I came to India in 2022 carrying a lot of questions.

I had just left a seven-year relationship and the life I had built in Silicon Valley. I left my family, my dog, and a life I had worked very hard to create. For as long as I could remember, I had wondered about the place where I was born, who my mother was, and what her life might have looked like.

I had wanted to visit the orphanage where I was abandoned for years. When I finally went, I wasn't initially looking for my biological family. I wanted to thank the people who had placed me with my family in America and given me a life I am deeply grateful for. I wanted to spend time with the children, volunteer, and pay my respects.

I did want a photograph of my mother, though. I wanted to know what she looked like and understand something about the woman who gave birth to me.

On that first day, I found myself asking questions I had carried for years. What kind of family did she come from? Was she poor? What did her life look like? What was my family like?

When I learned that she had never lived on the street, I felt an enormous weight begin to lift. I had spent so much of my life imagining what her circumstances might have been, and that one piece of information gave me a kind of relief I didn't know I needed. It didn't answer everything, but it changed the story I had been carrying about where I came from.

I think about my mother often. I think about the opportunities I have had and how different my life might have been if I had been born into different circumstances. I think about how much of my life I have been able to choose, and how many women never get those same choices.

Living in India made that question impossible to ignore.

I met women whose ability to earn their own money changed what was possible for them and their families. Women who could work, send their children to school, and create opportunities for the next generation. I began to understand how meaningful work can reach much further than the person doing it.

At the same time, I was seeing another side of the global fashion industry. I saw rivers affected by dye and industrial pollution, discarded textiles, and the sheer volume of material moving through an industry built around producing more and producing faster. The more I traveled, the harder it became to think about clothing as something separate from the people and places that make it possible.

I began thinking about the women making our clothes with the same care I had always wanted to give the women wearing them.

What could happen if the work itself created more opportunity for her? What could that mean for her children, her family, and the generations that follow?

I kept coming back to my mother when I thought about those questions. I was given opportunities that changed the entire course of my life, and I often wonder what hers might have looked like if she had been given some of those same opportunities.

That question became part of what I wanted Morè to be.

We are going to buy beautiful things. We are going to consume. The question is what we choose, where we spend our money, and what those choices make possible for other people.

I want Morè to create fewer pieces with more meaning. Clothing that is beautiful enough to keep, wear, travel with, and eventually pass on. Clothing made with care for the people whose knowledge and skill make it possible, and in a way that helps that knowledge continue.

India has given the world extraordinary textile traditions that are still being carried forward by people who have spent their lives learning them. I want those traditions to have a future. I want the women carrying them forward to have opportunities that can change their own lives and the lives of their families.

We already have a choice in what our consumption supports. I want Morè to make that choice feel beautiful.

And I hope that every piece we create can give a little more back than it takes.

With all my heart,

Manisha