Tailoring in Hoi An, Vietnam

Hoi An is famous for its tailors. It's where all sorts of people go to get high end suits made.  I had my favourite shorts copied early in my Asia trip, shortly before they fell apart, and I didn't expect to want anything else.

Something I did not foresee is the siren call of the picture in your head, the things you *really want to sew* becoming reality in front of your eyes in 24 hours.  I also assumed that tailors, since they do nothing but sew, must sew better than I do.

What started me on the slippery slope was a fact of timing.  I was assigned my MSF (Medecins sans Frontieres) mission the day before I arrived in Hoi An...my mission in Ukraine.  Cue a need for some cool weather clothing!  Also I convinced myself that maybe I would learn something from how a tailor corrected for my mysterious shoulder problem.  And after browsing through many shops, one of the tailors near my hotel had silk lining that I fell in love with and very cheap prices.  So I flipped through a book of design ideas and picked out a Burberry for them to copy.  I have a fondness for Burberries but generally they don't fit my shoulders very well.

At my first fitting I was actually pretty let down.  The tailor is not the person who takes the measurements, so while things fit in terms of the biceps and the shoulder breadth, my shoulder situation was not fixed at all, and I had no movement in my arms due to that.  However the matter was fixed for my second fitting!  My only remaining complaint is my fault - I wanted the belt to be sides only, and end at the back princess seams, but I didn't mention it so I got a real belt. 

The girl who did my measurements really drove home that my main issue was the slope of my shoulders, not the width or forwardness.  My hands are itching to test this out on some Scouts...patience is not my strong suit.

My summary of the coat is that it is like buying something at Zara - it doesn't feel like expensive tailoring - except that it is actual wool and silk, it fits, and nobody suffered to make it.  I don't shop at Zara due to my moratorium on sweatshop sewing factory products, which Zara and H&M continue to strongly support.

Pants and jacket combo!

At Ao Dai, another tailor's shop on the main promenade of town, I fell in love with grey, bird print rough silk - it feels like organza.  I showed the girls a picture of the Tilly Francoise and they copied it, and lined it with grey charmeuse.  The fit is perfect but I could use a tiny bit more scoop in the front of the sleeve.  

Silk organza does not soften with washing...this means my dress is always very wrinkly.

While I was chatting to the girls, I was fondling this nubbly chanel-type wool and wishing I needed something out of it.  And then I thought of a jacket from Rag & Bone last year.  I loved it and I still do, but it was 550$ and on the model it was so batwing that I knew if I wanted it I would need to learn how to copy it or find a pattern for something similar in order to make the shape suit me better than it suited the models.  Unfortunately it's really hard to find these old pictures online:

http://www.neimanmarcus.com/Rag-Bone-Randi-Cropped-Shimmery-Cotton-Jacket/prod177150050/p.prod?ecid=NMAHy3bqNL2jtQ&CS_003=5630585

I showed the pictures to the girls and before I realised it I had agreed for them to copy it.  I was pretty worried it was going to turn out crazy but they were so enthusiastic that they had it done the same evening, and I think I might have started a trend.  One of the ladies was already thinking of making one for herself!  I kind of like the original more, but I was impressed by how fast they translated my ideas into a concrete jacket.

I still love the fabric but this item still hasn't proven itself useful.

My new wardrobe was rounded out by a pair of wool pants from the most famous of the tailors in Hoi An, Jaly.  These pants are so tight that they will function as a block for future pants.  The fabric is a blend of cashmere, silk, wool, and lycra, but without much stretch. Here I discovered a problem with knowing too much: by asking for them to be very tight, the tailor took me at my word and didn't leave enough ease in the butt for me to lift my leg on steps.  This makes these pants uncomfortable to walk around in...

Did I say one pair?  While I was drooling over the fabrics I accidentally said yes to some lurid purple, so I got those too.  A good thing actually as the purple fabric is slightly heavier weight and has more lycra, so they stretch and are more comfortable. 

The purple pants - unexpected winner!

So I suspect you are wondering about the quality of my items, considering that everything was done in literally 24 hours.  I think there is a big variation between the tailors.  I could have done an equally good job on my teal coat, because I would have done it more slowly and carefully.  There are small signs of lower quality - the lining hangs down below the bottom of the coat, and there's no pleat in the lining.  I demanded an inside pocket and they put it in at the end, and within a few days of wearing it had already ripped because they didn't do anything to the silk to support the pocket. 

They sometimes stitched over the lining on the inside of both jackets, which reminds me of how I finish waistbands.  I think the sleevecuffs on the plaid jacket could have been done better too, as the lining peeks out a bit and was just sewn in and topstitched.  (I did ask for tabs on the arms but I forgot during my fitting, so they didn't go on in the end.)   The pants are very nicely done and even have the seams bound on the inside waist.  That's consistent with Jaly being the most famous and the highest quality of the tailors in Hoi An.

In the end actually this experience encouraged me.  I tend to be brainwashed by brands.  Things I have made that I love, I really love and I prefer - my tshirts, and one or two dresses.  But all the rest of the stuff I've made is somehow not as good as the store bought equivalents.  This experience showed me that that isn't inherently true.  If I focus on quality and slow sewing, my results will be better than store bought.  I also noticed through wearing these items that the loyalty is missing.  I'm loyal to the things I've made myself!  I miss them!  It may seem fun to need an entire new capsule wardrobe for travel, but I miss my homemades a lot and I dream of getting to sew. 

It was raining in Hoi An too!

Craftsy and scarf knitting

Back in September a friend in Delft talked me into buying yarn.  This was, my friends, the top of the slippery slope.  I knew I wouldn't be sewing for a long time, and I found this pattern to knit a sweater and thought it would be doable - even for me.  And unlike the sweater I made last time, it's something I would buy and wear that doesn't scream handmade.

Enough on that sweater.  It's still happening, never fear, but I'm stuck without the short cable to make the sleeves, I lost it somewhere between Seattle and here.

In the meantime, I decided to up the quality of my game.  I tried to start a Miette but discovered I wasn't ready for lace.  So I bought the Craftsy Knit lab because I wanted to do the seed stitch Cambridge scarf.  (Really I guess I didn't need a set of lectures for it, but I didn't figure that out on my own, so I'm gonna learn a few extra things too.)

That blocking process was very technical - added about 15 cm!

My mother said this looked 10 feet long...

I knitted the scarf for a friend which was great because by the time I was bored to death by the repeats, I had a deadline and had to finish.  It took about 1.5 weeks.  My friend Doris is really happy with it and so am I!  A finished knitting project that even involved a pattern!  This is practically a first, at least it feels like one.

The yarn is a wool alpaca and nylon blend by Valencia, the alpaca keeps it from being too terribly scratchy but it's marginal.  It's on size 4.5mm needles which are awful ones from Turkey, the cable got all over the place. All the yarn and the needles in the Ukraine are imported from Turkey and the quality is sort of ok but not the mouthwatering amazing stuff I can only drool over online.

Knitting is not like sewing and it's frustrating not to be able to access much yarn (I brought some with me, and the shops here do have those few options) but knitting is definitely fitting in to some degree as a replacement for sewing.  Although I really have to just not think about sewing because I miss it desperately!

Weaving ikat in Luang Prabang

During my trip I discovered a local weaving industry called Ock Pop Tok ("east meets west") in Luang Prabang.  It is a fair trade business providing livelihood for village weavers, and also has a lovely cafe that fed us local style food during our course, a shop which sells products made by the weavers there, and four boutique hotel rooms.  The location is amazing, with balconies over the Mekong river.  Impossibly, they told me that in the rainy season the water is only a few meters below your feet.  Can you imagine?

Looking west-ish from the Ock Pop Tok balcony.  Doesn't that fisherman look stranded?

Looking eastish, in the afternoon.  The shore seems really far away and it's impossible to imagine the water nearly lapping our feet.

I read about it in Lonely Planet, and immediately reckoned I should take a one-day class. It was hard to stay in one town too much in Asia, since it was my first trip.  I couldn't always settle in the present - if HERE is so amazing, then what will I see NEXT???  I had definitely not anticipated the variety of textiles, the hilltribe weaving and embroidery, and the access to the weaving and information.  By the time I got to Laos, I already had too much fabric to carry around with me!

So, class list.  In one day you could learn about dyeing and then weave a placemat.  In two days, you could weave a kit scarf using Lao designs.  And in three days, you could actually learn and do a full ikat scarf by yourself from nothing!  I had to revise my travel plans to fit three days in for this course.  Obviously it was the most thrilling option, and there was no looking back.

When you look forward to something, and it's a one-time affair, is it possible not to be disappointed?  I got sick on the way to Luang Prabang, and it just made everything even more intense and poignant, because I had three days of weaving to recover before moving on.  From sewing, I think I have become a craft pessimist - I know that my first attempt at anything is going to be crappy and so I don't try as hard the first time around.  But when the first time is also the only time, then I feel stressed to do the impossible - perfection!

The staff were truly amazing, and the project of first wrapping your silk into skeins, then tying it up, then dyeing it, and finally weaving, was so well done that now I definitely understand the theory of ikat and I could do it myself (on a bigger scale?) or teach others how to do it.  My teacher didn't speak any English so I learned a few words of Lao and she laughed at me, fixed my mistakes, and did half the work for me in the evening (all that wrapping skeins and bobbins of silk, agh!)

That foreshadowing of catastrophe was based on two things - the skeins for dye colours were aged and had faded - they actually redid them during my first day of weaving, which was sort of painful since I got to watch the beautiful colours drying and wish I'd chosen those myself.  I chose colours I wasn't sure about because they were all very pastel colours and I couldn't imagine how much darker my dye results would be. And the weft threads were black, which wasn't pointed out to me, but which makes a huge impact on the result.  If I had understood these facts, I would have chosen dark, rich colours, or asked about making olive green.  So I was weaving out of colours that I really didn't like. 

The sunbleached samples of doom.  The items below are all from the garden, and are the materials that you use to dye the silk.  We went and dug up all our dye!  (I didn't take an after picture of the new dyes because I was bitter.)

Weaving commences!

The ikat is in the yellow, and is visible up close.

The other thing is just that weaving takes time, like knitting.  I'm really glad I wove a scarf.  I was convinced not to run out and buy a loom!  Weaving is pretty boring work!

I ended up sending my scarf to a friend of mine who is a PhD in historical textiles.  I thought she might like the colours more than I did and I knew she would appreciate the work (and she says she loves it!) 

As for Ock Pop Tok and Luang Prabang, I loved these places enough to suspect another Asia trip will happen someday, and I'll be back!  Maybe to weave another scarf? 

Thai copy artists & ikat silk

My favourite pair of summer pants:

sorry very small picture

They are so threadbare that I was almost worried a copy would be too big because the fibers have relaxed a lot in the past five years of wear. I had debated copying them myself by taking them apart.  I was right to consider this an urgent matter, as later on this trip they fell apart spectacularly by ripping open across the entire bottom.

 Interestingly, the shop in Bangkok said that the tracing method is much easier than taking a piece apart.  I would assume it's less precise for some reason.

Copy number 1 is in a medium weight cotton:

Copy number 2 in silk Ikat from Bangkok:

Unfortunately I forgot to ask the guys to give me all my scraps.  I am pretty sad about that as I bought 1.5 meters.  Because of the width of the looms, thai silk is always about 1 meter wide, but I am pretty sure there was a lot left over.  The tailor cut on the cross grain to maintain the pattern and I was pleased with his pattern placement on the waistband and pockets.

Final opinion after wear:  I did this in the nick of time!  The waistband on both new versions is too big, but I'm hoping it'll shrink with a wash. It doesn't make them unwearable by any means.  They are of course stiffer than  my aged originals.  This copy project took two days!!  It cost me about $30 per pair, plus about $6 for the brown fabric.  Everything is finished nicely on the insides. I may regret asking for no belt loops because of this - I realised when they ripped that as the originals got looser they hung lower and lower on me, and fit less well. 

Unfortunately I was in a rush when I paid, so I can't tell you who the guys were in Bangkok that made my copies.  If you care, I can give you directions.  They were lovely gentlemen with good English, and they are good enough that they have clients in Switzerland and actually fly there to measure these dudes.  I think they aren't the cheapest out there - so far in Thailand there are sewists literally on every corner but I can't speak for the quality of everyone. 

Glutted on Textiles in Chiang Mai

Enough talking about fabric.  I don't usually take photos of people, of things in shops, or surreptitiously.  But here's the exception: a kaleidoscope of things I saw in Chiang Mai.  The children were all outside the Doi Suthep temple.  Because it was festival time in Chiang Mai, they were out of school and wore their ceremonial dress, possibly to try to get coins from tourists taking their picture.

Too bad I have nowhere to wear this amazing coat...

Hmong dress, modernised!

Silk Ikat, the blue pile.

More on traditional Thai weaving patterns

So in Chiang Mai I found a huge number of shops selling woven items.  Some of them come from the hilltribes in the area: the Lanna, Hmong, Karen, Tin and various other peoples.

The ikat that I discovered earlier is mostly from the silkweaving area around Buriran and Surin.  Other techniques seem to be prevalent in the hilltribes, including layered weaving and sometimes embroidery together with mixed layer weaving and ikat.  Unfortunately the shopowners with most interesting wares tend to speak no English at all.  I found one shop owned by a native English speaker, Adrian, and he was most informative.  His wares included stuff from the SUPPORT project.  From him I learned more about the SUPPORT foundation.  Apparently it is a bidirectional flow of information and products - the Queen supports the industry but to a certain degree modern design and fashion informs what is woven.  So for instance in this amazing tote bag which I just barely avoided buying, ikat is visible in the center, but the beaded decorative spirals are a non-traditional element.

On the other hand, there is Chan.  The owner spoke zero english, but did tell me that these items were made for a runway fashion show!  So this is runway fashion, hilltribe style.  A few of the tops and jackets would be wearable for daily use if you so desired, but the prices are western level, with nothing less than 150$.  (Sorry I was pretty surreptitious with my camera in his little shop.)

In many of the shops older pieces are reused - either by being incorporated into clothing or as decorative elements on bags.  I extrapolate that this is partly because the culture doesn't include as much wastefulness as in the west, but I know from speaking with some of the shop owners that many of these techniques are being lost, so the weavings have value as non-reproducible originals, and I suppose you could call them vintage elements.  One lady explained that the villages use a middleman to sell their weaving in Chiang Mai, so often jackets etc. which have been worn are resold when they aren't needed.  (I tried on an AMAZING jacket made by the Tin people, with bright pink silk embroidery, but it was 200$ and the shopowner wouldn't let me take a photo.) 

Thailand & silk Ikat

It was only my first day in Bangkok but I sniffed out the fabric somehow.  I went into the Textile Museum, which is an exhibit off to the side of the Grand Palace.  The palace itself is hugely touristed and the ticket is for everything, but not everyone makes it into the museums.  In fact, it was hard to get to the textile museum - you had to go through the giftshop.  The result is that I saw all the silks before I read about them.

silks:

Thailand has a very interesting cultural history when it comes to ceremonial clothing.  Unlike other countries in the area, there is no traditional dress.  There was up to a certain point but it seems like when the country westernised in the 1900's, clothing didn't make the leap.  When the King and Queen were going to Europe in the 1960's, she commissioned Balmain, the Paris couturier, to design a wardrobe for her using elements that had been part of historical Thai dress, including accordioned skirts and draped half bodices.  The work was so successful that it sparked a number of events.

1. She kept wearing the outfits, and so now in the collective mind, they *are* Thai traditional dress.
2. Other people started wearing them too
3. In order to support textile production in the countryside, Queen Sirikit created a foundation, named SUPPORT, which does just that - it supports the processes of silk dyeing and weaving (along with other village crafts) according to traditional village methods.  Different areas have different techniques, but ikat is a traditional technique in Thailand and is still done in the villages, although by fewer young people.

I am hoping to go see some of these villages in a few weeks.  But in the meantime I couldn't resist the expensive Queen approved silks.  The prices were relatively high.  After seeing some of the stuff sold in Firenze I've redefined 'expensive fabric.'  But for the more lightweight Ikat it was 600-900 Baht (up to 25$/m) and for the heavierweights it was 1900 Baht ($60$/m.)

I got two pieces, and put one to use right away!