Jeannie McQueeny began out of necessity. Not a desperate one, but a pressing one, nonetheless. 

I was in The Bahamas, shopping for a kaftan. The grown-up sort that combines a quiet elegance which, once worn, imbues a woman with the confidence that speaks to a way of moving in the world. A way that doesn’t shout, “Look at me!” Yet its wearer feels with a degree of mischievous certainty that one admiring glance might be followed by another. My search was futile.

When I couldn’t find what I was looking for in London either the idea began to percolate that I might have to create what I wanted. But how?

That’s when I had the great good fortune to meet the amazing Rajni Malla, who was exhibiting exquisite embroideries on her luxurious cashmere shawls. One conversation led to another before we went our separate ways: she to Nepal in the Himalayas and I, back to The Bahamas. 

A few months and many sketches later, two gorgeous kaftans arrived at my home in Lyford Cay. They were exactly as I had envisioned; long, cool linen, (one black, the other white), both with necklines and cuffs delicately embroidered with scenes from our wondrous coral reefs, one of them adorned with pearls, the other with red coral branches.  

I must have hit a nerve (the good sort!) because the incomparable Nan Kempner passed by that same afternoon, slipped the white one over her elegant limbs and refused to take it off. A day later, my phone started to ring with friends asking to order a kaftan “Just like Nan’s”. 

Weeks later, while staying with my remarkable friend, Terry Kramer, I wore the black kaftan, which produced the same reactions. It was obvious that I wasn’t the only woman with a hankering to step into the grown-up, relaxed elegance of a beautifully hand-crafted kaftan.

Thus began a fascinating collaboration, and a deepening friendship with Rajni and respect for her team of magic-fingered embroiderers. The incorporation of Jeannie McQueeny followed increasingly regular trips from the low-lying Bahama Islands to the Kathmandu Valley nestled in the majestic Himalayas. Proving once again that Plato was right when he wrote that ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’