How a US fashion designer teamed up with Chinese ethnic minorities to recreate their traditional clothing
- ‘It was like discovering gold,’ luxury designer Angel Chang says of the intricate fabrics and garments made by villagers in Guizhou’s remote mountain areas
Storm clouds gathered overhead as Angel Chang arrived. Cooks were slaughtering a chicken when a sudden blackout enshrouded the guest house in darkness. From the kitchen, the crescendo of wind and rain met with the unsettling sounds of the screeching bird.
“I was in a horror film,” Chang, a vegetarian, says. In that shadowed hall, the silhouette of the young fashion designer from New York could be seen hunched over an iPhone, a beacon connecting her from the rural idyll of Dimen in China to the metropolis she knew.
“That first winter was merciless,” Chang recalls, adding that the darkness persisted for two days and returned with each rain. Within those wooden homes, the cold was a constant companion, persisting even as Chang slept cloaked in coats meant for the outdoors.
This was 2012, when we first crossed paths in that otherwise splendid guest house set in Guizhou province’s unspoilt landscapes, where every journey unfolded along hours of serpentine roads.
I was in search of photographic stories; she was looking for exceptional fabrics from which to create her first handmade garments.
Born to Chinese parents who had immigrated to the United States, Chang, now in her 40s, is a budding entrepreneur with a seed-to-garment fashion line that offers a zero-carbon commercial avenue to traditional Chinese artisans.
