Last November I flew to China to work with our factories and decided to take a roll of B&W film a friend gave me.
It’s times like this I really, really, really wish my parents had made me learn Mandarin.
The amount of times I’ve walked into a factory in China or sat down at Yum Cha in Sydney and seen the looks of shock and disappointment, I may as well be a Gweilo.
The stern disappointment the yum cha trolley ladies show me is especially shameful.
It’s lucky our factories have amazing merchandisers who work with us via email everyday. Their English is on point and they help to be interpreters between me, the patternmakers and machinists in the sample rooms.
This time I stayed near the factories instead of in Shanghai so I was able to spend a lot more time with them. We worked along side each other, working through designs, draping fabric on dress dummies, flat pattern making.
It was a heartwarming mix of creatives coming together, communicating with strange hand gestures when words were not understood.
Couple of phone snaps