Textiles

Hong Kong designer Sharon Tsang-de Lyster is creating a global atlas of textile crafts

Fashion and craft go hand in hand. However, many artisans skilled in heritage crafts live in remote, rural communities, so finding and working with them remains a significant challenge.

Enter young Hong Kong-based designer Sharon Tsang-de Lyster, founder of The Textile Atlas. Her innovative online platform presents geographical maps of artisans and resources that make it simple for designers, brands, collectors, curators and academics to locate and learn about talented craftspeople practising traditional techniques.

‘It’s a platform for collaboration and mutual sharing,’ says Tsang-de Lyster, adding that she has long been concerned about contemporary fashion’s focus on finished products, trends and sales. Determined to find another way, in 2016 she founded her studio Narrative Made and began exploring how to incorporate heritage crafts into fashion.

Seeing herself as a ‘bridge builder for cultural exchange’, Tsang-de Lyster encourages fair partnerships and explains that ‘the simple act of sharing is important, but it should be done in a way that doesn’t disadvantage indigenous cultures, and that focuses on sustainability.’

Highlighting the personal stories behind disappearing crafts is one way to raise awareness of these issues. For instance, profits from a collaboration between Narrative Made and Indonesian brand SukkhaCitta were used to build a communal batik workshop in a village. ‘An adult earns around one US dollar per day for farm work but with contemporary batik orders they can earn up to six dollars a day. Compared to the backyards they normally work in, the new space allows scalability, a better working environment and training,’ she says. According to Tsang-de Lyster, engaging artisans who already have a particular skill like heritage textile making increases their income and promotes financial independence, and at the same time encourages the practice and preservation of their cultures.

She explains that climate change has forced many nomads to settle down and live in permanent homes, where integrating is a challenge. Although governments may provide land, settlers often receive little recognition or support. One of Tsang-de Lyster’s partners is kal, a brand that works with nomads in Changtang, northern India, and which offers an exemplar of textile production: those who are still nomadic gather wool, while those who have settled are involved in carding, spinning and weaving. Being able to use these rare skills allows them to offer something valuable to their own society and the world.

‘The settled younger generation question their identity,’ Tsang-de Lyster explains, ‘but if they keep tending their animals, they have more chance of earning a sustainable income from the pashmina and wool that is produced, so kal has established closed-loop production with nomads and settled nomads.’

This approach comes with a responsibility, she adds. ‘Working with artisan communities means I’m playing a part in their future. It puts me in the positions of anthropologist and development worker as well as fashion and textile designer.’

For Tsang-de Lyster, a colour and trend forecaster herself, The Textile Atlas’s focus on traditional craft skills is essential to anyone thinking about the future. ‘Studying future trends always requires understanding consumer behaviour, shifts in societies and identities, history and innovations,’ she explains. ‘There are many ways to operate within the fashion industry, but fashion itself should be a creative space. It reflects history and creates history.’