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Samata is a British-Ghanaian fashion designer, author and producer. Best known for her work in sustainable fashion, she is now the CEO of Suzy Amis Cameron’s Red-carpet Green dress, working across Los Angeles, New York and London with some of the biggest international brands. Prior to this appointment, she won the Suzy Amis Cameron competition to create sustainable fashion for the red carpet. Samata has written for a number of publications and is a guest lecturer at a number of fashion colleges including the London College of Fashion, Berkeley and ESMOD.
Dear Samata,
It’s time to redefine whose acknowledgement you celebrate. Chasing that from platforms or people who don’t see you, will make you question your value and contribution to the industry you love. It will only run you down and always leave you feeling undeserving. Which you aren't.
Start to reconnect with where you came from, as soon as possible, all the time. Your parents travelled from Ghana and came to Cambridge. Specifically to the university, one of the most esteemed educational centres in the world. They loaded you with a culture so rich that it can never be diluted. Don’t let appropriation or ignorance force you to ever try to hide or downplay that culture. That is the equivalent of robbing your ancestors of their joy in seeing you.
Whilst it’s nice to feel that you belong in a certain space, it is more important to know who you are. That way you know how to make those spaces your own, to fit you, not the other way around. The rest comes after that.
You belong to the ones who came before you and you belong for the ones who will come after you. This is not a race, it’s a circular relay of reaping and sowing, so sow well, deep and with no expectations. Sow as if you might not see the tree or the fruit, but just for knowing it is the right way to live.
It’s absolutely fine to not fit in. It’s actually a lot of fun. It’s ok to have limits and not have the things you want or feel you deserve. If you don’t have them, you don’t need or deserve them...yet. Restraints are what bring the best moments out.
When people say trust the process, sit in those words for a while. They are right, that saying is so underrated. Don’t force things to happen ahead of their time, you won’t enjoy the results and don’t tap out of people or moments just because it feels unclear. Paranoia and projection can ruin the beautiful things that time would have made clear.
So just breathe, enjoy the person you are for yourself, as much as you enjoy the company of those around you.
Life is going to be great, yes, but most importantly it already is.
Samata Pattinson