HOME     peaceBOMB     TEXTILES     ABOUT    CRAFT     PRESS     CONTACT

Hand loom weaving and natural dyeing are age old labor intensive techniques employed by female Lao weavers. Daughters in both city centers and rural villages continue to inherit weaving skills from their mothers and grandmothers. Weaving and dyeing skills are fundamental to Laos’s culture, advancement toward sustainable economic development and the economic empowerment of women particularly as these goods become more available to the Western market.

A single meter may take anywhere from one day to 3 months to complete depending upon the intricacy of the design and the time a woman has to allocate to weaving between farming and taking care of her family. Natural dyeing is also a time intensive and highly skilled endeavor that has endured through time. Imagine that indigo leaves picked during the rainy season produce a different color indigo than those picked and fermented in the dry season. The process of making handmade, naturally dyed textiles is critical to Laos’s artistic and cultural heritage, and also part of every day life as Lao women continue to wear the very fabrics they create.

ARTICLE 22 accessories are finished with repurposed leather from the highest quality materials used for upholstering jet plane interiors. We reduce waste while providing customers with premium, durable leather finishings. You may never know whose private jet leather you’ll be wearing... but we do! All leather and hardware finishings are applied in New York by a leather luxury accessories workshop.

Bags pictured are not to scale.

ARTICLE 22 | TRADING Co. products are fashion artifacts made according to ancient time intensive and eco-friendly traditions. A weaver can produce approximately 20 cm to 120 cm of these complex patterns in one day, making these goods functional works of art.  We do our best to respect the unique production timeline specific to natural dyeing and hand loom weaving. For example, differences in season may require a weaver to spend time away from her loom during harvest or yarns to bathe in the cold indigo dye jar longer during the rainy period.