about-the-editor
- Sheel khemka, ©2022

For SHEEL, denim has been a bit of a life journey, through its many ups and downs, the ups of course being quite a bit more than the downs.

(Otherwise it, meaning life’s journey, would simply be unsustainable- though that’s not the point to be made here, more that the life journey through denim has for Sheel had significantly more ups than downs, it just so happens. Also, the downs somehow always got turned into ups. Relief!).

So for Sheel, the journey of life, through denim, has been a real journey, spanning almost 20 years to this very day (one day in August, 2022), and no less has it been an adventure, many and multifarious adventures in fact, each distinct and varied but linked by a common theme, and continuity - also spanning different countries, continents, and states (of e.g. the USA), and then again different horizons, languages, and skill sets - albeit all within the general professional umbrella of high-end fashion denim- whether it be script writing for a video or a write-up for a denim story, or indeed a press release, or creative concept to imagery origination a.k.a. marketing, advertising and photography, or to showcase the latest incarnations of often lust-worthy (or lust-less as the case may be) time-honoured, or time-specific (or occasionally even timeless), incarnations wistfully cut sewn washed and finished to an attempt at the generally unattainable bar of fashion perfection, infused with a whisk of divinity, made up in the reedy garment manufacturing district of east-of-downtown Los Angeles; or otherwise the often too easily belittled general chirping and fraternising at events, parties and those much dreaded- but also feared- industry trade shows- or alternatively engaging in the occasional bout of a simple gatecrashing where one had been somehow NFI’d - and hobnobbing with the proclaimed cognoscenti, or wilfully nurturing some of that much needed SSP (shameless self-promotion no less), or that other by-word of our modern marketing by-word come sine qua non - celebrity product endorsement - or otherwise head-down and back to the drawing board for the other that without which it couldn’t do without: which is creative product origination =designing and pattern cutting. The former is creative and takes abundances of flair, the latter super nerdy, of the type of oh you might as well bang your head against a wall each morning kind of nerdy, but also requires a certain innate ability, one that you have to be born with or forget-about it- kind of ability in the science of all things techie involving maths, geometry, equations, engineering (yes, yawn yawn)- albeit not quite as dry-as-the-sand-in-arabia as it’s all about FEMALE FORM and feminine contours which - for both guys and girls - resonates at some level even if it’s only a primitive one, especially when compared to zeros and ones, graphs, equations, pie charts and the rest.

And so on. But the point is, with the breadth of the skill-set that’s called upon all at once, these things kept- and continue to keep- Sheel at bay, plenty busy and ardent and fervent and passionate at all or at least most times, with some of that signature steely resolve and loyalty to the tooth and nail- and always with a view to the end game- irrespective of the not insignificant elapses of time that have often sailed in between. Looking forward to the Great Awakening, when one day it all comes together, all that blood sweat and tears or not as the case may be, a vindication of beliefs and principles that were originated and graced with clarity, clarity of vision and then also some benefit and a certain privilege of an enforced but at the same time a much needed time-out, further enabling different perspectives and some grasp of the longer-term equation, harnessing wisdom and a vision that was with with a backbone of study, and with nuances and complexity on multiple note papers and cavernous, lit and then re-lit, imagined and then re-imagined, recesses - as well as some of the more surface regions - of the mind, formed.

All’s well that ends well and without any shadow or iota of a doubt it’s been a great journey also, each step of the way. And as in his favourite old pair of jeans (blessed with soul, fitfully ripening and maturing with age), Sheel is realising a noted precious sense of timelessness when it comes to matters of the soul- as he starts to access it without the usual obfuscations or hindrances. And as he tends towards the end of a chapter of that journey, as one door closes another one opens, is it a new journey, or another iteration of the same journey in the circle of life, always coming back to the same point eventually (as its a circle), but this time you can do it all again but that little bit differently, with the benefit of hindsight, and a crystal ball - if you’re lucky enough, that is.

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