DESIGNING WAYS TO GIVE BACK
‘Feel good, do-good’ PURE Pillows a collaboration with Syrian refugee who is a tailor
Conscientious home design is always worth a mention — and particularly at this time of year, with the blow-out sales and blown budgets. Vancouver designer Ami McKay of PURE Design has just released a new pillow collection, PURE Pillows, which she created in collaboration with Syrian refugee and tailor Salma Mohammad, whose family McKay has helped sponsor through the Lions Bay charity It Takes a Village.
“I’ve been collecting fabrics for years,” says McKay. “And so has my girlfriend Kelly. I have antique woven silk textiles from Laos from 1997. All in the hopes of making really great things for clients one day.”
McKay says that when she heard that one of the Syrian refugees they were sponsoring to come to Vancouver was a trained tailor, her mind started racing with the creative opportunities she could offer.
She says that the day Salma, her husband Nihad, and their three children arrived at the Burnaby apartment It Takes a Village had helped them secure — and which McKay and her “fabric fairy” friend Kelly Taylor had helped make beautiful — was very emotional.
“They were living in a UNICEF tent for two years,” she says. “In pretty hard conditions. So as she was there, and unpacking her bags, and I said ‘Salma, would you like to sew pillows for me and make money?’ And she said, ‘Yeah!’ When do I start?”
McKay said she encouraged Salma to take some time to settle in, knowing that the first few months would be somewhat of an emotional roller coaster, and to give her time to get used to her new life in Canada.
“And then she kept saying: ‘when are we going to do it?” says McKay. “So in June, we started.”
The “feel-good, do-good” pillows, which Salma sews when her children sleep, feature gorgeous one-of-a-kind fabrics, vibrant in colour and original in pattern. They are selling the collection through McKay’s Pure Design website and at a PURE Pop Up (on Jan. 11, 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Jan. 12, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 711 East Hastings).
The amount of work the volunteers with It Takes a Village have done in bringing Salma’s family and her sister Amal’s family of four to Canada is incredible, says McKay. The paperwork involved “is not my forte,” says the designer. “I don’t have the patience,” she says. “It’s like taking knots out of chains. But for me, to do this with Salma, I’m excited, I love seeing her, she’s like a sister to me. It energizes me to do this with her, and she gets paid for every pillow she sews, as well as profiting off every pillow that sells.”
For McKay, helping someone who has lost a home to settle into a new one is both emotional and familiar territory. Eight years ago, at this time of the year, McKay had left her husband, her furniture business had failed, she lost her mother, and was diagnosed with a rare genetic syndrome. In isolation, she says any one of these things would be hard, but combined, meant she was without a home and unable to buy her two sons Christmas gifts.
“I know what it’s like not knowing where you’re going to live,” she says. “I lived in a women’s shelter. I know what it’s like to not know where to turn.”
It was Taylor who offered her accommodation and helped her get back on her feet, says McKay, by offering her the guest house, and filling the pantry and fridge with food.
“We had a place to be,” says McKay, “and I said, ‘how can I ever thank you’. And she said: ‘be successful.’ So she’s always been there cheerleading me on.”
McKay says she is not ashamed of the hardships she’s walked through to reach her current life as a successful designer, and happily remarried.
“My life is pretty damn amazing,” she says. “I have beautiful people who have helped, and believed in me, and I am someone who just knows I’m going to be OK. I’ll work my tail off and dream big.”
For Syrian refugee families like Salma’s, says McKay, imagine what a difference it makes when you arrive, surrounded by people who believe in you and help you.
“This is all about humans helping humans,” she says.