Often when we sit with our mother, she tells us stories of her past to make us feel the essence of her time, showing us the things that she had received from her parents and grandparents. Be it her mother’s saree or a letter from her father. To see them like that not only brings the warmth of a personal belonging but also the lifestyle of that era.
Preserve. A word we hear often, be it for heritage or our cultures. They make us what we are and to carry them forward they have been preserved for us, not just for usability but to take ahead a legacy which one can’t buy. All these things of the past are the heirlooms that have been passed from generation to generation.
Sustainability and heirlooms, are two different things but maybe to think of it they aren’t so different. Both require preservation, yet both provide us with care at every stage. The concept of an heirloom is the process where one generations’ creation becomes the valued possession of those to follow. Whereas Sustainability is to savour them for a better future.
Earth is the ultimate heirloom that has been going on from one generation to another. Like all those valuable legacies we will receive to take forward, this planet is the most precious heirloom that every person can give with their personal feeling of warmth and value. We just need to realise how to carry on the traditions while keeping up with the contemporary needs of the future.
Even in our personal lives, there are many things we have lost in the way but also taken some forward. From something like grinding the spices ourselves at home or making different types of pickles. Though we haven’t learnt all of them, but we have grown up in the environment where such activities hold a significance in our life and we would sustain them.
It’s important to remind ourselves that the things we take forward are the core values of who we are today. The groundwork of our existence lie in these and so they go on to become the legacies we pass down in generations.
After so many years in fashion, we personally feel blessed for the museums as they are a big example of sustainability with heirloom because they have saved some of the most precious arts, crafts and techniques which have impacted the world in and for many revolutions. One that came to us with history is natural dyeing. Natural dyeing holds a past of 5000 years and thankfully some people have taken it ahead step by step for us to acquire it.
Fashion was about deep rooted cultures but not anymore. Earlier it was not just about clothing but a representation of personalities, belongingness and communities but now fashion is just about money. It has contaminated the meaning of Heirloom in our society not just in terms of the tradition or craft but most importantly our earth by polluting it excessively. The only value it is accounted for now is the monetary value and nothing else.
Today we have become a part of this industrial world where a large population is being catered by massive quantities of creations. But creation is all there is. The timelessness that was created by the incomparable value of something seems to have disappeared. As we said that the Earth is our heirloom and we need to care for it, save it and pass it on to our coming generations. Earth is not our mother anymore, it is the child with whom we need to deal consciously, cautiously and carefully. That status has evolved over time and has made it our responsibility to nourish and nurture it.
As we move towards that evolution and revolution, creation of that balance is needed right now. This heirloom is the provider of all the assets that our civilisation will ever use. So ultimately, the question that lies is the bigger picture is this, Are you sustaining this heirloom to pass forward?
Let us know how you intend to sustain this heirloom!
Lots of Flowers <3
HeenaAgrima