Tailored by Bloodline: The Power of Dressing Like Your Mother

We learn style long before we learn language. Not from runways or moodboards, but
from watching a woman get ready. The soft flick of a compact closing. The quick, efficient hair twist when there's work to be done. The way fabric signals intention long before any words can.

My earliest lessons in presentation happened in my grandparents’ room — our family’s unofficial couture archive. A dedicated closet held chiffons and chunnis,
gold-threaded borders, and the occasional velvet piece that made its appearance only in the sharpest winters. I was five, maybe six; blissfully uninterested in palettes or drape theory. I reached only for what felt good in my tiny hands, flung it over my shoulder, wrapped it around myself. Then I’d step out of the store room, chest puffed up like a tiny diva, and do a little ramp walk, my grandparents wholly indulging, offering polite applause for my theatrics.

The second archive lived in photographs. One image of my mother in Switzerland has outlasted every trend cycle. Leaning against a piano, like she
owns both the Alps and the Steinway. She’s leaning against a piano, looking as though she owns both the Alps and the Steinway. Her lipstick, her earrings, her handbag — each the same shade of red. Not coordinated; cosmically aligned. She wears a ruffled white blouse, a black pinafore-ish layer over it, and trousers that aren’t quite capris, but definitely in conversation with the idea of capris. A butterfly clip anchors the entire look. The aspiration was never to recreate her pose — it was to recreate her calm.

To understand how this inheritance moves forward, I spoke to women in their 20s
who, like me, exist in that tender in-between of building a self while still reaching back for the source.

Raveena told me about her gold watch. It was given to her mother by her
grandfather. “Every time I wear it,” she said, “I feel like someone is holding me to a
standard I actually want to live up to.” And memory, I’ve come to realise, is sometimes the most reliable form of accountability — quiet, but unwavering.

And then there’s Rashi, who told me about her mom’s pair of blue pyjamas with cats
on them. “I took them with me when I moved,” she said. “Not intentionally
sentimental. They were just in the pile.” But now they’ve become her emergency comfort option. “When I put them on,” Rashi said, “it feels like my mother is in the room without needing to say anything.” The loneliness downgrades from “existential crisis” to “okay, we’re fine, let’s order noodles.” And truly, sometimes the closest thing to being hugged is wearing fabric that remembers you back.

Clothing, I’ve realised, is rarely just clothing. Sometimes, it's a prophecy.
Recently, I borrowed a kaftan from my mother’s closet, a piece I would have never
picked myself. Too much ease, too much confidence in its own drape. She
suggested I wear it over my black bodycon dress, something I do reach for. But the
outfit made more sense than anything I’ve styled on purpose. Her garment carried
the room; mine just kept pace.

When I wore it, I didn’t just look good. I felt calibrated. Something clicked into place. I had inherited not the fabric, but the stance. That’s the secret no one tells you about borrowing from your mother: you’re not just borrowing clothes. You’re borrowing a version of womanhood that has survived expectations, politics, patriarchy, and a thousand everyday dismissals the world doesn’t even register. There is so much power in that lineage.

You wear her history and then you edit it. You add your shape, your posture, your
language, your music, your city. The result is a collaboration across time, a
co-authored identity, a story only you can finish writing.

We don’t become ourselves alone. We assemble ourselves from the women who
came before.