The linens my mother kept in silk

My mother has an eye. For old things, for fine things, for the small quiet beauty most people walk straight past. She raised me on it, hauling me round the brocantes and the vide-greniers while I complained the whole way, until somewhere along the line her eye became my own.

So when she asked me a few weeks ago to go through some of her treasured things, the ones she has kept wrapped and stored here in France for years, I think I knew what I was looking for before I found it. Among her linens, so fine no one seems to make them any more, was one old French piece I could not put down.

I took it straight to Sharon. She and her team keep a small atelier in Cannes, where they do the patient, careful work you rarely see any more, taking old cloth apart and coaxing it into something new. I left it with her on a Wednesday. By Friday I was in for a fitting, and by Saturday I was wearing it, a top and a skirt now, to my partner’s family reunion dinner, the one they hold every year.

An old French linen my mother had treasured for years, and there I was wearing it into a room full of his family, quietly carrying a little of her with me. Every stitch Sharon sets is as careful as the way my mother wraps the things she treasures, and between them, an old piece that had been put away for years now has a whole new life. I am so grateful, and already dreaming up the next one. You will find her in the Cannes Guide under Kokoro, and I am linking her here too.