Synkroniciti is excited to welcome writer Barbara Krasner of New Jersey with “Sumptuous Splendor,” a memoir essay about being an identical twin that shows how a talent and interest for sewing and design helped her individuate and find a deeper sense of self.
“My sister and I intentionally wore identical double-knit pantsuits on April 1. She went to my homeroom and I to hers. I don’t know what gave us the chutzpah to do this. Not one teacher throughout the day recognized that Arlene wasn’t me. I’d thought I was developing my own identity, a distinctive personality, but the April Fool’s joke was on me. I hadn’t succeeded at all. When our eighth-grade yearbooks came out, I took a Bic pen and inked out my face.
I had to keep sewing.”
Barbara won a contest as a child in 1969 in Bunny magazine and found herself creating her clothes in high school. Her sister Arlene stole one of her creations, making her furious, but also showing her the value of what she was able to create. Barbara didn’t pursue fashion design or sewing as a career, convinced that she wasn’t creative enough, but the creativity unleashed by her youthful immersion in the pursuit flavored her life and gave her purpose. Years later, that creativity transmuted into a love and talent for writing.
Barbara’s vulnerability is fresh and her writing invites us to share her experience. Many women will relate to the cold water thrown on female creative dreams–so many fashion designers are men and misogyny is ingrained in the fashion business. Creative people will recognize the transformative joy of the artistic process and making designs reality. Creativity doesn’t leave us easily, even if we have to leave it for surer paths, and it is never too late to find your way back.
Read “Sumptuous Splendor” in Synkroniciti’s “Patterns” issue, Vol. 7, No. 4, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, having given up sewing for sentences, replacing Simplicity and Butterick patterns with craft books on essays and memoir.
Her work has been featured in more than seventy literary journals, including nonfiction in Collateral, South 85, The Manifest Station, and Vassar Review. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives and teaches in New Jersey.