"I’d be struggling to make the fabric do what I wanted and she’d say, ‘no, you have to listen to the fabric, the fabric will tell you where it wants to go.’"
Idelisse’s mom -- Emma Delfina Carattini Padro de Malavé – died at 99 on December 10, 2017. And we wanted to record this podcast as a tribute to her life, a life that spanned nearly a century. She grew up in the hills of Puerto Rico, thwarting gender stereotypes and asserting her love of freedom and beauty, and then immigrated to New York in her early 20s for work and family. Both fierce and (as Idelisse says) ‘demure’, Emma’s story is about love of family and homeland, the strategies that smart women developed to survive and thrive, and channeling talent and imagination into creating every day beauty. That creativity lives on in Ide and Emma's granddaughter, Esti. As does the determination that Ide and her daughter Esti inherited from Emma: to live life fully and with appreciation for the indescribable feeling of the morning sun, the comfort of that first cup of coffee with steamed milk, and the memory of Emma’s music-filled laughter.