People of Awesome

Episode One:

Rawaan Alkhatib

You know those friends you have that just sort of excel at everything and you really want to hate them for it but they also happen to be all sweet and lovely and gracious so you are forced to end up admiring them instead?


I've ended up with enough of these people in my life to leave me in a constant state of either insecurity or inspiration, depending on the weather.


I am lucky this way.

Rawaan Alkhatib is one of them.

I mean, she's just your standard Brooklyn-based poet-baker-painter-chef-printmaker-silk scarf designer from Dubai. Big whoop, right?

Seriously, though: Would you please go look at these scarves she just made?

my fave!

Ugh. She's so cool. A little group of us in Iowa used to have epic feasts together and she was always contributing things like pork belly simmered for two days in duck fat, and homemade pistachio and rose petal ice cream...

She even baked us the most delicious wedding cake which I still dream about eating.

Basically just go look at her website right this moment. There you can check out a bunch of other stuff like the chapbooks she's designed and the illustrations she's done and the postcards she's made etc.

Sadly you won't be able to taste the food she creates, or read her writing (Rawaan, where are your poems, girl?) or like, hang out with her over the internet, but that's probably for the best. You don't want to start feeling, I dunno, inadequate.

Rawaan, you are a Person of Awesome.

Top photos by: Eric Felipe-Barkin. Models: Bettina Huang, Kathryn Egelhofer.
Cake Photo by Jagger Photography