Chiara is a lover of NYC history, even—or perhaps especially—history that she herself cannot remember. In New York it is easy to be in love with the past, as so many different pasts live on here—the recent past, various eras past, one’s own past, the pasts of countless others—on top of each other and side by side. A perpetual question in NYC: when is it appropriate or necessary for the old to give way to the new? How do you honor the past and still move forward?

There are only four working, walk-in, walled telephone booths in NYC, and they are all on West End Avenue, where time often seems to have halted mid-block. Chiara is intrigued by the notion of telephone booths on a quiet, residential street. Who used them, and for what? If you found yourself on the corner of 100^th street and West End, did that not suggest that you lived somewhere nearby? So why wouldn’t you just call from home? Did people who used phone booths have something to hide? And you used to have to have a coin! Such quaint details delight her.

Chiara likes to sit inside the prisms of relative peacefulness these booths enclose. The street noises fade, she feels protected. She is glad they have not slipped from metal and glass into memory. Now they are part of her memory and so are given an extended lease on life. By the way, they’re now free of charge—which makes them less authentic, Chiara feels, less of a utility and more of a curiousity. As is true of many old things.

She has heard, however, that in those bygone days you sometimes had to stand in line in order to use them. That convinces her that phone booths really did need to be replaced by something better. Much as she romanticizes the past, she recognizes that it was full of inconveniences and flawed ideas. Like this one:

Chiara is the first of three stitch faces I made from my friend Lauren’s trove of neckties. The neckties belonged to Lauren’s grandfather, who was obviously a man of style and character, and they had been lovingly kept by Lauren and her family. When Lauren asked me to make a stitch face from these ties, I felt enormously pleased and honored. But although I immediately had many ideas, I found it difficult to commit myself to any one, difficult to get started, intimidated by the responsibility I felt towards these beautiful materials and my generous and trusting friend.

I finally drummed up the courage to start cutting into the ties, and discovered right away the workmanship that had been lavished upon each one. All had contrasting linings, and interlinings to give them structure, and sometimes an additional layer of fabric if the shell was particularly thin. The silk of the tie I chose to make Chiara turned out to be very lightweight, although the tie itself was not. I usually stuff the stitch faces with snipped-up scraps, but I had to use a fiberfill for Chiara because she’s so delicate. Oddly, she is also littler than the other stitch faces. I don’t know how this happened, exactly. It’s as if her size reflected my tentativeness—she has a lighter, less solid presence than the others. Her ears are lined with the tie’s lining.

The tie I chose for her dress was a conservative small-scale black-and-white print, with the fantastic surprise of a hot pink lining, which I loved because only the owner/wearer of the tie would know he was wearing hot pink. But I could not bring myself to cut it up. It was only once I decided to try to make Chiara an outfit that would show off the tie, rather than destroy it, that I was able to proceed.

All of Chiara’s clothing is made from the ties, even her wrap (which I had to make for her at the last minute because the weather suddenly turned freezing cold and I couldn’t let her go outside in a sleeveless dress (this project is hurtling me down the path toward eccentric old-ladyhood)) is made from interlining. Her fingerless gloves and scarf are from an astonishing purple knit tie, from an era I can’t quite pinpoint. The only exception: the blue ribbons on her slippers, which were drawstrings for pajama bottoms.

Her jewelry is from the stash of jewelry bits given to me by my friend Elizabeth V., a person who will buy a book because the cover matches her coat.

The next two in the trio of necktie stitch faces coming soon. Ish.

“[W]hen we delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.”

—Marie Kondo, from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up