MARGINALIA NO. 2
05/01/2026
"The Traveling Tiger," — From Blake to Bangladesh
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
I first encountered William Blake through his illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy in an Italian art course a few years ago — the strange, visionary figures he etched by hand into copper plates. Then I found him again in a course called "Great Books from Little Languages," taught by Professor David Bellos at Princeton. We were reading Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, in which one of the characters is translating Blake's poetry into Polish. That's how I found Blake again.
"The Tyger" is a poem in Blake's manuscript Songs of Experience, juxtaposed with his earlier work, Songs of Innocence. The two collections live in dialogue — innocence and experience, creation and destruction, the lamb and the tiger. Blake never resolves this tension.
That duality is something I keep returning to. But the tiger didn't start with Blake. In 2021, my first fashion collection — "East Meets West," which held the earliest seeds of what would become Genie — referenced the Korean folk tiger, a protective, mischievous figure that appears across centuries of Korean art. The motif stayed with me. Ideas don't arrive fully formed; they grow and layer over time, picking up new meaning as you move through the world. The Korean folk tiger became the Princeton tiger became Blake's Tyger. A tiger is a tiger is a tiger — but each time, it becomes something new.
Last year, when I graduated from Princeton, I had the opportunity to design the class jackets for my class. It's hard to believe that was almost a year ago now. I get asked often whether my Princeton degree — in comparative literature and poetry — informs my design process. Looking at this cap, which has become the symbolic cornerstone of SS26 "The Little Vagabond," I would say yes.
My inspirations come from the literature and art I was able to find and study in depth during college. While the tiger motif is a direct reference to that, the conceptual underpinnings of Genie as a brand come from something broader: the idea that identity is not singular, but comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Blake kept returning to me in different forms, proposing different ideas each time — the way our experiences and memories always circle back, shaping who we are now.
The Tyger Cap was designed in New York City, in collaboration with a French manufacturer, crafted in Bangladesh with deadstock denim sourced from Japan.
That journey felt worth documenting — which is how "The Traveling Tiger" series came to be: a set of hand-cut collages placing the cap against maps, streetscapes, and archival images from around the world. The cap moves through places the way ideas move through a life — picking things up, carrying them forward.
And now it's coming to you.
Discover the Tyger Cap →
The Tyger Cap is a pre-release souvenir from SS26 "The Little Vagabond," available in limited quantities. Each cap ships with complimentary domestic shipping in a keepsake box from New York City.
Jeanie
Founder, GENIE