The price we pay for silk

In Lao villages obscurely remote from the world we know an age old process continues with Loa women at the helm of wooden looms. Producing sublimely raw silk fabrics, they live and work in harmony with their environment supported by sustainable industry. In stark contrast to China where the silk industry is booming like never before, it’s bursting and the seams, spilling into the Yangtze River and polluting the moon and stars. China’s production of silk products has outgrown their ability to produce enough fabric, forcing them to source supply from international markets. It mirrors the nursery rhyme about the hare and the tortoise. Can China sustain its growth? Can Lao villages sustain their industry? We rely on our environment to support us, so protecting and nurturing our environment is essential to sustain life.

Mr Robert Hawke Australian Prime Minister 1983 to 1995 once quoted “The way to global economic stability is through protecting your environment” he was immediately labelled a “greenie” You might ask what has politics got to do with style and fashion? Well politics, war, science, economics, environment and many other factors directly or indirectly impact on shaping style and producing fashion. Just a glance back in time will reveal the facts. Politics; Moa Tse Tung’s socialist system of government imposed dress codes on its subjects, the style is immediately recognisable. German officers wore uniforms styled by Hugo Boss in the Second World War. Scientific intervention has been playing a silent role shaping style for many centuries. Environmental conditions impose limitations on silk weaving in Laos. The prime motivation here is survival, making enough to last until the next season, protecting the environment is core to this end and governs quantity.

Mr Hawke’s profound statement continues to echo around the world as the cost of repairing the damaged environment escalates, the damage continues, “It’s a vicious cycle”

Meanwhile back in tranquil Laos intervention of modern communication has brought remote villages ever closer to our shores. Through agents in the capitol city traditionally woven silks can be bought and shipped any where in the world. Agents travel hundreds of miles visiting hundreds of villages delivering and collecting orders. An order can take six months to fill. Vegetable dyes are seasonal and ground by hand, silk worms are bread each season and new mulberry saplings planted. The yarn has to be spun, dyed and finally woven on wooden looms into sublimely raw silk scarves. The texture and colour produced using vegetable dyes are impossible to describe, you have to see it and feel it for yourself.

‘The price we pay for silk’, ‘well done village people’