“There is always a market for quality…”
In a refurbished French colonial villa in downtown Vientiane, Laos, a little bit of perfection is made every day. Bamboo handlooms click and clack to the rhythm of Laotian pop music, weaving silk thread into luxurious textiles. It can take two weeks to make a scarf and nine months on two looms to make curtains. But here, quality and integrity of products are the top priorities. “Everything matters. Every color matters. Every thread matters,” says Carol Cassidy, founder and owner of Lao Textiles.
Cassidy, an American entrepreneur, is dedicated to reviving the Laotian craft of silk weaving. When she arrived in Vientiane in 1989 as a textile expert for the United Nations, the art of Laotian weaving was an endangered tradition of the country’s past.
“The challenge,” says Cassidy, “was to bring Lao textiles into the future. I wanted to combine my 20 years of experience with hundreds of years of Laotian heritage.” In 1990, when Cassidy received a license from the government to start Lao Textiles, she became the first American to run a business in the communist country.
From mulberry tree to the pages of Vogue magazine, the process of producing a single piece is very labor intensive. Cassidy not only coordinates supplies with mulberry farmers but also supervises the silkworms’ diet. In the meantime, she plans a design. “I start with traditional patterns and techniques and I modify, interpret, translate, adapt into a product that becomes international,” she says. “The elements are traditional but the complete design is my own creation.”
Cassidy colors the silk with dye, purchased from Germany and matched to the hues of the less hardy local dyes. Then her 40 artisans count thousands of silk threads, wind, tie, and then warp them onto the loom. Oftentimes, the preparatory steps consume more time than the actual weaving itself. Because of the effort involved, everything with Lao Textiles has a very authentic feel to it. Even the looms are original—Cassidy designed them herself based on traditional Lao weaving mechanisms and made them to accommodate longer and wider pieces.
And even when all the prepping and weaving end, the job is not yet complete. The artisans still need to type and twist the fringe, wash out the rice paste, iron, hem, and record the weight and size of the textile. Only then can they consider a piece finished.
“There is always a market for quality,” says Cassidy. “It’s not how much you sell or what something costs that counts. What matters is the gratification of the customer who will live with what you’ve created.”
Lao Textiles specializes in 100% hand-woven silk and produces intricate brocade, ikat and tapestry textiles, crafted wall hangings, scarves, shawls and custom furnishing fabrics. Carol Cassidy’s artwork is displayed in galleries and museums throughout the United States: The Textile Museum in Washington, DC, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
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