Khào A by Kilomet109

My name is Thao Vu. I'm the founder and creative director of a sustainable fashion brand from Hanoi, Vietnam, called Kilomet109. I’m a fashion designer by training and also a practicing textile artist. My art and design work, focused on sustainable textile practices in contemporary Vietnam, have been exhibited around the world in prominent international art and design shows, university symposiums, and featured across multiple media channels.  

I founded Kilomet109 in 2012 as a fashion label and social enterprise that blends contemporary design with traditional Vietnamese craftsmanship. My work uses design innovation as a means of raising public awareness about at risk rural minority communities in Vietnam, and supporting the preservation of craft villages.

I collaborate with communities of indigenous artisan women, representing different ethnic minority groups, throughout Vietnam.  We work together to create eco-friendly textiles and dyes that are incorporated into Kilomet109’s collections and art installations.  

My project will address three crucial problems that are negatively impacting rural ethnic minority communities in Vietnam and South East Asia: the systematic depreciation and loss of cultural identity and diversity as expressed through textiles, costume, and livelihood; the environmental and social disruptions caused by the prevalence of cheap, poorly made fast-fashion garments; and the preservation of traditional craft through strategic modernization. 

This project will build upon my work in these communities over the past 10 years. I aim to develop a model of locally sourced, locally produced sustainable clothing made both for and by these communities. This will create valuable income generating opportunities for potentially thousands of women while incentivizing the preservation of traditional crop cultivation and textile making. Most importantly, it will give communities a powerful voice in determining how to balance integration into the modern world with maintaining their unique cultural heritage.

According to the World Bank, ethnic minority groups make up 15% of Vietnam’s population (equivalent to 13 million people) but account for 70% of the extreme poor. In addition to persistently high rates of poverty, indigenous minority populations in Vietnam and around the world are under extreme threat due to loss of ancestral lands, language, and unique cultural identity. 

One of the fundamental ways of expressing cultural identity amongst Vietnam’s 54 ethnic groups is through traditional costume. These costumes are made from locally grown plants and fibers, natural dyes, and based on a diverse set of weaving/dyeing/embroidery techniques that have been passed down through generations of women. 

Traditional textiles, however, are rapidly being replaced by cheap alternatives that are dumped into these communities by the environmentally disastrous Fast Fashion industry. As a result, diverse local textiles, the time-worn sustainable methods that produce them, and any potential economic gains to these communities will be lost within a generation. The consequences of inaction are bleak. My project will empower indigenous communities to design and develop modern clothing that reflects their functional and stylistic needs. The textiles will be produced and sold locally, thus creating jobs for local artisans while preserving indigenous heritage. 

Khào A by Kilomet109 aims to develop a new replicable model of sustainable fashion, where all elements of resource cultivation, product design and means of production are owned by the indigenous artisans themselves, and serve the clothing needs of their communities. The project will be carried out in 5 different communities to begin with.

Main project activities:

• Develop Survey instrument: The survey instrument will be designed to gather quantitative and qualitative data from a wide swath of community members to guide the scope and range of the clothing lines.  
• Conduct In-depth Community Interviews:  Using the Survey Instrument we will conduct interviews with community members, both in a group setting, and individually as well. 
• Sketch and Design Clothing Lines: Based on analysis of data results we will work with select community members to sketch a range of clothes and produce technical drawings. 
• Design and Product Development Training Workshops:  Present the collection sketches to community members for design finalization and buy-in.
• Prototype and garment production:  Using textiles that are 100% locally produced we will do prototype development and full production of the clothing range.
• Follow-on training program for fashion marketing and sales:

Provide best practices training for marketing, branding, selling. 

This project will elevate the livelihood opportunities of thousands of impoverished women artisans and their families while incentivizing the preservation of indigenous cultural heritage for future generations. Moreover, by introducing affordable and locally produced alternatives into the marketplace all community members can benefit. Instead of fast fashion vs. traditional costume, communities will now be able to buy contemporary clothes designed to reflect their own unique cultural values. 

 The scope of the project will be determined by community members themselves and is based on their active participation and input. The project includes the development of a methodologically sound survey instrument and in-depth community interviews, in both group and individual settings, that will assess the needs of each community and inform the content of the project. This formal process gives full agency to indigenous communities to determine for themselves how best to balance cultural preservation with the economic, style, and functional needs of modern life. 

Community members, as such, will own each step in the process and ultimately they will be the ones responsible for producing, marketing, and selling the clothes within their own communities. This entrepreneurial aspect, and the opportunity for much needed new income generation, will ensure community buy-in. 

Numerous conversations and research in recent years provided both critical context to the project idea and demonstrated the underlying aspirations of the community. One particular moment, however, stands out to me: 

Several years ago, I was asked by an artisan if she could wear one of my contemporary Kilomet109 designs with some minor changes.  My immediate reaction was “No, I encourage you to wear your traditional costumes. I love them! They are so unique. And you look so beautiful in them.” Our conversation ended abruptly like that. But her request, and my dismissive response, has haunted me ever since. I quickly realized that I was guilty of putting my own aesthetic values ahead of her individual needs and the needs of her community. I was guilty of romantic notions of traditional culture which forced me to take a step back, reevaluate, and become a better listener. Culture is always adapting. And development does not have to equate to erosion of traditional cultural values. I’ve come to recognize that the most important thing is to use my creative and business background to empower communities to reimagine modern indigenous clothing, and how they want to present themselves to the world.

I've dedicated the past ten years of my life to working with communities of indigenous artisans from remote and impoverished areas of Vietnam, spending weeks at a time living and collaborating side by side with them on all aspects of textile making. This includes working in the fields to harvest indigo and hemp, to trekking in the jungle in search of wild yam roots for dyeing, to weaving/dyeing/batik printing the fabrics for use in Kilomet109's sustainable fashion collections. This work has given me a unique perspective on many of the daunting issues these underserved communities face, and is the catalyst for this project. 

Poverty and lack of opportunity puts strains on the traditional family structure, and the brunt of the burden is often borne by women. Yet an entrepreneurial spirit means that just a small push can lead to positive change.

So much of what I've been able to achieve as a designer is thanks to the contributions of these talented artisans. Because this land and people have taught me so much, I feel obligated to help inspire the next generation of indigenous makers to embrace their unique heritage while helping them adapt their practices to a rapidly changing world.  

I formally trained as a fashion designer at the London College of Fashion Studies in Hanoi and have been a design entrepreneur and textile artist for the past 10 years. My brand's emphasis on the collaborative process, mixing traditional eco textiles with modern fashion pieces, means that I've worked side by side with the 5 communities that I plan to pilot this project with. I've already done the hard work of establishing credibility within these communities and have long standing professional relationships with community leaders. In short, the mutual trust and understanding necessary to successfully carry out the project already exists. 

I also bring a deep knowledge of all aspects of developing a sustainable fashion line, from the creative to the business side, having successfully done so for my own brand. This experience puts me in a unique position to drive the pilot project from start to finish. 

Each community I've worked with has its own unique culture and inherent challenges and constraints, and I've invested a formidable amount of time and resources to create an efficient and equitable relationship with each community.  

The 5 communities that I have selected to pilot this project with have already indicated their willingness to participate! These communities have been chosen based on their enthusiasm for the project, their willingness to commit land and resources, and the fact that they each represent a different ethnic group and tradition. This will enable us to tailor the project to the specific needs of each ethnic community.   

There are numerous professional obstacles that I've had to overcome. I will share a simple story. 

Collaborating with artisans means that you need to be patient, willing to explain things, and accept that mistakes are part of the development process. In the case of one particular design it went a step further — actually embracing an imperfection discovered in the sampling process and making it a core part of the eventual design. The Blue H’mong use small, low worktables to do their batik work: Only about 60 cm wide, this means artisans have to move the fabric on and off the surface more frequently. The result is that the straight lines in the final pattern have a significant overlap. This was not part of the original design, or the prototype that I'd already committed significant resources to develop. 

But to me, the design "mistake" looked beautiful and I decided to cancel an order for larger worktables — and even accentuated the overlapping effect in subsequent designs. This decision provided considerable relief to the batik artists. “They said ‘Oh my god! We were worried that you'd be really upset!” and I said: ‘No, this is beautiful. Keep doing it!‘”

As one of the early adapters of the sustainable slow fashion movement, I've had to develop a workable fashion business model from scratch, where no "how to" manual existed prior. I've been able to achieve a modicum of success without the benefit of any outside financial backing or the existence of any local sustainable fashion business leaders I could emulate. Instead, I had to forge my own way forward, both on the business side and in my work with artisan communities. 

It took me more than three years of working with the artisan communities - experimenting with different textiles, natural dyes, and other techniques - before I was ready to launch my first collection.  In Vietnam, designers had been incorporating traditional textiles into their collections for years but until I started my work none were collaborating directly with the communities to produce the textiles themselves.

I attribute my success in achieving a significant following both in Vietnam and internationally by consistently producing high quality work and always putting the inspiring stories of the individual artisans and the collaborative processes we use to make my clothes.