Elsbeth van Paridon

Netherlands
 

English Editor of the Americas Communication Center (Beijing Weekly) of China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration

 

"Fashion is part of the daily air and it changes all the time, with all the events. You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes. You can see and feel everything in clothes." - Diana Vreeland

 

The term “Made in China” over the past decade has undergone the ultimate 21st Century makeover. This rapidly changing landscape is a unique phenomenon that goes beyond mere Shanghai Fashion Week collections; it waves the flag for the changes vibrating within China’s society-at-large today.

 

And this includes the Tibetan Plateau.

 

Clothing and accessories produced in Tibet are catering to the transforming appetite of (Chinese) consumers, with a proclivity for the domestically-created and -produced, as they become increasingly fascinated with the mountainous region and its culture.

 

Collaborations are part and parcel of today’s world, especially in fashion, and here is no exception. A growing number of brands have opted to team up with Tibetan cooperatives in the past decade, bearing both fashionable and fruitful social slash economic results. And one thread is woven throughout: Yak wool.

 

Today, for Tibetan nomads on the Plateau the yak is the thread that connects past to future, local to global.

 

Here are three prime examples of fashion as a game-changer for the Plateau.

 

1. Norlha: Back to where it all began

 

2. From Qinghai, through Norlha, we travel to… Shanghai.

 

3. Shokay, A-ok