A Parable, a Name, and a Dedication

PREORDER

Some stories are not meant to be explained quickly.

They are meant to be entered.

Recently, I shared a short film, a parable, spoken aloud and layered with shadow, fabric, and stillness. It was offered without interpretation and without conclusion. That was intentional.

Parables do not demand understanding.

They invite reflection.

This one emerged from a season of memory, reckoning, and making, where design was not simply about form, but about breath, endurance, and what it means to be carried when we can no longer carry ourselves.

Deliverance often comes not when we have the right plan,

but when we finally tell the truth about our helplessness.

That sentence sits at the center of this work.

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The Story Behind the Parable

This parable was always about my mother.

The smoke in the story represents a kind of loss that is not sudden, but inherited, the loss of being loved well by her own mother and father. A loss that shaped how she learned to survive.

She lived much of her life trying to move through that smoke.

Trying to find clarity, independence, and air.

At times, she masked that pain through partying and outward freedom, believing that this kind of strength might protect us, or make us independent. But survival is not the same as safety. What was meant to shield us sometimes made our relationship more difficult, more fragmented, more tender to hold.

Still, she was trying to live.

She was trying to breathe.

Before she passed, something shifted.

She told the truth about her need.

She repented.

She reached for grace instead of endurance.

And she was redeemed.

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The Garment

The parable belongs to the final piece in a curated collection, a garment that was still becoming when the story was shared.

Before color.

Before completion.

Before release.

In my practice, garments are not designed in isolation. They are shaped by story, by process, and by what lives beneath the surface of the work. This piece holds themes of protection, surrender, and being covered, not as weakness, but as mercy.

Rather than naming it myself, I opened that moment outward.

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The Naming

After sitting with the responses and the spirit in which they were offered, the final garment was named:

Redeemed

The name was given by Sharika Gregory.

It carried clarity without explanation, restoration without spectacle, and grace without force. It was the name that remained.

Sharika was honored as the name-giver and was entrusted with a one-of-a-kind, hand-cut patch from the making of the garment, a textile fragment created from the process itself. Not a replica. Not merchandise. A gesture of acknowledgment and continuity.

The garment itself remains whole and dedicated, held within the collection and archive.

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The Dedication

This final piece is dedicated to my mother.

It does not rewrite the past.

It does not soften the truth.

It honors what was survived, and what was restored.

The smoke did not have the final word.

Grace did.

This work exists as both memory and hope.

Because daughters and mothers can heal.