I love designing for friends. These are some of the wonderful ladies that fill my life in Phnom Penh. As I am learning to design, some of these beautiful creatures have agreed to let me design for them. My co-blogger basically has no choice in the matter.

A perk of working alongside Tiff is that she is just as excited about textiles as I am. Whenever I go to Myanmar, she throws some cash at me (in a respectful way) and I head to the market for fabric.

It is SO much fun shopping for fabric in Myanmar. The textiles are diverse and loaded with embroidery of all sorts. There are different patterns from all the of states and the weaving is technical and beautiful. I love that the selection is talent driven, and everyone seems to value to quality of the work. There is much less bling in the fabric, which is a welcome change from the Cambodian market glitterbomb, but there might be a sparkle of silver thread in a pattern, or strategically placed sequins. Vendors are able to tell you exactly where each piece is from and they are proud of have high-quality work, as opposed to piles of crappy, mass-produced stuff that is the norm of many parts of SE Asia.

This all leads me to making something for tiff. She’s fun to design for because a) I like her taste b) she lets me roll on an idea c) she likes weird stuff d) she and I look nothing alike. While I am used to figuring out what looks good on a gangly white girl, she has gorgeous tan skin and bangin’ curves, and its so much fun exploring colors and fit on her. A big part of what I want to do with the design stuff is make clothes for all kinds of people, not just the size-nothing-alien-bots of the runway, because that’s boring.

She wanted a romper (because who doesn’t like getting totally naked when you have to pee?) so we did a romper. I love rompers, they are great to dress up or down and you can do cartwheels in them, which is important.

Final draft up as soon as we get this one back from the tailor. I will be sure to include all of my very special kindergarten-quality drawings then.