Every summer without fail, my family made the trip to the coast. My grandmother had a summer house on the Aegean. The kind of place where the days moved slowly, the sea was always close, and a beautiful peshtemal was always drying in the breeze off the balcony.

The summer house was where I came to breathe. Where I shed the weight of the whole year and let the summer in. Where I reunited with friends, and every reunion felt like picking up a conversation that never really ended.

And every summer, there was a different peshtemal. I thought of it less as a towel and more as part of the outfit — something you chose deliberately, the way you choose what to wear to the beach. I loved spending each summer with a new one. Even now, when I look back at old photographs, I can feel the memories from that summer by the peshtemal in the frame.

Years later, I moved to Los Angeles. New city, new friendships, the same warmth, the same joy of being together near the water. And I found myself wanting to bring that piece of the Aegean here: the peshtemals made on the shores where I grew up. That is how House of Aegean began.