With the crescent moon that signals the start of Ramadan this weekend, henna artists across New York City are mixing their paste and clearing their schedules for one of the busiest times of the year.
Intricately detailed patterns of body dye made from the henna plant – known as mehndi in most Hindu cultures and henna in others – is a staple of celebrations from East Africa to the Middle East and South Asia, as well as Indo-Caribbean communities.
While weddings and birthdays keep henna artists busy year-round, the Ramadan rush culminates in the days before Eid al-Fitr at the end of the month. The floating Islamic calendar means there is often a scramble for booking appointments once the dates of Ramadan are confirmed.
For the dozens of NYC henna artists, who mostly run one-woman operations, the lunar calendar dictates not only religious observances but also their own schedules of parties, group appointments and last-minute bookings – as well as their earnings for a good chunk of the year.
Sabeen Marghoob, a henna artist in South Slope, says that the week leading up to Eid is one of her busiest times.
“It’s usually the first week [of Ramadan] where everyone books, but there’s always people at the very end trying to get their session,” said Sabeen Marghoob, a henna artist in South Slope. “I feel like with Ramzan, everyone knows it’s coming, but no one expects it. Every year, it’s like ‘Whoa, it’s here!’”
She estimates she’ll spend more than 30 hours drawing henna on dozens of clients in the week before Eid, with another dozen odd hours through the month, as well as henna workshops and other activities.
Henna artist Sana Nabi, a junior at Hofstra University who travels throughout Long Island and Queens doing henna on the side, began receiving Eid inquiries last week, though she hadn’t opened her calendar yet.
“It does get very chaotic,” Nabi said. “Especially for group bookings … usually families invite friends or other family members over to their house and hire a henna artist so everyone can get a little design done.”
On Thursday night, Marghoob was home at her Brooklyn apartment, preparing tea and waiting for a client, two cones of henna paste laid out on the table.
Marghoob, who works full-time as a consultant in the banking industry, started drawing henna on herself nightly during the depths of the pandemic lockdowns. As restrictions lifted and the huge backlog of weddings kicked back into gear, she realized that New York City didn’t have enough henna artists to meet the demand, and started her business.
“Imagine it, every wedding is on a Saturday, and every wedding takes two or three henna artists,” Marghoob said. “I’d be in Astoria doing a wedding, and a message would come in the group chat [for NYC area henna artists], ‘Can anyone come to this street in Astoria?’ So I literally went down the street to another wedding and worked the rest of the night.”
Like many henna artists, Marghoob often works from her home.
The post-pandemic frenzy has slowed to a normal pace, Marghoob said – now she can enjoy a more leisurely side hustle that gets her away from her desk to meet people and their families for henna appointments, and allows her to get to know various communities and their lives. After the South Asian and Arab communities, she said, the Guyanese community in Valley Stream, Long Island, provides many customers.
Marghoob’s client Thursday night was Dina Awshah, a corporate finance lawyer on the Upper West Side who has been coming to her for two years.
“For Arabs, we don’t really have [henna] on that much, but I find every excuse,” Awshah said. “The beginning of Ramadan, and then Eid, and then second Eid, any wedding, I’ll go do it. I love it.”
At Ramadan two years ago, she admired the work on a girl she was sitting next to at the mosque, and complimented her after prayer.
“I was like ‘Can you please tell me where you got this done? I need it desperately,’” Awshah said.
“The mosque is my advertising crowd,” Marghoob said, laughing.
Awshah was drawn to Marghoob’s “negative space” approach, she said – rather than drawing florals, paisleys and geometric patterns with the henna paste itself, Marghoob will create a flower by drawing its contours, leaving it empty, and filling in the area around it with a thick coating of paste.
Marghoob specializes in a “negative space” approach to henna art.
It’s a visually striking inversion of the traditional “heavy” style of henna art, where nearly the entire hand, or arm, or foot or ankle, is filled with minute and intricate designs, leaving barely any empty space at all.
A classic move for weddings is to hide the groom’s name somewhere in the design and let everyone try to find it.
“When I first started, I used to forget to put his name in – it was so bad,” Marghoob said. “The bride the next day would be like ‘Hey, where’s the groom’s name?’ and I’d say ‘Can’t you see it? It’s right there, it’s hidden.’”
Globalization and Instagram have flattened the many regional variations of henna art – from the abstract and geometric Desi styles, to the Arab styles with bold flowers creeping up the arm, or East African styles with a darker henna paste – into a few popular and recognizable aesthetics, Marghoob said.
She said she'll do whatever the client wants – Malaysian and Indonesian customers tend to want extremely minimal, dainty designs – but enjoys the heavy and intricate work the best, not least because it’s fun and meditative to create.
Dina Awshah displays her henna art.
Despite the intricate work and time involved, henna in NYC remains relatively underpriced compared to beauty services like hair and makeup, Marghoob said. Her hourly rates for a private session like Awshah’s, which lasts over 90 minutes, start at $90.
Her most intricate bridal design packages, with bespoke designs and two consulting sessions ahead of the actual appointment, and henna up to the elbow on both arms, start at $550.
“I can be sitting with a bride for 10 to 15 hours,” Marghoob said. “Not only doing henna but breaks, doing her family … by the end of the night I’m part of the family, eating dinner with everyone and getting plates of food to take home.”
Many customers with roots in countries with a wide henna practice balk at the prices she and others in NYC charge, Marghoob said, expecting prices akin to what they pay “back home.”
“It’s always funny to me, because you’re throwing this large event, usually a wedding,” Marghoob said. “You’ve paid vendors, you’ve paid food, you’ve paid for so many things that were not the same price as ‘back home.’”
Henna artists tend to set their prices independently, she said, though they may share pricing information for larger corporate events like a Fortune 500 company’s Diwali party or other celebration.
At one corporate event, where Marghoob worked 20 hours over the course of a weekend, she recalls discovering that the artist next to her was charging double what she was.
In the final nights of Ramadan, as Muslims prepare for Eid celebrations, henna artists will be working into the night. At Chaand Raat celebrations in Jackson Heights, late the night before Eid, henna artists work throughout the night at folding tables set up around the Jackson Heights subway station, where the streets turn into an enormous block party.
Marghoob expects to be fully booked for Eid within a day or two, though she’ll accommodate whatever last-minute requests she can.
“I’ve met so many amazing people [through henna], done so many events raising money for Pakistan, for Palestine,” Marghoob said. “Obviously I love my culture and faith, but this is a new avenue to participate in it.”
“Before this I wasn’t spending time with a hundred different girls before Eid, seeing them and their families and being a part of their Ramadan experience,” she said.
