Yak chic

Norlha collections capitalize on the quality yak wool used in traditional Tibetan hand-sewn jackets and robes. Provided to China Daily

A Gansu nomad finds a new calling in fashion design, with a little help from some long-haired friends, Chen Nan reports.

Twenty-six-year-old Dorjee Rinchen came from a small village in Gannan Tibet autonomous prefecture, Gansu province. His most vivid memories are his childhood freedom and happiness. The sharp cliffs, deep caves and endless surrounding fields - everything in the small nomadic village molded him.

As his parents are Tibetan nomads, Rinchen started as a nomad, he says, at his parents' behest.

However, he insisted on going to school and later had the life-changing experience of becoming a fashion designer.

On Sunday, he will bring his works and tells his transforming story to Beijing's fashion fans, unveiling how his design has been influenced by the mysterious Tibetan culture and the high plateau.

"As a young child I always wanted to learn and see the world. I wanted to achieve something beyond the challenge of bringing sheep safely home at the end of day," he says.

He eventually tore himself away from life as a nomad and entered an alternative school in Qinghai. Upon graduation, one of his most revered professors suggested that he tried working in a yak-wool textile project being set up in the teacher's hometown, Zorge Ritoma, a small village deep in Amdo nomad county, in Gansu.

Having no idea about fashion and design, he left in 2008 to join the project, a factory called Norlha workshop, which creates products from the spinning and weaving of khullu, the precious fiber that insulates yaks from the harsh winter.

"I simply hoped to get a job after graduation," he says.

Norlha means "wealth of the Gods". Millions of yaks roam the high altitude pastures providing the nomads with all their needs, including the black braided tents, yak butter and casein, a protein concentrated in yak milk.

Rinchen started out managing Norlha's inventory, which enhanced his computer skills and also allowed him to learn the different textiles and their names. Eventually he began to be able to tell the different characteristics of the threads used.

Soon he took charge of the sampling section where people worked on samples from world-renowned designers for large fashion houses as well as in-house designers.

Seeing the different samples and dealing with the different designers allowed him to propose new things and eventually contribute to the Norlha collections.

Two collections per year, spring/summer and autumn/winter, combine the trends of the market with the colors and textures of Gansu's natural environment. A collection of classic plaids, blankets and fabrics, as well as hand-knitted products and finished tailored pieces are also produced for sale in China and abroad.

Inspired by the workshop's natural surroundings, - a landscape of grasslands, yaks and nomads - Rinchen has endless ideas on colors and texture.

"By translating this authenticity into a modern, classic product, people from all corners of the world can wear our products and feel that they, too, are a part of my world," he says.

From a fashion-senseless young man to a professional designer, he also realized that the more timeless the design's style, the more successful.

"The traditional hand-sewn jackets and robes of the elders in the village always struck me as fascinating. It seemed that the older the item, the better the quality. Details in these products and the striving efforts for perfection are rarely found in the mass-market products of nowadays," says the designer. "A good design is something that I can wear as a modern piece and then hand down to my children as a classic item."

The project was begun by Kim Sciaky Yeshi, a US anthropologist. She developed an appreciation for handmade products at a very young age under the influence from her parents. Marriage to a Tibetan man brought her to Tibet, where she researched indigenous natural fibers such as raw silk and camel hair.

But the yak intrigued her. Considering the animal survives in temperatures of -30 C in winter, she decided to study the thick undercoat of down.

She first went to the village in 2006. The village has 1,500 inhabitants and pasture land wide enough to graze 6,000 yaks and 20,000 sheep. By then, she planned to build a workshop and hoped to elevate yak wool to the level of cashmere.

The hard-working villagers, who take pride in their wool and their handwork, were happy with the American's idea, though they knew nothing about brands. "What interest them and got them to contribute was getting jobs in their own village, which is very rare," says Yeshi, 56.

In the fall of 2006, Yeshi sent four villagers to Cambodia for a four-month training course, followed by another six weeks at a friend's workshop in Nepal where they learned how to work with wool.

"Some people ask how many yaks we kill to get the wool. Actually we don't," says Thopdan Dorjee, who joined in Norlha project in 2010. "We collect khullu every April and May, when it's ready to fall. It's sustainable."

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn.