Dosa’s Christina Kim, fashion designer and recipient of the Aid To Artisan’s Innovation in Craft Award, is an astonishingly talented and intelligent woman. An LA resident who is South Korean by birth, she designs long-lasting garments made with natural fibers, dyes and recycled scraps. Kim has deep respect not only for these natural resources but for human ones as well. Working with artisans around the world, she creates ongoing partnerships that typically last multiple years rather than just one fashion season. And she pays her workers well, generating long term and trusting relationships.
Dosa’s pieces are not inexpensive. Her low markup on these substantial prices indicate her commitment to fair-labor practices and to her philosophy that people should consume less and cherish more the things they buy and wear, including the labor and the skills of the people who make them.
I first came upon Dosa’s clothes in a favorite shop of mine in the Islands. The trousers and tops, dresses and slips that I have bought in voile and linen and silk, in white and natural and indigo, are the essential pieces of my summer wardrobe. I am comfortable and at ease in every one of them; I also feel, when I am wearing Dosa clothing, a deep connection to the earth as well as to the maker. There is something about the clothes’ lack of perfection – a serendipity in the design, the textiles’ hand, the detailing – that gives me pleasure in their wearing and elevates them to cherished stature.
Since 2007, when fashion designer and philanthropist Donna Karan founded the Urban Zen Foundation, an inspiringly beautiful holiday market appears at 705 Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan. Each year, Karan creates a marketplace that combines humanitarianism with consumerism, promoting shopping with a purpose. The Foundation is dedicated to three initiatives: preservation of culture (past); bringing mind, body and spirit to healthcare (present); education (future.) The opening last night featured more than 40 artisans from countries as diverse as Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, India, South Africa and Mexico, artisans that exhibit at the International Folk Art Market in the Southwest each summer. The space is the perfect venue in which to display fabrics and objects, photographs and fashion in such a way that they - and you - feel instantly at home.
Of particular beauty were the feather light shrugs, coats and jackets of Farzana Sharshenbieva from Kyrgyzstan; the magnificently, finely tie dyed bandhani silk scarves of Gujarati Abduljabbar Khatri; the sensuous Zulu pots of Jabulile Nala whose mother is considered a national treasure. I adored the heavy, indigo dyed raw cotton jackets of Laotian Boukhong Signavong that greet you as you enter this magical space.
There is nothing more healing, nothing more inspiring, nothing more warming than to be in the presence of passionate artisans who draw beauty from their souls to share it with others. It was hard to leave Urban Zen last night, so hard, in fact, that I shall return tomorrow."
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