Healing without Hiding

This piece was inspired by Kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of mending broken objects with gold. Instead of viewing the cracks as flaws, they’re highlighted with gold, showing that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. While many of us feel ashamed of our scars, they represent the struggles we’ve gone through and the miraculous fact that we survived them. We become more and more beautiful every time we recover, and with every new scar, we gleam with a little more gold.

photos by Gen Basich-Pease & Sarah Ondak

modeled by N’Nasseri Carew-Johnson, Victoria Chiek, & Regan Lavin

styled by Kali Hough

clothing courtesy of Bloomingdale’s