The climate in Guizhou may be considered mild, but the humidity exaggerates the hot temperatures in the summer and hits your bones with cold moist air in the winter. While it rarely snows, the winters are still painfully cold because there is no central heating anywhere. If it is 40 degrees outside, it is also 40 degrees inside. There is no relief from the cold except to bundle up and keep active. If you’re not lucky enough to sit around a small coal or wood-burning fire in the middle of the room, then you’re moving around trying to keep yourself warm.
We Americans take for granted that every building we enter in a big city is air-condition in the summer or heated during the winter, so we are always in a 72 degree climate-controlled environment. While we can escape the cold and take our jackets off once we go indoors, the ethnic minority villagers must keep their winter jackets on all day and night long. The cold is especially painful when exiting a hot shower or getting out of a warm bed in the morning. But once one gets used to it, the fresh cold air can make one feel alive and purified in an almost masochistic way.
While there are four seasons per year, the Dong calendar breaks this further into 21 (24?) predications in the farming calendar, each spanning two weeks. It’s easy to doubt the change in climate every two weeks, but our Dong minority dyer Lai Lei showed us these subtle changes in the climate in the color of the indigo-dyed cloth. In the winter, the dye hardly picks up on the fabric and instead creates delicate jagged lines from the frost that collects on the fabric’s surface. As the temperature warms up, the indigo leaves more color on the cotton until the end of the summer (or fall?) when it is darkest and the fabric takes more of the dye. Depending on what time of the year the fabric is dyed, it will achieve a different shade of indigo.
Dyeing other colors happens outdoors during the warmer months of spring and summer when the plants for dyeing are fresh and can be foraged from the mountain forests. Embroidery is done during the winter time indoors when there is less farming activity to do and more free time.
After Chinese New Year in February, I can begin planning production for my collection. The weather starts warming up in March, and villagers germinate cotton seedlings in fire-heated plastic-covered greenhouses. By early April, they are then planted in rows on their land. Each villager is allocated 1 mu of land (about 1/2 acre?) by the government, on which they grow all their crops for the year, including the cotton and indigo that will be made for my fabrics. Families are also given land in the mountains for growing trees, which they use for building their homes. As traditional wooden house typically only lasts 30 years, trees are replanted so there is a future supply for rebuilding. When I asked if they wanted to renovate their home and make it bigger, the answer they gave was simple: wait 7 years for the trees to grow big enough to cut them down.
It never occurred to me that one would have to wait, especially for a tree to grow so I could renovate my own home. In New York, I was accustomed to getting things immediately, at any time of day, and at anytime of the year. Nearly anything can be shipped these days no matter where it is around the world. But here in the mountains of Guizhou, I learned about the limitations of nature. In this region, it was too cool for fruit to grow in our village, so we rarely ate fruit. Chocolate, coffee, and olive oil were considered expensive foreign products in China, so they were rarely seen in the villages. We only ate what was grown locally, and during the season when it was available.
Nature had its own timing, and if I wanted to make any fabric then I would have to follow its rules and produce according to the real seasons, not market-driven fashion seasons. In fact, I had to forget everything I learned working in the international fashion industry — whether one is working in New York, Paris, Italy, or even the coastal factories in China, global apparel production worked on an fast-paced cycle that is increasingly becoming harder to keep up. Being able to order any product, in any color, of any quantity, and have it ship at anytime of year simply did not work out here in nature.
In the beginning, I used to feel like I was going back in time, hundreds of years, whenever I entered Guizhou. But within a year, that notion flipped and I now it puts me more in touch with the real world. The ancient Greeks referred to this as chronos (measured time) and kairos (the right moment), or kala and ritu by the ancient Indians. The fast pace of modern life, particularly the hyper-speed with which our digital world is experiencing, feels artificial and man-made time in comparison. Everything just takes longer in nature — what I now view more and more as real time.
Here in Guizhou province, I would have to learn how to design according to nature’s timing, and the villagers would serve as my teachers.
Seasons
The climate in Guizhou may be considered mild, but the humidity exaggerates the hot temperatures in the summer and hits your bones with cold moist air in the winter. While it rarely snows, the winters are still painfully cold because there is no central heating anywhere. If it is 40 degrees outside, it is also 40 degrees inside. There is no relief from the cold except to bundle up and keep active. If you’re not lucky enough to sit around a small coal or wood-burning fire in the middle of the room, then you’re moving around trying to keep yourself warm.
We Americans take for granted that every building we enter in a big city is air-condition in the summer or heated during the winter, so we are always in a 72 degree climate-controlled environment. While we can escape the cold and take our jackets off once we go indoors, the ethnic minority villagers must keep their winter jackets on all day and night long. The cold is especially painful when exiting a hot shower or getting out of a warm bed in the morning. But once one gets used to it, the fresh cold air can make one feel alive and purified in an almost masochistic way.
While there are four seasons per year, the Dong calendar breaks this further into 21 (24?) predications in the farming calendar, each spanning two weeks. It’s easy to doubt the change in climate every two weeks, but our Dong minority dyer Lai Lei showed us these subtle changes in the climate in the color of the indigo-dyed cloth. In the winter, the dye hardly picks up on the fabric and instead creates delicate jagged lines from the frost that collects on the fabric’s surface. As the temperature warms up, the indigo leaves more color on the cotton until the end of the summer (or fall?) when it is darkest and the fabric takes more of the dye. Depending on what time of the year the fabric is dyed, it will achieve a different shade of indigo.
Dyeing other colors happens outdoors during the warmer months of spring and summer when the plants for dyeing are fresh and can be foraged from the mountain forests. Embroidery is done during the winter time indoors when there is less farming activity to do and more free time.
After Chinese New Year in February, I can begin planning production for my collection. The weather starts warming up in March, and villagers germinate cotton seedlings in fire-heated plastic-covered greenhouses. By early April, they are then planted in rows on their land. Each villager is allocated 1 mu of land (about 1/2 acre?) by the government, on which they grow all their crops for the year, including the cotton and indigo that will be made for my fabrics. Families are also given land in the mountains for growing trees, which they use for building their homes. As traditional wooden house typically only lasts 30 years, trees are replanted so there is a future supply for rebuilding. When I asked if they wanted to renovate their home and make it bigger, the answer they gave was simple: wait 7 years for the trees to grow big enough to cut them down.
It never occurred to me that one would have to wait, especially for a tree to grow so I could renovate my own home. In New York, I was accustomed to getting things immediately, at any time of day, and at anytime of the year. Nearly anything can be shipped these days no matter where it is around the world. But here in the mountains of Guizhou, I learned about the limitations of nature. In this region, it was too cool for fruit to grow in our village, so we rarely ate fruit. Chocolate, coffee, and olive oil were considered expensive foreign products in China, so they were rarely seen in the villages. We only ate what was grown locally, and during the season when it was available.
Nature had its own timing, and if I wanted to make any fabric then I would have to follow its rules and produce according to the real seasons, not market-driven fashion seasons. In fact, I had to forget everything I learned working in the international fashion industry — whether one is working in New York, Paris, Italy, or even the coastal factories in China, global apparel production worked on an fast-paced cycle that is increasingly becoming harder to keep up. Being able to order any product, in any color, of any quantity, and have it ship at anytime of year simply did not work out here in nature.
In the beginning, I used to feel like I was going back in time, hundreds of years, whenever I entered Guizhou. But within a year, that notion flipped and I now it puts me more in touch with the real world. The ancient Greeks referred to this as chronos (measured time) and kairos (the right moment), or kala and ritu by the ancient Indians. The fast pace of modern life, particularly the hyper-speed with which our digital world is experiencing, feels artificial and man-made time in comparison. Everything just takes longer in nature — what I now view more and more as real time.
Here in Guizhou province, I would have to learn how to design according to nature’s timing, and the villagers would serve as my teachers.
Timeline of seed-to-garment
JANUARY Waiting for spring
FEBRUARY Waiting for spring
MARCH Germinate cotton seeds
APRIL Plant cotton seeds
Raise silk worms
MAY Grow cotton
Feed silk worms
JUNE Grow cotton
Feed silk worms
JULY Grow cotton
Boil silk cocoons
AUGUST Harvest cotton bolls
Spin cotton into yarn
Spin silk into yarn
SEPTEMBER Set-up yarn on handloom
Weave fabric
Harvest indigo leaves
Create indigo dye vat
Collect red soil
OCTOBER Weave fabric
Wash and cook fabric
Dye fabric in indigo dye
Dye fabric with red soil
Beat fabric
NOVEMBER Cut & sew clothes
Make hand-knot buttons
Embroider labels
DECEMBER Garment finished
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