For our blog we will be featuring a story of one of our creations creations!
To start with, here is the story of the beautiful Tenzin Dress, hand crafted by Tibetan Refugees in McCleod Ganj. Read more to find out how it came to be!
A couple of years ago I fractured a hip in a car accident in Spain, and heard about a mysterious place in South Goa run by Manipuri ninjas who did wonders with bones. I went to visit them at the Bone Clinic and met Mr. Ringo Paonam, a softly spoken Martial artist who said he could fix me but they were packing up and moving to the himalayas and would I come up there for a few months? So Anouk and I packed up our house and moved to Himachal Pradesh, dragging our suitcases up an apocalyptic highway with a mystical tattoo artist and ended up living in a little guesthouse on the mountain. Heading to the bone clinic every day for months with some lovely characters, an Italian Israeli father son duo, a Russian spy, a sensitive swiss soul affected by the change of weather, and by some bizarre twist of fate an old family friend of my French boat family who created bob dylans first music videos.... and climbing up the mountains to visit eagles nest and meet wild horses.
During a trip into McLeod ganj, our local town, where we coincidentally met the Dalai Lama, I noticed the beautiful chupa dresses the Tibetan women were wearing. They are a traditional style dress with a wrap belt waist made from beautifully crafted Tibetan Brocade. I thought about whether I could make them for anouk as it is a perfect style for cooler mountain air. I found a grandmother/granddaughter run shop that helped us pick out the first fabrics to give it a go.
Tenzin, the grandmother, took us up the mountain to meet her family and drink some insanely pungent tea, and the Tenzin dress and its makers were created. So in between sampling local wines with Gad on night rooftops, getting my hands tattooed and getting all our bones cracked back in to place, Anouk and I were working with Tenzin and a group of refugees to create these beautiful dresses.
We sourced some unusual colours to make them a little more vibrant! Available for special orders over the summer and will be online for our winter season.
