GLAM Adelaide

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A Little Bit of the East, on Fifth
By ABBY ELLIN

HIGH above Fifth Avenue in a duplex apartment brimming with Matisses, Picassos and presidential autographs, the talk turned to saris. Can Western women get away with traditional Indian garb and not look as if they're wearing a bedspread?
"The only way is if we're in another country, and then at a party," said Sarah Giles, the design editor at Harper's Bazaar. "Bindis are fine, but not saris. We don't know how to walk in them." ... See More
A woman with a tiny diamond-shaped bindi dotting the space between her blue eyes nodded.

"That's true," said the woman, Maura Moynihan, who in addition to the bindi was swathed in a diaphanous gold sheath. "And Indian women say the most terrible things about you under their breath." She broke into a flawless Hindi accent. "Look at that foreigner, how ridiculous she looks in that! "

Maura Moynihan's latest bohemian incarnation is as a dressmaker, in Kathmandu.

"A sari is the Indian babe's fashion trump card," said Ms. Moynihan, who, throughout, swathed herself in various garments from her collection. "They're very sexy. But not for Westerners."

Ms. Giles turned to her and said, " You can wear them, but the rest of us look idiotic."

Ms. Moynihan, who is 43, has been wearing saris since the early 1970's, when her father, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was ambassador to India. They lived in New Delhi. Since 1999, Ms. Moynihan's adopted home has been Katmandu, Nepal, where she founded a company called Choli, the Hindi word for the shirt worn beneath the sari.

On Wedn6sday, she held a sample sale at the Upper East Side home of Sharyn Mann, whose husband, Steve, is the former finance chairman of the Moynihan for Senate committee. "She used to lend me clothes for Dad's fund-raisers," Ms. Moynihan said. "Now she's buying mine."

Ms. Mann, a co-founder of the Food Allergy Initiative, a nonprofit charity, purchased two jackets and a pair of pants. " I love that her clothes come from a different era," she said. "You get really tired of designer clothes* This has meaning."

Over a four-and-a-half-hour stretch, about 20 customers zipped in and out, while a uniformed butler passed around silver platters of pirogis (he called them Nepalese dumplings), fresh asparagus and lemonade in crystal glasses. Many of the customers were friends Ms. Moynihan knew through people who traveled in her father's circles.

She was inspired to import ethnic Indian clothing, she said, because she thinks Western women could benefit from the Eastern addition to their wardrobes.
"In Asia, women are allowed to age gracefully," she said. "They

All images and text © sosari.com 2001

Thanks Ken! The Kingdom did the art/creative direction and Richard Lyons did all the photography. I think we did around 30 shots and combined them all together. We're really happy with the end result!

up there with the best I say

just doing my bit to help. im just doing my bit to help others in this crazy mixed up world. a hero some might say, but well yeah i can see that.

note to self, when rearranging comments, make sure youre not repeating the same thing.

Just had a suss.. It looks really good!! Well done x