Ayesha Jehangir, a 20-year-old student of Music and Fine arts is trying to revive the otherwise forgotten art of letter writing, through her small initiative ‘Vintage modele by Ayesha’.
She believes that letter writing is a practice from ancient times and in the era of social media, letters should be normalized again.
Her small venture involves preserving memories of people by her customized products including, memory books, letters, gift hampers etc.
The memory book contains letters, confessions, various artwork etc. done by her.
“In memory book, a client sends me a picture of special memories and details about the person who they want to gift. That includes messages, confessions and pictures. The messages are written by me in an old English handwriting to make it look aesthetic,” she said.
Since the time she started it, she got an overwhelming response from people.
She uploaded the picture of one of the memory books on her Instagram handle which caught people’s attention because of its aesthetic touch.
She said, “Aesthetics is beauty in the ordinary things, even in the bark of a tree or a fallen leaf. That’s what we do in letter writing. A person feels that it’s centuries, but the memories are captured in such a way that it actually makes people emotional.”
She feels her attempt is to bring the old thing back with the modern touch. For decorating letters, she uses watercolors, sparkles, tapes, wax seals and aesthetic laces.
“Earlier there were no macbooks or keyboards. We used to express our love with pen and paper and why can’t we bring that back. If we look at the prehistory, we don’t have chats, we have archaeological items like manuscripts, books, letters and these things are going to be forever,” she said.
Watching the response of people, she is experimenting with new things every time. She will be introducing back seals and stamps.
“We are also using a 3-inch paper bouquet with the memory book just to make it more appealing,” she added.
In this initiative, everything is being done by hand.
“I make embroidery hoops. I have also started customized stickers as well where you can customize your name or brand’s label,” she said.
Since childhood, she was interested in craft. Though it takes much time and energy to make the handcrafted things, she enjoys it.
In 2021, she decided to start something on her own and tried her hands on a number of things from embroidered masks to customized phone cases.
“I always keep on doing my research about what is trending and what is not. I came to know that people are very much into aesthetics which made me switch to the aesthetic field. Expressing love with the handmade things has never gone out of style and preserving the memories forever in an aesthetic way is the best thing one can do,” she said.
