Originating from Syria 7,000 years ago, according to scholars (site source), the Miao migrated north through Russia and Siberia, entered what is now China, and were pushed south over the centuries due to wars with the Han, until they finally settled in the rugged Karst mountains of southwest China. They did not have a written language, and only an oral history where the iconography in their fabric and embroideries were used as tools to tell the stories of this migration and the creation mythology of their people.
The Miao are well-known internationally for their elaborate hand-embroideries which are filled with auspicious symbols for protection and iconography conveying their oral history. Not only are they collected by the British Museum in London, they are also on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Quai Branley in Paris. These embroideries serve as tools to pass down the history of migration across China over the centuries; it is literally like wearing history books on your clothes.
But there is less hand embroidery details on their clothing these days, and they increasingly wear mass-produced clothing they buy in the market — a reflection of their progress/advancement as they can now afford to buy clothes instead of having to make it themselves. So vital are these embroideries to the culture and soul of the people that they were put onto UNESCO’s tentative list of intangible cultural heritages in need of urgent safeguarding in 2014. (?)
So when we’re talking about the fabrics and embroideries of the Miao ethnic minorities, it is more than just clothing – it is literarily their history written down on cloth. With the passing of each elaborately-embroidered piece to a new owner, we lose the original maker who used the fabric as a storytelling tool to pass down the origins of her people. Tragically, the younger generation can no longer read the stories and messages in these fabrics.
As the anthropologist Wade Davis has said, half of the world’s languages will be lost in one generation (pull quote from The Wayfinders), and with it the knowledge carried by its elders. The Miao do not have a written language, and the adoption of a written language in 1958 (year? site source) created by the Han has not done much for documenting the knowledge of the elders, most of whom are illiterate and do not speak Mandarin Chinese.
So why does it matter if their knowledge is lost or not? Is this not the inevitable trend of all indigenous cultures? By wanting them to continue their traditional ways, are we not keeping them from moving forward with their own economic progress? Should we not deprive them of the better life they see on their television sets and hear about in the big cities?
Well, traditional craftsmanship is being lost at an even quicker rate all around the world right now — whether it be a traditional mountain village in China, a samplemaker in New York’s Garment District, or a 3rd generation (?) leather button-maker in Italy. It can be attributed to rising labor costs in developing countries and the public’s shift in the last two (?) decades of buying more goods at cheaper prices. Since the U.S. began outsourcing overseas in the mid-1990’s and fabrics becoming cheaper after China joined the WTO in 2001, fast-fashion retailers have trained the mass consumer to buy cheaper goods to wear. As the price of product has grown with inflation, the price of clothing has actually decreased — and with it, certainly the quality of the fabric and sewing.
On the market level, this means that the diversity of products diminishes in favor of cheaper and more scalable mass-produced items. For the environment, it means that more products of lower quality are being produced and sold – a product life-cycle that usually ends up being thrown into a landfill, because it does not last very long and buying a new one is cheaper than mending it. So this means that the hand-crafted is becoming more rare as companies are seeking our less costly ways to manufacture products.
The overuse of “craftsmanship” and “artisanal”
Which is why the terms “artisanal” and “craftsmanship” are being overused today. After the 2008 recession, luxury brands needed to find a way to differentiate themselves (?) and bring more value to the post-recession mindset, so digging into their history of craftsmanship was a way to bring more meaning to their product (site source). This was a natural narrative for a French luxury goods house or Swiss watch manufacturer, whose story may have started as a humble atelier over 100 years ago. And interestingly, their use of local natural resources to define their handmade products is not unlike what we see with the ethnic mountain tribes in Guizhou province. When I read about how Goyard used local tree logs that they floated down the river (site source), or hear about how the “petite-mains” of the haute-couture houses in Paris (site source) would take pieces to sew at home, it reminds me of the humble way of producing in Guizhou province. Luxury goods were not always highly-branded, machine-manufactured replaceable products found in every major airport and capital around the world. They were more humble in origin, small quantities that were hand-made and pushed innovation, as can be seen by Louis Vuitton’s entering into the World Exposition in 1885? (find year). Or Hermès’s use of the newly-invented zipper in 193?. (site source) Or Cartier being the first to move the pocket-watch to the wrist-watch for pilots of WWII (site source).
But to suddenly call something “artisanal” when it is industrially produced is false advertising and being abused by American marketers. A McDonald’s hamburger, for example, is perceived as being of higher quality when it says “artisanal” next to it. (find source) Hamburgers have always been slapped together by hand, so why do we need to now say that they are “artisanally” put together? Or when a Levi’s dress gives the perception of locally-crafted (find source) when the tag labels inside says it was manufactured in a factory in Portugal?
Living in Guizhou, I discovered that craftsmanship is culture. It’s a reflection of the people and the way they live. It’s their beliefs and the resources around them. It is a reflection of the maker, the human. When I see a garment, I know who made it cause it bears the imprint of their personality on the cloth — a tight weave by a man who pulls harder, a woman whose weave is looser because she is more gentle on her pull.
In Guizhou, I would see bamboo baskets that were 10 years old, aged from daily use, in beautiful condition, that families would make for their own use. It looked like something that could be sold at Pottery Barn for $100, for an artificially-aged faux version.
At what point do we draw the line between real craftsmanship and faux craftsmanship? Real artisanal and fake artisan? And does it even matter? What does craftsmanship and artisanal really mean? In Guizhou, craftsmanship is not a profession. It’s a way of life. It’s life itself. Everyone knows how to make things. And maybe that is the skill that we are missing. To make is to be human. That is what separates us from other animals. Our ability to make things with our hands, whether they are are small things or giant buildings. Perhaps that is why we are. So happy when we are making things — because it brings us back to our purpose of being human. Because when we start using machines, it takes us away from being human. We end up over-producing and creating pollution because we are not in touch with the end consumer – we are not making it directly for them. So there are a lot of wasted elements, pieces not being used (think of all the extra things your phone does that you don’t use). If we were to make things for ourselves, or customized for us, the product would only use the materials for that use. It would be more efficiently-designed. We would use it longer. It would last longer. We would care for it, fix it if it broke, and mend it if became torn.
In the last 7 years since my first trip to Guizhou, I’ve witnessed the evolution of this trend in the resurgence of artisanal and craft production in the U.S. as an extension of the DIY maker movement that has grown in the last decade with Etsy and the Maker Faire. There is a return to slow and local production, as a reaction to the increasing speed in communication and how the 24-hour news cycle and constant flow of information has affected our daily lives. And also to the ubiquity of fast fashion and the outpouring of trends and anonymously-designed new products that is constantly being advertised to us.
Surprisingly, even the super tech-savvy post-Millennials in China are sparking a traditional craft revival now because they have never been to a traditional village themselves.
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It was not until 3 years later when I finally did meet a 16-year old girl and was fluent enough in Chinese to ask about her ambitions. After her grandmother showed us a traditional silk costume she had handwoven and made by herself, which the curious young girl was seeing for the first time in her life, I asked if this was something she would be interested in learning. Her response was a definite “yes!” — if she could get paid for it, and would open up a workshop to produce my orders. Even in a small remote village, she reflected the optimistic entrepreneurial mindset that dominates modern China – a country where 50% of young girls say they want to grow up to be an entrepreneur.
If I was to get any fabric made, it was clear that I’d have to find a way to motivate these young teenagers to start learning the techniques from their parents. But once I started sketching, getting them excited my designs took no effort at all. Like so many girls around the word, fashion and clothing got them excited. It was clear that the way to get them motivated about weaving their grandmothers’ traditional cloth was through the lens of modern fashion.
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