Happy Birthday Somerset.
My daughter, Somerset, turns 18 this month.
As I type that, I’m struck by the absurdity of that statement. Was it not just a moment ago, that I locked eyes with her, for the first time?
A love so deep and powerful and beautiful was realized in an instant. Forever changed, was I, in the moment that I became her mother.
These images are her, at the age of three, modeling my first collection of Ses Petites Mains, Tiny Chic Clothing. My muse and our ‘house’ model (literally & figuratively as we shot these in our Victorian in San Francisco), she helped me to solve the question of what little girls would want to wear & how it was possible to create beautifully made clothing that did not eclipse the inherent wonder & splendor of a child.
Enjoy Somerset’s unscripted loveliness in these photos & an oddly fitting A. A. Milne poem that she loved called Solitude.
I look forward to celebrating her as she moves—with grace, strength, smarts & curiosity—to adulthood. xo
Solitude
I have a house where I go
When there’s too many people,
I have a house where I go
Where no one can be;
I have a house where I go,
Where nobody ever says “No”;
Where no one says anything—so
There is no one but me.
—A. A. Milne, When We Were Six
