PAUSE: The Trip That Told Us We'd Be Alright

Pondicherry, India (Jan, 2019)

If we're being honest, we probably spent more time getting ready for this trip than actually being there. The early morning bus we almost missed, the outfit debates that went on longer than necessary, the very serious attempts to not ruin our hair before the photographs, the alarms we set and slept right through. The journey we spent mostly unconscious, leaning against windows, until somehow without quite registering the in-between, we woke up in Pondicherry. No plan. No itinerary. Just two people and one day and a city neither of us had seen before.

Pondicherry is famously difficult to get lost in. We managed it anyway, repeatedly. We rented a bike with the full confidence of people who had absolutely no idea where they were going, told ourselves we had the whole day ahead, and within a few hours had somehow already covered most of the town. We were doing well, all things considered. And then, naturally, the bike broke down right in the middle of the highway, as these things do.

A younger version of us, maybe even a version from just a few months before, would have panicked. Or argued. Or blamed the lack of itinerary that was never there to begin with. Instead, we laughed, figured it out, found another way, and carried on. And somewhere in that small, slightly chaotic moment, something clicked. Maybe travelling together was never going to be about perfect plans. Maybe it was always going to be about this, how you handle everything that wasn't part of the plan, who you become when things go sideways and there's nobody to fix it but each other. Turns out, we were pretty good at that.

The rest of the day unfolded the way the best days do, without agenda. Quiet cafés where nobody seemed to be in any particular hurry, pastel walls and old French windows and streets that somehow made your feet slow down without being asked, the kind of salty sea breeze that gets into your hair and your clothes and stays there, a little souvenir you didn't know you were collecting. Who paid for lunch stopped mattering because the next coffee was already on the other person. Who was navigating didn't matter because we were both equally lost. Everything just balanced, without effort, without keeping score.

By the time we boarded the bus back, we'd barely spent twelve hours there. And somehow, it was enough. More than enough. Slowing down, we realised, isn't something a place gives you, it's something you allow yourself to do. Pondicherry simply made it easier to remember that was an option. That's why this chapter became PAUSE. Not because we escaped anything, but because for a few hours, life stopped asking us to keep up with it and simply invited us to be present. To notice. To leave a little space between one moment and the next and see what lived there.

We arrived that morning wondering, in the quiet way you wonder about things you don't say out loud, whether we travelled well together. We left knowing we'd probably spend a lifetime finding out and that the finding out was going to be the best part. The collection came much later, but that feeling, of two people and one broken-down bike and a city that asked nothing of them, never really left.

It still hasn't.

Every collection begins with a feeling. What follows are the ways we try to hold on to it through scents, textures, sketches, keepsakes, and stories. We'll tell you about those another time. For now, we're just really glad you stopped by.

With love, always.
— su.i ✨