Blind Leather Jacket Designer

Blind leather jacket designer has a sense for fashion
Charleen Earley, Special to The Chronicle
Suna Khalaf Salim sees the world in colors even though she’s completely blind. She also loves to shop for clothes, tea pots and artwork from the Middle
East, travel all over the world and a year ago, she started her own business in leather jacket design.

Owner of SKS Collection, Salim (pronounced “solemn”), 34, of Concord was born and raised in Iraq, and has lived in the United States for 21 years.

She is married to Allen Gruen, 46, and together they have two children, Mara Rissule, 7, and Ross Ali, 4. Gruen says his wife has the style in the family.

“She buys a lot of my clothes and has better taste than I do,” said Gruen, a technical engineer of his own Oakland company, Earth Mechanic Consulting.

Salim was born fully sighted, but was told that her large brown eyes were “jinxed,” since many people would stop her on the streets just to gaze at them.
At age 6, she was hit by a truck on the streets of Baghdad while running after her balloon. Because of extensive damage, doctors could not determine whether
her deteriorating vision was due to the accident or juvenile arthritis, which they diagnosed around the same time.

It was the early ’80s, and President Saddam Hussein would not allow citizens to leave the country; there was no help or education for Iraqi families with
handicapped children.

“Losing my vision in the first-grade made me feel like the neighborhood puppy that got left behind,” said Salim, who couldn’t attend school because of a
lack of accommodations.

er parents wrote a letter to Hussein, asking to leave the country for help. “He decided to meet me and my family, and then had my dad and I sent to Paris
for a cornea transplant,” Salim said.

Their trip and operation took 40 days, fully paid for by Hussein. “He was a different person then,” said Salim, whose body unfortunately rejected the transplant.

“They decided that my brother (Louis) could take me to the U.S. at age 13, and my mother (Sabeha Mohammed) wanted me to go,” Salim said.

Salim harbored ill feelings for a long time toward her mother of seven daughters and one son who made her leave family and country behind. She said it took
years to understand and forgive her mother’s decision. “For a long time, I resented it, but it was for the best. If I were still in Iraq, I would be uneducated.
They think of handicapped people like dogs,” she said. “I went to Vacaville High School and was the only blind student out of a class of 2,000!” Salim
had to learn English (Arabic is her first language) and Braille in record time in order to catch up.

Later, she attended College of Alameda and De Anza College in Santa Clara where she studied gerontology and psychology. She even did a TV commercial about
Braille for Bank of America’s ATM machines.

But her true calling was for fashion and custom design. “I’ve always been interested in designing suits, skirts and dresses. In my mind I have tons of designs,”
said Salim, who worked at the Lyon Blind Center in Oakland, and at the Embarcadero YMCA in San Francisco.

“I love clothes, and I love to dress my friends. Designing clothes is an art; you have to be creative.” Skeeter Barker, 40, production manager of design
for Mr. S Leathers in San Francisco, got to know Salim when she called Barker while doing research into the industry. Barker said he sensed that Salim
has what it takes to survive in the inundated fashion industry. Barker said they will get together soon to discuss new leather-clothing designs.

I’m a big believer in people following their dreams, and she has great energy,” said Barker of San Francisco.

By age 26, Salim was completely blind, yet color memory and a sense of style have never left her imagination.

“I was surprised to hear her talk in color. The fabric she can feel, but I didn’t ask her how she knew what colors would go good together,” said Chang Tsai
Wu of C & S Wu Co. in San Francisco, who manufactured one of Salim’s designs, a silk-lined silver-and-red shawl. He will produce more of her line this
year.

Salim, whose favorite San Francisco designer is Betsy Johnson, because she “accentuates a woman’s body, not a teenage body stick figure,” said the trick
to knowing what looks good is all in the touch.

“I have to feel the person,” Salim said. “I feel them and make sure they look OK. When I (meet) someone, right away I know what looks good on them.”

Denise Vancil of Mill Valley met Salim 17 years ago at a camp for the blind in Napa where both were counselors. Vancil lost her sight at age 13, and teaches
visually impaired and blind teens and adults at the Santa Rosa Community Center.

“She’s always calling me and saying, ‘This will look great on you.’ She always looks good and wants those around her to look good,” said Vancil, 36, who
also is a dance instructor. “I will be modeling for her when she has more products. All her things are beautiful boutique.”

Vancil knows how fortunate Salim is to have color memory, and realizes that Salim has a good eye when it comes to clothes and coordination. “She has some
color memory, which gives her the ability to match her wardrobe and work in color,” Vancil said. “It’s fantastic for her to use her creative energy and
do something she’s really good at.”

Always in search of a good manufacturer, Salim will describe in detail how she wants her line of clothes to be sewn by using her hands, voice, body and
sample garments. “I tell them the pattern and lining, and basically talk them through it,” she said. “The stuff I want to use is incredibly beautiful.
Definitely something you wouldn’t find in Macy’s or Target.”

Because Salim uses high-end fabrics, which she admits are hard to come by without extensive traveling and research, her leather jackets begin at $350.

She targets 25-to 45-year-old women who want to wear clothes that are classy, ageless and one-of-a-kind.

“I really want women to look like women, sexy but conservative. I love that women used to match their shoes with their purses,” Salim said. “Eventually,
I want to open my own boutique and do custom-made for men, too.”

Salim says she faces stereotypes about her blindness from sighted people who lack vision. “I always say and believe that true blindness is in the mind of
a person and not in the eyes of a person,” said Salim, who credits Suzanne Vetrano, New Venture Training instructor at the Contra Costa Small Business
Development Center in Concord, for her encouragement and support. “Blind people always have to prove to the world that they are actually human beings.
People will ask me, ‘Who dressed you today ?’ ”

Clair Fowly of San Francisco met Salim seven years ago, and is on the waiting list for one of Salim’s capes. “Suna is a very unique person,” said Fowly,
an area manager for Barkley Court Reporting in San Francisco. “She’s very clear in her visualization of what clothes look like, shape and form and what
works with your personality. She’s very perceptive.”

For Salim, who loves working with color on people who gravitate toward conservative black, knows that moving people into a variety of colors and textures
gives them a newfound freedom. “I want people who wear my things to feel good and look good. The first things you see are people’s clothes. I want to bring
things to life,” she said. “When someone says to you, ‘I like that color on you,’ you start to really feel that color.”

————————————————————– To order a jacket
Suna Salim’s SKS Collection specializes in custom leather jackets that are available directly from Salim. Contact her at
(925) 212-8088.
(Original URL of this report)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/09/CCGU64462K1.DTL&type=printabe

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