Bridal Fantasies
For all those hankering for details about the Chelsea Clinton wedding – at least one cat is out of the bag! We can say with definite authority that the linens at the wedding of the year were designed by Asema Ahmed’s Magnolias Linens.
Indeed, Middle Eastern royals, Hollywood stars and blue blooded society princesses have all turned to Asema when they need some high drama in their lives, be it a glittering wedding or a black tie gala.
Asema is the President of Magnolias Linens, an upscale New York based custom event décor company that she created with her mother Dr. Anjum Ahmed and sister Talaiya Ahmed Safdar. From ornate themed sets, arches and stages to exquisite embroidered linens inlaid with crystal work, it’s all in a day’s work of sorcery, of transforming figments of the imagination into reality.
Asema is the grand-daughter of the fifth president of India, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. She recalls, “I never met my grandfather – he passed away a year before I was born, but my sister spent time with him and actually lived in Rashtrapati Bhavan.”
Yet somehow Asema seems to have inherited a sense of the pomp and circumstance of the president’s house and the elegance of her grandmother, the Begum Abida Ali Ahmed, who belonged to the noble family of Sheikhupur, Badaun. She loves recreating these qualities in the special moments of people’s lives.
Royal Weddings
So when the producers of the movie ‘Phantom of the Opera’ wanted blood red décor from fabrics to sofas for the premiere party at the Plaza Hotel, Asema made it happen. She has also provided the multi-hued silk fabrics for the Salman Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi wedding some years back, and helped organize the décor for an event by director Ron Howard. She also did the décor for several royal weddings in the Middle East, creating everything from the linens to over 2000 customized silk covered invitation boxes.
“People can go wild and we can customize whatever they want,” she says. “We work with the best designers and wedding planners in the US and across the world, as well as with the brides.”
Her Upper East Side showroom, where she meets clients by appointment, is a treasure trove, lined wall to wall with rich, embellished custom-designed fabrics. Her clients include the brides themselves besides topnotch designers and wedding planners like Colin Cowie, Philip Baloun, and Preston Bailey. Many Magnolia creations have been featured in the book ‘Preston Bailey’s Fantasy Weddings.’
The table décor, for instance, includes specially designed items such as Grape Clusters which consists of silk table covers with mirror work appliqués and matching silk napkins; Gold Fuzzy Flower is poly organza with textured embroidered patterns; Queen Blue is silk dupioni with embroidery, appliqué, beadwork and crystal work; and Cream gold is silk organza with pearl bead embroidery. The specialties include everything from monogrammed aisle runners to candelabras to ornate gift bags.
So how did a Masters in Communications, Culture and Technology from Georgetown University turn into a dream weaver for celebrations? Both her parents are physicians and came to the US 35 years ago. It is only recently that they have returned to Delhi where her father, Dr. Pervez Ahmed, is now the CEO of Max Healthcare. Asema, who was on the pre-med track herself at New York University, decided instead to go for a masters degree to Georgetown University.
Luxury Marketplace
In 2003, when a family event took place, Asema realized that there was a real lack in the marketplace for upscale luxury décor products, and this quest was given concrete action by her mother who had seen the great resources in India firsthand. “It was a combination of knowing what is available in India but also knowing the need in the market place here – that’s how the idea was born,” says Asema. At Magnolias, she is the public face of the company and looks after its day to day affairs and growth, catering to the wedding and special events marketplace.
How hard was it to break into the upscale mainstream market in the US, where the bridal and special events magazines are the authority and there is just so much competition?
“I’m sure you are aware the New York network is a very tight network and they have connections they’ve had for a very long time,” says Asema. “In that situation meeting new people was very difficult; luckily we knew people who pointed us in the right direction. When it’s your own business, you just have to persist.”
Asema, who is a member of the New York University Young Alumni Leadership Committee, is involved with promoting women and entrepreneurship with current NYU students, and has herself worked hard for her success.
She says she deals with all sorts of clients from those who are looking for the most opulent and over-the-top to the understated and discreet. “Every week I get another idea that’s crazier than the other!” she says. She organized a wedding reception for two athlete swimmers where everything revolved around the pool and was made of custom towel fabric and was monogrammed. At another glamorous Palm Beach wedding, the tent, fabrics and table linens were all made of long silk threads which resembled hair and shone in the dark, looking really spectacular.
Magnolias also has very traditional, old world clients who don’t spare any expense but go for the classic look in monogrammed products. Says Asema, “Everything is unique, based on what the clients are looking for.” She’s also done flamboyant embroidered and hand painted tablecloths with peacock feathers for the American Museum of Natural History, as well as fun Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory themed designs for another celebration.
Over the years word of mouth has built up and Magnolias has been featured in upscale bridal, style and international magazines from Town and Country to Instyle Weddings to The Wall Street Journal. There are celebrities and royal clients but Asema, who is not a name dropper, says her lips are sealed.
Two years ago Asema married Ozi Amanat, partner at VC firm K2. The couple is very much a part of New York’s social scene and deeply committed to philanthropy. Ozi Amanat is on the board of advisers of Mount Sinai Hospital, and the organization Seeds for Peace, which honored Amanat and Asema with the Peace Maker Award this year. Asema is on the New York Chapter of Development in Literacy (DIL), and created all the décor for the DIL Gala at Cipriani where Ted Turner was the chief guest.
Recently Magnolias has branched out into the hospitality industry and has got itself some crème de la crème clients. If you walk into the uber sophisticated Plaza or the Pierre Hotels, you will see all the linens are from Magnolias, and it has also recently started providing the Four Seasons with specialty linens.
The company is part of the mainstream wedding and event planning industry but is slowly branching out to very upscale South Asian clients. Now Asema is looking eastward to India to do big scale weddings and events there, designing the entire wedding from the flowers to the fabrics to the giveaways.
For Ozi and Asema’s own nikha ceremony, 200 friends from New York had flown into New Delhi. There her uncle’s home on Akbar Road had been transformed with cascading fabrics and tents covered in hundreds of white ribbons. The reception at the Imperial Hotel had a platinum theme and so instead of fresh flowers, Asema filled the space with multitudes of four foot high crystal flowers which, when lit up in the dark, looked like diamond prisms.
“There are definite plans to go to India – we did a wedding in Bangalore with an international planner recently,” says Asema who plans to open Magnolias in India too to create lush weddings in collaboration with international wedding planners and designers, providing clients the complete wedding experience while using local resources. She predicts: “We will be doing the most amazing weddings!”
© Lavina Melwani
(This article first appeared in Hi Living magazine in Mumbai)
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