She recalls that, while she was intrigued with the idea of pivoting to a design career, she didn’t have a strong sense for what designers actually did: “Back then in the Vietnamese dictionary, we didn’t have a word for ‘designer’. Seeing her talent, Vũ’s husband encouraged her to go back to school to take fashion design classes. Vũ had her first child in 2006 and, in her free time, made baby clothes for him. Julie Vola FOUNDATIONS OF A SUSTAINABLE BRAND So that kind of connection was really a build up for me to gain knowledge about my own culture.” Dyeing process Nic Shonfeld Nùng An Artisans Nic Shonfeld The process… Nic Shonfeld Nùng An Artisans Nic Shonfeld Thảo Vũ at work When I studied literature and, later on when I worked for a magazine, I mainly wrote about cultural issues including festivals and fashion. She says that this early career gave her tools to tell the story of her garments and to create a voice for her brand, also crediting the experience as its own kind of design education: “In a lot of Vietnamese literature, we talk about culture - and textiles are a part of the traditional kind of culture in Vietnam. ![]() Once out of school, Vũ worked as a freelance journalist for over 5 years - often writing for magazines that covered cultural issues. Her love of books and stories led her to enroll in a school with a special literature-focused curriculum starting in the 6th grade and, eventually, to university degrees in literature and English. “I grew up surrounded with so many things that were made by hand,” Vũ says. Sometimes they’d let me try my hand at spinning and weaving cotton.” I’d hear the sound of it and, sometimes, I’d run inside to see the ladies who worked there. “At the beginning of my lane, there was a small textile factory which I would pass by on my way to school. Thái Bình was surrounded by craft villages, which provided additional inspiration. “One of my first garments I made for my dad was a blue sky shirt, made by hand - and he kept it until he passed away.” Vũ and her older sister learned to make clothes for themselves from a very young age, mostly made from recycled bits of her parents’ clothes and blankets. Her mother did all the sewing and clothes-making for the family, while her grandmother made baskets. Not only did her father build their family home, Vũ says, he would paint, do carpentry, and make sculptures. I remember the patterns and that it was made of felt. Sometimes we didn’t have enough food to eat, but my dad always made sure we had a vase of flowers and a tablecloth - one which he brought from Czechoslovakia - on our table. You couldn’t buy fabric, so you’d have to weave it by yourself. “You’d buy food with a ration coupon and there wasn’t much in the market. Vũ grew up in the era before Vietnam reopened to international trade - a time when people made an art of using whatever resources were available to best advantage. Today the label employs nearly 30 artisans and 5 people in her home design studio but, when it launched in 2012, it was a one-woman operation - and Vũ still does all the label’s marketing and business development work in addition to designing. ![]() The label’s kinetic and worldly designs, she says, come from her love of exploration and for the feeling of motion - but they’re also rooted in Vietnam’s culture of self-reliance and in traditions of local making. ![]() These early exposures to storytelling and global culture stoked Vũ’s curiosity and put her on a path that, eventually, led her to create Kilomet109. ![]() Her father’s homecoming also meant gifts for Vũ and her siblings - books in foreign languages, baby dolls from Russia - and he’d often take her to the mobile cinema shows which traveled around Vietnam before the arrival of malls and multiplexes (the movies were Russian and revolution-themed, she says, but her favorite was an American film- “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”). “It would become like a dream for you,” Vũ says. When her father returned every few years to their rural hometown of Thái Bình, he would tell his family about winding train journeys from Asia to Europe and wanderings through the streets of foreign cities. Vũ, founder of Hanoi-based fashion label Kilomet109. Ever since she was a little girl, stories of faraway places have stirred the imagination of designer Thảo Vũ.”My dad was a diplomat and he traveled around the world during the late 1970s and 80s.”, says Ms.
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