From aunties’ basements to a shop next to a Kroger
In my latest for Atlanta Magazine, I wrote about how the hunt for kurtas and shalwar kameezes (traditional South Asian clothes), is no longer as hard as it once was.
Some of my most vivid memories as a child are roaming between reams of cloth at Hancock Fabrics, a craft store chain, bored out of my mind. My mom would spend hours (that’s what it felt like) searching for the perfect fabric to either take over to an auntie who would stitch her a shalwar kameez (tunic with loose fitting pants), or bring home so she could stitch it herself.
Thankfully, this is no longer the case. Hancock Fabrics is now a relic of the past (it shuttered more than 6 years ago), and the year after that, a Pakistani clothing shop in a strip mall in Norcross, J. Junaid Jamshed, opened. Though I don’t think those two events were in any way coordinated, I do know that its the seemingly small things, like the availability of culturally specific clothes – that shows us just how much our region has changed in the last few decades.
I wrote about it for the December issue of Atlanta Magazine: Read the full story here.
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