A letter from our EIC to you :)
Issue 04 of Santulan Magazine - All About Fashion - is now yours 💛
Words by Ashvini Navaratnam, EIC at Santulan Magazine
It’s 10pm in New York at my neighborhood dive bar. The lights have that sagging lampshade sort-of yellow, engulfing the whole room. I sashay towards my friends standing next to the murky-water tank of turtles. They guzzle down their beverages as if wine were in fact water and scream to hear each other over a rather mediocre mix of Temperature by Sean Paul. I’ve thrown on my Kids of Immigrants (KOI) shorts with my cherished first-pair of Jordans, a cropped denim sleeve, and my South Asian armory jewels. The funny thing is, no one here can really see shit.
Style is identity. So neatly tucked into every decision, whether seen or not, are our stories, our ancestry, and our life-curated taste.
Two years ago, I put my big lady pants on and cold-emailed a founding member of KOI, Debbie Gonzales. We bonded over a deep love for hot-sauce, our sorrows for the world’s political climate, and how building community - family - was at the heart of everything we did. Our conversation felt like the warm hug I had been yearning for in an industry that often serves to be an emblem of the White Witch of Narnia: icy, cold, and a little bit too perfect.
In quintessential LA fashion, the weeks before had led me to the Silverlake Flea where I copped a pair of KOI’s brown-mesh basketball shorts marked with an embroidered tiger and the following phrase:
“Shout-out to immigrant parents who came here with nothing but gave us everything”
Before that, the idea of wearing any sort of wording on my body made me audibly want to cringe. Maybe it was the fact that when I was 15, I had purchased a Beyonce-inspired crop tee plastered with the words “Surf Board.”
And no, no one told me what that actually meant.
But these words felt sort of lived in. Like they were carefully woven, stitch by stitch, just for me. Too small to the observer’s eye, but mine to hold onto. Regardless of how convoluted the dynamic of an immigrant family household can be, to be a KOI is to know sacrifice not as an abstract, but as the very ground we stand on. It’s to know that a labor of love may also have been a labor of pain.
And maybe that’s the magic of fashion - pieces that tuck away meaning in details you might miss at first glance. What’s unseen becomes the most precious part, like the sweet spot at the end of the ice cream cone.
To have worked with KOI’s core team alongside one-of-a-kind photographer (and human!), Brittany Bravo, on this issue’s cover story, has reminded me just how powerful art can be when made with care and intention.
Oh, and to never knock a cold email! The art of getting anywhere is thinking you can.
From womenswear designer Erik Charlotte and stylist Mui-Hai Chu, to regenerated textile company Cycora, architectural design firm Food New York, and timeless brands like Abacaxi & Society of Cloth - this issue is a time capsule of what fashion really has to offer.
A little bit of truth.
⭐ Now available for purchase here
⭐ LOS ANGELES, join us for the official launch event in partnership with Flavors from Afar on December 7th