Mae Fah Luang foundation

View Photos (6) Image © 2000 Mae Fah Luang foundation

Situated on the fourth floor of one of Bangkok's more upmarket shopping malls and comfortably nestled next door to Habitat, is The Mae Fah Luang foundation shop. Looking more like an exclusive boutique than a rural project store, Mae Fah Luang has been opened a mere six months but is already the talk of the town.

Although it stocks local handicrafts made by Thailand's indigenous Hilltribe people you won't find the usual array of sarongs, raffia mats or linen napkins stocked here. The goods on offer have a distinctively contemporary urban feel about them, but whilst the toggled filofaxes and multicolored wicker bags are a cool twist on an old theme, it's the vast array of rainbow hued textiles on offer that's really caught the public's imagination. Even to the untrained eye it's possible to discern that the materials on sale here are a cut above your average haberdashery.

What makes the yards of cloth unique is their strange brew of fibers. Traditional, locally produced raw materials such as cotton, silk, wool and hemp have been mixed and beautifully mismatched with a whole host of unlikely ingredients such as copper wire, raffia, leather and, in one case, even videotape. It's this fearless experimentation and the simple but effective fusion of 'tried and tested' with 'weird and wonderful' that makes Mae Fah Luang truly unique and a marketers dream.

The genius of the foundation lies in the simplicity of this concept. Women from Thailand's ethnic minority hill tribes are famous for their dexterity in weaving and embroidery using traditional wooden looms. The foundation has utilized these skills and helped the women achieve self-sufficiency and economic independence by capitalizing on the West's seemingly insatiable appetite for all things ethnic and organic, whilst using time honored techniques to nudge Thai fabrics into the 21st century.

Mae Fah Luang foundation was initiated by Her Royal Highness the Princess Mother as part of the Doi Tung development project. Located in the heart of South East Asia's notorious Golden Triangle, Doi Tung was once an area covered by major opium fields, with the forest plundered and stripped bare by poor Hill Tribe people dependent on shifting cultivation. Many of the men turned to opium as their main cash crop whilst the women were often forced to become prostitutes to support their family.

The late Princess Mother initiated the dual strategy of improving the quality and standard of living of the residents of Doi Tung through alternative sources of income whilst also conserving the environment.

Today the once denuded hillsides of Doi Tung are filled with forests and the people improved a vastly improved quality of life. They men have become expert cultivators of coffee, macadamia nuts and flowers.

But it's the women who have really made their mark. Instrumental in turning this worthy cottage industry into a textile company of international standard has been young designer, Ploenchan Vinyaratn Pornsurat - or Mook to her friends and colleagues - who joined the team nearly two years ago and injected a breath of fresh air into the company. Obsessed with fashion from an early age Mook attended the famed St Martins College of Art and Design in London where she was left to her own devices and actively encouraged to develop her own style.

One of the things that drew Mook towards textiles as opposed to fashion design and it's ready made fabrics was that she was fascinated by the creative process involved in making material. The world of textiles is dominated by a process of experimentation and discovery - a hands-on approach from choosing the raw materials, spinning, weaving and then literally up to your elbows in rainbow colored dyes.

Mook graduated from St Martins with a degree of woven textiles and then spent a frustrating few years working for various commercial corporations which, whilst they taught her the more practical skills of marketing, didn't really give her chance to exercise her imagination.

However a chance encounter with Khunying Puangroi Diskul na Ayudhya.- the foundations chairperson - put her back on the right track.

Naturally Mook leapt at the chance to work for Mae Fah Luang foundation where her only brief was to experiment with weaves that would draw emphasis to the techniques employed to make fabrics and, on the more pragmatic side, to make sure the goods actually sold.

She was immediately plunged back into the 'hands on process' that had attracted her to making textiles in the first place. One of her first projects was going back to her roots and learning how to operate the hand looms used by the Doi Tung weavers. Whereas college training had focused more on high tech computerized weaving, Mook was now able to get a full perspective of how to give traditional techniques a contemporary flavor.

She discovered that one of the bonuses of hand weaving - apart from the charm and uniqueness of each individually crafted product - is that it's a technique that has fewer limitations than machine weaving as it can better accommodate special techniques and designs.

Taking the traditional Thai fabrics of silk and cotton as the foundation for the fabrics, Mook let her imagination run riot with the myriad of possibilities using colors, patterns and giddy combinations of raw materials and man made fibers. Like the ergonomic pleats and textures employed to enhance the couture of her favorite designer Issey Miyake, Mook has explored every conceivable twist of grain, weave, braid and composition in the Mae Fah Luang collections.

Unlike most designers, Mook can't draw but instead articulates her ideas of shape, form and color through collage and photos. In explaining grain and texture of a material she uses graph paper to map out concepts, with details written on the side specifying details such as colors, and raw materials. The patterns selected are then sent up-country to the weavers who make samples which once approved are produced in bulk.

Her natural inquisitiveness means even the most mundane everyday objects become a fiery source of inspiration and it doesn't take much to get those creative juices flowing. In fact the last collection was based entirely on a chance encounter with a chicken - a plain old chicken of the type that scrabbles around most back yards in Thailand's countryside. But captured in Mook's eyes and filtered through her imagination the sheen on the bird's plume reminded her of silk and tipped off a whole range of colors...golden yellows, metallic greens, rich oranges, blood reds, a beautiful briny turquoise and pitch black.

To bring the collections to life Mook has collaborated with some of Thailand's most contemporary and most creative designers who've utilized the fabrics to devastating effect.

One particular designer she's worked with is Patsrun Sriluansoi. Initially drawn together by a mutual respect and admiration - she likes his use of shape and form; he loved the way the fabrics gave his clothes life - it was a match made in heaven.

It was also a collaboration that caught the imagination of the judges at Singapore's fashion connection - an annual competition for the regions hottest new designers - who awarded Patsrun the grand prize for his collection.

The two designers teamed up again for Bangkok's fashion week where they presented another sixty unique outfits and showcased the ground breaking new materials created by the Mae Fah Luang team. Response was so positive the foundation could barely keep up with the demand with materials snapped up by local designers eager to turn the fantastic fabrics into shoes hats bags and couture.

Three collections down the line and a mere six months later, The Mae Fah Luang Foudation has already become engrained in the fabric of fashion. The materials are scooped up both by local designers and bulk buyers from abroad. For the summer Mook says she's feeling fruity.

The next collection will be dominated by the traditional geometric shapes that appear on Hill Tribe fabrics, reinterpreted by the use of citrus colors such as lime green, sunburnt orange and sunshine yellow.

Once again even achieving the perfect blend of colors is a hands-on process. The fabrics are dip dyed in special environmentally friendly chemical dyes imported from Germany (unfortunately the more organic vegetable dyes tend to run) through a process of trial and error more colors are added to the mix until the perfect shade is achieved.

It may only be a small company, but in it's own quiet way Mae Fah Luang has made a radical impact. After the endless scandals of sweatshops making designer gear for wealthy westerners that cost often the equivalent of a year's wages for the person who stitched the item together, it's gratifying to hear that this is one collaboration where workers are definitely getting paid their dues. The people of Doi Tung are able to preserve their unique way of life whilst conserving the environment. Now that's a fashion statement.

Mae Fah Luang is on the third floor of the Siam Discovery Centre, Rama 1 Road, Pathumwan Bangkok (62 252 4723-5). It's open seven days a week from 10.30 am until 8.30pm. Open to the general public and lots of goodies on sale too (all the items mentioned above, with a regular turnover of new stock.)

Published on 4/8/01