Run out of a tiny boutique in Red House Theater’s 16 Workshops (16工房), Younga presents a worldview on fashion. The brand specializes in clothing made from cloth produced by African artisans, but also sells items crafted in Thailand, China and Taiwan.
Founder Claire Liang (梁又平) became smitten with African wax print fabrics while volunteering in Cameroon. An avid traveler who pens a monthly column for Green (綠雜誌), a magazine about environmental issues, Liang opened Younga in 2008 after returning from the west African country, where she worked with the Association pour la Promotion de l’Artisanat et de la Nature (APAN), an organization that promotes traditional arts and crafts, fair-trade practices and the use of natural materials.
The travel bug bit Liang, who majored in French at university, after a post-graduation trip to the Middle East. She backpacked through Egypt, Jordan and Israel, where she harvested apples and worked in a restaurant on a kibbutz. She walked around in her spare time talking to residents, spending one afternoon discussing Taiwanese history with a village chief in Egypt and another taking tea and dancing with a group of women.
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
“Just being a tourist isn’t enough for me. I want to get to know each place’s culture and talk with people,” says Liang.
Liang’s monthly column in Green captures her unorthodox attitude to tourism.
“When Claire travels, it isn’t to go shopping. She looks for places that are meaningful and finds people who are interesting,” says Green editor Yi-lin Lee (李宜霖).
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
Past articles have focused on Liang’s kibbutz stay, studying at Oneness University in India and her time in Cameroon.
In Douala, Cameroon’s largest city, Liang taught hygiene and nutrition classes with other APAN workers. She also collaborated with artists and crafters, including wood carvers, weavers and dyers, to find outlets for their creations.
One afternoon while browsing in a market, Liang fell in love with African wax print fabric, so called because it was originally made to resemble Indonesian batik fabric.
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
“I love really bright, lively colors and I’d never seen fabric like that before,” says Liang, who quickly bought some lengths and made them into dresses for herself.
When Liang wore her new creations, she says younger Cameroonians were surprised. “The people around my age, they’d ask ‘Why are you wearing that? It’s so old-fashioned!” Older woman, however, were thrilled to see the traditional-style fabrics. “They’d say, ‘Younga, younga!’ which means beautiful in their dialect,” remembers Liang.
Liang was also encouraged by the reaction of her Taiwanese friends, who suggested she bring back dresses to sell. Before leaving Cameroon, Liang worked with APAN sewers to create a small stock of dresses, trousers and accessories, all made from fabric purchased at local markets.
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
Arriving back in Taiwan in the middle of winter, Liang worried about customer reception to the light cotton clothing, which she sold at markets, including Red House Market for Artists & Designers (西門紅樓創意市集). But the items sold out within a month and Liang told her APAN colleagues that they’d hit upon a viable business.
In addition to clothing sewn by APAN crafters, Younga also carries products manufactured by small factories in Taiwan and China, as well as artisans with ThaiCraft, an organization that collaborates with villages in Thailand. Though Younga does not currently have fair-trade certification, Liang applies fair-trade practices to her business, producing items in small batches and paying an equitable wage to workers.
All of Younga’s clothing is designed by Liang, including dresses based on the kabba, a loose flowing traditional Cameroonian dress. Liang updated the design by making it shorter and sleeveless, but kept details like pleating and folds at the neckline. A recent line turned African fabric into Western-style suit jackets and vests. Another series was inspired by Liang’s love of ancient Roman clothing and featured asymmetrical silhouettes. Products created by other designers include bags made by Taiwanese quilters pieced together from a rainbow of fabric scraps left over from the manufacturing of Younga’s dresses.
Younga shares a boutique with Dou Dou Xiang (朵朵香), a Taiwanese brand run by two sisters who create intricate necklaces knotted together from thin strands of hemp or leather and embellished with seeds and leaves gathered from around Taiwan, including cream-colored grains of Job’s tears, the bright red, coral-like seeds of the adenanthera pavonina tree (also known as red sandalwood) and large, glossy brown pods from the sacred fig tree.
Liang continues to travel, going abroad about four or five times a year. Her favorite destinations currently include Thailand and India, where she keeps an eye out for crafts to stock at Younga or artisans to work with. All of her trips have to have a purpose besides pleasure, she says.
“I don’t just want to be a tourist. I always look for volunteer or study opportunities,” says Liang. “I think once you start looking for opportunities, they present themselves.”
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