In the 8 year time period that I have known the Dzao their lives have catapulted from an ancient world with no electricity in their homes, access to only local foods, mostly all homegrown and raised, handmade clothing and a completely independent cultural community with their own practices and beliefs. To the modern Asia, internet, smartphones, washing machines, rice-cookers, education, an intertwined community with modern Vietnam and hunger for money.
Sapa is one huge construction site, Taphin too. Everyone here is trying to make a buck. Hotels, shops, tour packages, more. The desire for a modern (plastic, shiny and fantastic) world is rife, everyone wants it. Everyone wants change, everyone wants to have more. It is ferocious and extraordinary to bear witness to. The pace is fast, really fast.
The sadness in Taphin is that the money that comes to the village barely reaches the Dzao people. The tour operators from Hanoi and other Vietnamese businesses reap the profits.
So many families are left in deep poverty and exposed daily to long lens cameras and tourists in their homes but hardly seeing any money.
Of course the Dzao want money too. They want to have money to give them choices about how their futures pan out. Some dream of maintaining their wooden houses and being able to keep the valuable land that feeds their families, others have greater ambitions of making Taphin an eco village, others want to keep their traditional skills and others simply want a rice cooker and to be able to buy some extra meat. There are a few great programs helping Dzao women to create their own businesses but its not enough. The women know what they want to do, they just don't have the skills or the financing to do it.
Tamay and I have been dear friends for years now. We are a shared love of textiles. We both love sewing. We both love embroidery. We are both super driven and we both have passion to find some solutions to problems in our societies. We have kids. We wildly dream of a better future and our dreams are really similar and very complementary. We also work really well together. So Tamay & Me was born, a textile business, that offers well made long-lasting, ethically sound, entirely natural clothing, providing regular employment for the future.
It is all well timed. As the Dzao need work and are ready to shout about their textiles on a global scale. We in the West are tired of bad quality garments, exploitation, throwaway culture and chemical production.
Our jackets already employ over 20 people in Vietnam. We have the cotton growers, spinners and weavers, the indigo dyers, embroiderers, silk-braiders and the seamstresses. It feels great and they want to make more and more.
There is something magical in the whole process beyond cloth and jackets (thought they are magic too). It is a way that we can start to build bridges between cultures that teach wisdom, not greed. We all have so much to share. To understand the value in simplicity, in honesty, transparency and meeting needs. Just as the Dzao need to meet their needs, they need to see the value in their very humble yet harmonious lifestyles. Plastic is not fantastic, neither are processed foods or cheap clothes or concrete. In the West we need to re-remember what a humble-harmonious lifestyle feels like and what it means on a daily basis. We don't need to up-sticks to live a self-sufficient life in communities like in the 60s. We need to walk more, cherish our communities, help each other out, eat better, enjoy processes, work hard and steadily, tend to our children and elderly.
Our communities today are more than our family and neighbours, they are all those friends, across the countries we live in and around the world, the social media connections that inspire us, the podcasts we listen to, the networks that we belong to, or want to belong to. We have the capacity to connect, it is our gift and so we should. Lets engage more and help each other more to find solutions in difficult times. Lets ask each other questions, lets communicate.
The Dzao jackets are so simple. They are from the earth like we all are. They are clothes that enable you to feel completely yourself. Who doesn't look great in indigo? Amongst one of the oldest known dye colours and an alchemic fermented process to work with, it comes out of the dye bucket green! The cloth feels great, it matures so well as you wear it, they get better and better with time becoming soft, the colour softens and the cloth shapes to your body. They work like a summer jacket but also as a shirt. They are staple garments that work with most outfits, they can be dressed up or down, they can be workwear or used to smarten yourself up. It is a classic, with a Japanese style sophistication and entirely unisex (enough in society is gendered, this doesn't have to be!)
Plus, just to make them even better, who doesn't want to know who grew their cotton and who spun it and wove it and embroidered it and sewed it all together and who sent it, who packaged it, marketed it, worked on the website, took the photos, who was in the photos, wrote the stories and replied to the messages. Just this story in in itself creates an entire community. We have the capacity to know who we all, are so why not, lets get to know each other! Doesn't it make us richer to wider our horizons and to create networks? Only that way can we carve tunnels of light through a strange time of change. Let’s connect… email us me@tamayandme.com
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