Dozens of social media pictures and posts of me in a sari don’t tell you one important thing: I don’t know how to put one on.
Raising me across Brooklyn, Long Island, Puerto Rico and New Jersey, my mother would try to help. But she’s not really great at the pleats and folds, especially on other people, and shouting matches ensued. Sometimes, I’d end up with heaps of fabric around me and just switch to a dress or a salwar kameez. Other times, I’d show up to a function all disheveled and pray some auntie would take pity and fix me in the bathroom.
That strategy still works. So does living in Jackson Heights, where I have about half a dozen desi friends I can call for help, as well as nearby salons where you can pay someone to dress you (I rarely do that).
Why, if it causes me so much anguish, do I cling to this costume? Because I can think of no garment as beautiful, flattering and nuanced as a sari. I can think of no outfit that enables me to tell my girls tales, ancient and modern, from the storylines depicted on the cloth to the person who gifted them to me to the occasions I have worn them and the memories somehow contained within.
The sari is a work of art, and the craftsmanship that goes into each is just the beginning. A new exhibit at the New York Historical delves into the history of the sari in the South Asian diaspora, focusing on the city. Epicenter NYC is proud to serve as community media partner for “The New York Sari.”
A part of the exhibit’s genesis came from a conversation among me, Historical museum CEO Louise Mirrer and NYC Council Member Shekar Krishnan, who represents Jackson Heights and is the first Indian American elected to public office in the city. I had just finished helping both my parents and in-laws downsize their homes and mentioned the literal hundreds of saris I didn’t know what to do with — and the weight of history within, of immigration, tradition and gender roles. The Councilman shared that his mother — a chemist in a lab — donned a sari in her early years of working and then wore another, decades later, when she won a big award at the Plaza Hotel. We all lit up at the prospect of highlighting these narratives.
Curators Salonee Bhaman, Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Women’s History and Public History, and Anna Danziger Halperin, director for the Center for Women’s History, have done even better. They discover and delve into the little-known history of the sari in NYC (such as Coney Island’s embrace of India’s exoticism in the early 1900s) and also highlight the works of prominent artists such as Chitra Ganesh and Suchitra Mattai. Mattai, notably, has been an Epicenter artist of the week and was a panelist for a discussion we hosted at Art Basel Miami.
The curators also capture the garment’s day-to-day relevance through “the stories of who wears saris, the relationship between saris and identities, and how they have evolved over time.” (The councilman’s mother’s sari worn to the Plaza is in there, too!)
This exhibit rests on community participation and we invite yours. Share your sari memories using this Google form. Email us with further ideas and questions at hello@epicenter-nyc.com.
Over the course of the exhibition, we plan to spotlight elements within but also turn our storytelling outward across the boroughs, and even the globe, to capture what the sari means to different communities. This is by no means exhaustive or all-encompassing. Even as I use the word “sari” here, I am aware that many regions, my own included, have their own styles of dress and draping that might not be captured. In fact, the style of clothing I most often wear is actually an Assamese mekhela chador, a two-piece garment that hangs similarly to a sari. We’ll try to get into some of the regional differences and designs in future articles, videos and discussions.
The New York Sari opens Friday, Sept. 12 and runs through April 26, 2026. Now I just have to figure out which of my hundreds of saris and mekhela chadors to wear — and who will put it on me.
