Why Santeen?
It's a question I've heard so many times and is always fun to answer because it is deeply personal. Why did we name our business after a fabric...well, the fabric is sateen, we are Santeen. As in the old Italian name in my family, Santeen.
Growing up stacked on top of cousins and extended family, our family reunions were at least 100 strong where if you skipped a pot luck dish you were bombarded with 50 questions about your health from the Great Aunts. I love my Italian family but it is my Great Aunt Rose Santeen whom captivated me in my childhood. An amazing strong loving matriarch of our family for nearly 60 years. Speaking fluent English, Italian and Hungarian, she owned vineyards in Italy and her own salon in her home town, could cook like no other, bake for an army, a seamstress who could stop you in your tracks with one look, love you with great hugs. Oh, and always gave you a piece of candy before you left her home from her favorite glass candy bowl....those wedding mints. But you had to ask or it was no.
In her younger years, she hosted big family dinners, and in the later years enjoyed every individual visitor, for she lived alone in the big house she built when she was first married. What endured her to me was when tragedy struck our own family, several times over that year and as a young child, I could not comprehend the pain of loss. This is when I realized her pain too as she shared with me how nearly 50 years earlier, she had lost her own sister, her only child, and her husband in one summer. Her kind loving words of wisdom, blurred by teary eyes and I realized her strength in deciding to live her life and enjoy her life, because she was still here. That I too will find my way, but to know I am always loved and good things will come.
Often I have looked back to my Aunt Rose, as a symbol of strength, intelligence, beauty and class, to remember her fondly. A few years after Aunt Rose passed on, I held my own beautiful baby girl, and knew what her middle name would be, Santeen, in honor of a great women whom I was blessed to have known and loved. Still love. Always.
Welcome to Santeen Creations.
Aunt Rose Santeen. Undated Picture.
