, I see fragments of a life once lived, stitched together in memory.

I was with my friend Christine that day—French Christine, we still call her, to distinguish her from the others in my life.

I tied the scarf around my neck that afternoon, imagining the memories it might carry as we prepared to move on from Vietnam.

And when I wear it now, I still think of shopping with Christine, and the times we met for tea— sharing our expat stories, stitching together our lives one conversation at a time.

A wardrobe, for me, is not a place for storage.
It is a quiet museum of past selves.

There’s the Barbour coat that carried me through the English countryside.

The custom-made silk tunics that blew softly in the humidity of a southern Vietnamese summer.

The sturdy boots that walked me through New Zealand’s walking trails— places I no longer call home.

These pieces remind me that I have been many women. And yet, at my core, I have always been the same.

There is something sacred in keeping these garments.
Some I reach for often.

Others remain untouched, waiting for the right moment, the right season, the right version of myself to return.

This is why I do not call it a closet.
That word feels too small, too practical.

It feel less like a closet and more like a keeper of stories. My personal atelier.

A quiet room where fabric becomes memory.

And where, with each piece I slip from its hanger,
I step into another chapter of my unfolding story.