S A Y A Designs

When Victoria at S A Y A Designs asked if I wanted to know more about her work in helping to replant rain forests in Indonesia, I told her most definitely yes, I very much would be interested in knowing more. So she sent me a package.

In the package were three slim cream-colored boxes.

Inside the slim boxes were carefully sewn silk sheaths in colors of turquoise, pomegranate and lime containing lustrous, hand-carved hair sticks.

Each one unique, one of a kind, just like the trees from which they’re carved. Tamarind, teak, rosewood. Their journey started in Indonesia, where local craftsmen fashion them from the salvaged roots of abandoned hardwood tree plantations. These slim little hair sticks carry with them a big story, one of deforestation and UN sustainable development goals. They are the tangible manifestation of Victoria Jones’ vision with S A Y A Designs of a circular economy that doesn’t just strip away raw materials but replaces what has been depleted (for each hair stick purchased, ten trees will be planted). It’s a hope-based economy that relies on conscious consumerism to thrive, on literally starting at the root of some of our most intractable problems. And it’s a chic vision too, drawing on Victoria’s background in the visual arts before she moved to Bali a little over a year ago. These little hair sticks make very seductive ambassadors for their rain forests! You can listen to more of S A Y A Design’s story here:

So we asked some friends to play with them, and the hair sticks picked up their journey again, this time to the Santa Monica Mountains.

Would our friends in Santa Monica, California, know what to do with the hair sticks from Bali?

Inquiring minds…

Absolutely they knew! Hands, hair, and wooden sticks have been mixing it up for millenia, long before plastics and elastics.

Okay, mom was savvy to the hair sticks. But what about her daughter in West Hollywood?

Like I said, it’s simply intuitive.

Thank you so much, Victoria, for setting this marvelous journey in motion.

S A Y A Designs — turning heads for the right reasons.

photos by MB Maher