Mai Châu, Vietnam

This piece originally appeared in our  Spring 2024 print issue. Photographs and Words by Melissa Haupt

Arriving in Hanoi close to midnight, I checked into The Metropole, a whitewashed French-colonial hotel from 1901 with bottle-green shutters that channels Indochine like no other. Taking a cue from a former guest, Graham Greene, a gin and tonic at the bar was only appropriate before bed.

I was in Vietnam for the first time, joining TextileSeekers for a retreat visiting indigenous peoples and studying the preservation of their traditional textile culture. Journeying with a small group of creative women, we would be uncovering the stories that the textiles tell, while focusing on the sustainability of these practices.

In the morning, I ventured out and was immediately tested trying to cross the street—weaving through Hanoi’s motorbike traffic is not for the faint-hearted: look straight ahead and cross while saying a prayer. I popped into the water-puppet theater for a wonderful performance of traditional Vietnamese folk tales and legends. Walking back to the hotel through the old town, my senses were overloaded with incense drifting onto the street from the temples, the chatter of the markets piled with fresh fruit, the passing rickshaws and the beautiful colonial buildings surrounded by banyan trees. 

Our first visit was to a workshop of artisans from the Red Tay tribe. Vietnam is home to 53 minority ethnic groups, whose population exceeds a million. For centuries, women have been creating textiles, working with their hands, weaving stories, every thread telling a tale of the culture and the hands that wove it. Listening to the rhythmic sound of the shuttling loom as the women wove the brocade fabric was hypnotic. On the studio rooftop, we worked with natural plant dyes using seeds, leaves and tree bark to create pinks, reds and yellows. Each of us created our own dyed scarf before we left.

The next day, we piled into a van and began our trek to the Mai Châu region in Vietnam’s northwest. As we traversed winding roads through mountain passes, the transition from the traffic and motorbikes of Hanoi to this bucolic landscape was startling. We passed farming landscapes layered with rice terraces—a tapestry of emerald, jade and every shade of green cut like a patchwork quilt—and villages with traditional stilt houses. With mist obscuring the horizon, we arrived at Avana Retreat, where we would stay for the next three days. Avana is nestled in a jungle with the valley spread out below, the perfect stay to slow down and connect with nature and its spring-fed lagoon, waterfall, koi pond, spa and pools. 

We drove to visit a Black H’mong family through a misty, gray mountain landscape dotted with pink-orange persimmon trees. The H’mong began arriving in Vietnam from China and Laos 300 years ago and settled in the northern part of the country because of the highlands’ tropical climate. The family’s home holds three generations living together, where textile skills are carried on through a lifelong apprenticeship between mothers and daughters. We watched as hemp was readied for weaving, hands linking the fibers into threads. We learned batik, using beeswax to create designs on fabric, which we transferred to the vats and their sweet scent of indigo leaves for the dyeing. Natural indigo, a deep, rich shade of blue that will stain your hands, is obtained by dyeing the fabric for days in the vats. The results are beautifully patterned indigo fabrics the color of the midnight sky.

We also spent a morning with the White Tay, learning the process of creating silk from silkworms, cocoon to thread. Cocoons are boiled to release the filaments of silk and filaments from 10 to 20 cocoons are twisted together to form a single thread. Threads are then hand-reeled into skeins. It’s a tedious process requiring the skill of delicate fingers passed down through generations. Watching those precious silk threads being woven on the loom, the artisan’s steady hands passing the shuttle back and forth while her feet worked the pedals, I thought about the perseverance of these women, their craft and traditions surviving war and peace, transcending time—and now, the world.