Merry Chaumos!

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last three months. I have been busy with financing the company and pushing through an order from the factory, so very little interesting to report!

I thought instead I would give a little update about what is happening among the Kalasha who live in Chitral, the region where our cloth is from.

The Kalasha follow a unique and ancient faith. They celebrate seasonal festivals linked to the solstices, much like our pre-Christian ancestors did (that is for those of us who live in Europe).

In the Kalash Valleys a few days ago the Chaumos celebrations drew to a close. The most important festival of the Kalasha calendar, Chaumos celebrates the winter solstice and prepares the Kalasha for the year to come.

Below is a drawing I made during Chaumos in 2008, it is of a young Kalasha friend who has a cold. He is tucked up in bed, with the traditional remedy of burnt goat horn applied to his face.

Here is a clip of some film which I shot on the same trip. It records the special dough flocks and their shepherd that are made in one of the many rituals carried out during Chaumos.

This clip records the grinding of walnuts which make up the filing for a special bread baked during Chaumos. Traditionally the walnuts are processed in a pestle and mortar, but the family I stayed with were experimenting with a newly bough mechanical grinder from the market.

This last clip records another Chaumos ritual, the drawing of stylised markhor on the Gestakhan temple. Markhor are a magnificent variety of mountain goat with spectacular corkscrew horns. In the Kalasha cosmology markhor are amongst the purist of creatures, shepherded by the pure spirits of the high mountains. 

The Arrival of the Donegalistan


Here it is, only hours out of the tailors, modeled -for expediency's sake- by yours truly:

The cut is more generous than previous jackets, but still elegant. I could fit a thin jumper underneath, but little more. There is space around the chest though, so a thick sleeveless cardigan would probably feel fine, or even -for the more traditional gent- a waistcoat.

The collar and piping is of super-soft Donegal tweed and the lining is a heavy twill. There is a thin layer of fleece in there too, between the cloth and the twill, so the jacket feels heavy and robust... It feels like it could stop a saber slash.

Costellos of Illford

Costellos is a tailors which has been going since 1970. They sepcialise in uniforms and costume for the stage. When I visited today I was shown the full dress uniform of the ambulence service as well as evening dress for a plethora of different regiments in a wonderful mix of colours and cuts. Most interesting of all was a set of bight scarlet breeches and coat, the uniform of London's watermen, unchanged in cut since the seventeenth century (unfortunately I didn't get a photo, but have a look at the generic image blow to get an idea).

Costellos have been working on Hindu Kush's next coat -The Donegalistan... and they have done a great job. I picked it up today, so pictures to follow in the next post!

Sharia Finance

I have been a bit silent of late, this is because I have been looking into finance schemes to help Hindu Kush in the next 5 years. After a lot of research I am applying to a sharia compliant fund which is part of the government's Start Up Loans scheme.

I have gone for a sharia compliant scheme partly because it reflects the values of the people who make cloth and clothes for Hindu Kush and partly because it is the only finance scheme for business that I could find which explicitly states social justice as part of its remit.

The Koran lays down certain guidelines with regards to banking, significantly it prohibits the charging of interest. According to sharia finance there are other ways for investors to realise profit, but these relate to a share of gains rather than fixed interest on a loan. Other elements of sharia finance as stated on the financing sharia enterprise are, "[A] requirement on those who make a profit through business to contribute towards those less well off, and the need to strive for a more equitable distribution of income and wealth and increase equity participation in the economy".

A bit more Pre-Raphaelite / psychedelic

On Friday I went to the Tate Britain with my friend Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp. There amongst other things we saw an exhibition about that great arbitrator of the aesthetic, Kenneth Clark. There was a lot of Pre-Raphaelite work in the show and some pretty far-out visionary stuff too.

I thought, "My designs are way too tame".

So inspired by the day-glow pallets of artists like William Holman Hunt I have been working up the old leopard and markhor design (it's still very much work in progress).

Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat

Heavy on the saturation 

The Shoreditchabad


Following on in the theme of the Pakistan-isation (or more strictly Persian-isation) of jacket names, I have come up with The Shoreditchabad.

The idea is to produce a tight fitting, narrow shouldered unstructured jacket of the type which is currently popular in Shoreditch and equivalent places in other cities. It will also give me the opportunity to produce a very zingy lining.

The theme I have chosen for this lining is an image of the sort of person who I hope might wear The Shoreditchabad doing battle with a snow leopard in the deep snows and high winds of the Hindu Kush.

Image for buggy back

The Shoreditchabad man

Blue with red snow polka dot for piping

The Donegalistan


I have been silent for some time. Please accept my apologies.

I have been dealing with things like bank loans and logistics, which do not a scintillating blog post make.

Briefly though,  Looptex, the factory I am working with in Lahore, are about to start production, so at last I will have some stock! Their workmanship is looking excellent.

Back in Londonabad I have started work on a new jacket, The Donegalistan. It is quilted and combines super-soft Donegal tweed with pale shu. I think the two together work really well. It's going to be the best yet.

A sample jacket should be ready early next month and I will post it here as soon as I have it in my hands. But in the meantime, to tickle your interest, here is the original drawing and a photo showing a section of Donegal tweed piping against shu. The dark areas in the drawing - the inside of the collar and piping on the collar edge, down the front edges of the jacket and at the cuff - indicate Donegal tweed. The quilted lining is a  sandy coloured heavy-weight twill.

Telling the Story

I have been working on a series of drawings that will tell the story of how Hindu Kush clothes are made and are transported to the UK. They will form the 'Story' part of the website.

The main drawing shows the sequence of transport and manufacture. I have uploaded it below, even though it charges through the navigation bar, but you have to see it in one go!

We start off with the making of the cloth in the Hindu Kush....

The cloth then travels by super-glamorous Pakistani truck over the mountains and down into the plains to our factory in Lahore, where our garments are carefully put together...

Then it's by sea to the UK!

Accompanying the main drawing are popup pages which will give details on specific parts of the process:

Please forgive the spelling and grammar in the windows below, they are work in progress!

Locating the Hindu Kush

The special sheep that provides the wool for our cloth. These sheep know their worth. 

The traditional clobber of the Hindu Kush. Texting is not so traditional...

Tolls used in making the cloth and the families that use them.

Pop Up Shop

Sorry this post is most belated! But over December I took part in a popup shop in Fashionable East London's Redchuch Street. I would describe Redchurch Street as crypto edgy. The odd bit of rubbish floats past as one walks down it and graffiti covered roller shutters abound. However, this is a somewhat of a veneer as most of the shops sell very, very expensive things. Taking this into consideration, I misjudged my stock rather: I ordered in 3 lots of screen printed sweatshirts, thinking that they would be just the thing for East London. But in reality they sold poorly (I am still trying to flog them at knockdown prices on ebay). Instead people were interested in buying my much, much more expensive jackets made from the special shu cloth. I only had samples, so I couldn't sell anything! But I did get some very positive feedback. The subsequent kickstarter campaign, through which I took orders on shu cloth jackets, went well (I ended up exceeding my target by 300%). So all in all my first retail escapade was not wholly unsuccessful.

For the shop I had teamed up with the chocolatier, Paxton Chocolates and the knitter AnnaSöderström. Hence the chocolate sheep, which toured the surrounding streets handing out flyers and making friends.

Baroghil and Yak Polo

Where the Hindu Kush and Pamir ranges meet there is a valley called Baroghil. The valley shelters a high altitude pasture where Wakhi nomads graze their yaks and on top of every ridge sits a marmot ready to squeak at passers by. It also boasts a superabundance of wild flowers, including the Himalayan edelweiss. All in all it is a pretty blissful place.

I didn't have a very blissful time getting to it, however. Nearly falling down a crevasse, getting drenched up to my armpits in a fast flowing river, spending a night with no cover in the snow and a horse which could sense my fear and repeatedly bucked me.  Still, it was a great adventure and the local people I was with were very kind, although a bit bemused by my calamity proneness. Why did I keep on falling into rivers? Was I doing it on purpose?

We were all heading to a polo festival where matches were played on the back of yaks. Yaks are too stupid to be any good at polo. One problem is that they are frightened by the ball and often run away from it. Another issue is that they don't obey their riders commands and when tiring of the game will charge off the pitch scattering the audience  and ploughing on towards the horizon with their hapless riders still attached. They do look spectacular though, like something out of Star Wars.

Having just crossed a glacier with Guja nomads.

The Guja nomad's summer camp.

In convoy with the Guja nomads. (Note the polo mallets wrapped up in the bedding roll).

Approaching Baroghil polo festival. I could see the plume of dust from miles away.

An elegant polo player.

Dancing in the evening. Aficionados can dance with a full tea cup balanced on their heads. Regretfully, I didn't manage to photograph this daring feat.

Frequently yaks would disappear over the brim of the hillocks with their riders powerless to stop them.

Buzkashi, a gentle game whereby players wrestle for a headless goat carcass (you can see the carcass in the right of the picture).

This yak nearly got me. But I did manage to capture its rider's psychedelic cardigan and shell suit combination.

Yark, the man who owned more yaks than anyone else in the valley. His turban, tweed jacket and aviators combined signaled very clearly who was boss.

Pressed flowers from the high altitude pastures. Edelweiss is bottom left. I also recorded their Wakhi names and some basic medicinal uses. The drawing is of a traditional spinning wheel.

A mountain that we walked past on the way to the polo festival. The sky was turning dark and the weather was coming in quickly.