TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

So periodically on TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I’m DOING , we share a SPOTLIGHT conversation and feature brief chats with an individual from the community about a special topic or a unique endeavor. For this spotlight episode, I’ve been thinking a lot lately of cultural anchors and signatures of India and South Asia that are universally recognized with a rich tradition AND are being presented and promoted to a modern audience within an evolving context. So it was truly great to learn more about mehndi art and share a conversation with Los Angeles based mehndi artist and entrepreneur Neha Assar. Neha has been practicing mehndi art for 30 years and what may have started as dreamy childhood doodling blossomed into a passionate skill set for the delicate, ornate, and often visually stunning art and craft of using mehndi. While Neha has cultivated an expertise for bridal and wedding ceremonial mehndi, she’s perhaps taken this creativity and talent to reimagine mehndi as the substrate for many other intersections that allow the intricacies and tradition of this art form and style to cross into different presentations, whether on clothing and fashion or homewares or even sports memorabilia! Not surprisingly, Neha’s expertise has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Vogue magazine, and spotlighted at the Grammys, Oscars, and Emmys. By the way, her clients have also included Kylie Jenner, Lebron, Shaq, Drake, and SZA among others.
We caught up to chat about everything mehndi - from cultivating a relationship with the art to promoting cultural education and even AI. But first, I was curious to ask Neha about reflecting on her first mehndi memory…