Beauty Amulets: Orchid and Her Kajal

An amulet is a small object that brings you  good luck or protects you from harm; an item of folk magic with power and potency  because of the meaning you give to it.  We are asking some of our favourite creatives to tell us about their beauty amulets. This month: Orchid, a producer, writer and musician based in London.

I bought this little kajal (or 'sormeh' in Farsi) pot with my mum from the chaotic Tehran bazaar the last time I was there, and it's always felt like it's carried a special ancestral kind of energy for me. Ironically, it was on a day that me and my mum managed to escape what feels like millions of amazing family members we are surrounded by there, and experience the city just as ourselves.

I love the pot itself and its almost cliché Iranian bright blues and whites, and middle eastern curves that echo iconic buildings and women's figures alike in tiny form. I also love the blackness of the sormeh powder itself - I'd specifically been looking for something like that while we were there since nothing in the UK ever seems to be black enough to bring out my dark eyes.___STEADY_PAYWALL___

In my mind, 'beauty' and my heritage have always been at odds with each other. When I was younger I found it difficult to see that they could coexist, as all the beauty and makeup advice that I saw seemed to be a detailed guide on how to erase my natural features - hair (and a lot of it, everywhere), dark circles and deep set eyes, and a bigger nose, and that's just from the neck up. So I steered well clear of a whole area of feminine expression I didn't think was meant for me. But this little liner helped me see otherwise.

Now, I imagine this little, ornately painted, traditional pot, a beauty item that's perfectly designed for my shape of eyes, filled with powder that's deeply dark enough for my complexion - in the hands of generations of incredible women who looked not too different to me to bring out a beauty that they owned, and in a strange way I feel empowered and protected by them. In another sense too, I haven't been home to see my family for a few years now and it reminds me of this whole other part of myself that feels cut off right now - especially right now - and every time I use and look at it, the deeper I go into its geometric details, the more vivid the memories of people, places, tastes, sounds, and energies, flood back.