“Where are you from?” A question I have been asked countless times in my life. If your origin is so obvious that people ask you about it, then at some point you will learn to deal with it. The funny thing is that I was born in Germany or more precisely in Hamburg. But nobody is satisfied with this answer. What seems to interest us so much in people, does not interest us in clothing. The origin of a garment is just as diverse as that of a human being.
Your heritage is a part of you
My parents were born in Vietnam, got to know each other in Germany and gave birth to me in the beautiful city of Hamburg. Since my childhood my origin has been a central theme in my life. From my difficult name to my appearance, the people around me had enough clues to keep asking me about my origins. In my youth, the society was not as tolerant of foreign cultures as it is today. The prejudices and insults against my appearance and my culture led to the fact that I began to reject my origin. Sometimes I just wanted to be like everyone around me and not be different. The older I got, the more I realized that my origins were an integral part of me that I could not deny. I started to convince myself that it is something special to be different from most of the people around me. I kept doing that until I finally realized that it was true.
Where did your clothes come from?
As obvious as my origin is, so unseen is the origin of a garment. I would like people to show the same interest for the origin of their clothing as they do for the people around them. But people tend not to want to deal with the uncomfortable reality. The origin of a garment is at least as diverse as that of a human being. In the case of organic cotton, the material is grown in India, Turkey or America. There the material is harvested and processed into cotton yarn. The fabric is sometimes produced in the same country, but mostly in another country. There the yarn is dyed and processed into the fabric of the garment that you will later hold in your hands. Until then, the garment is not yet born, because it is usually made in another country. There, the fabric is cut and processed by seamstresses to the garment that you buy. But here, too, there are differences.
Thanks to this rumour, however, some people are sceptical when they see that the organic cotton from the Parisienne comes from India, the fabric was woven in Portugal and the dress was sewn in Germany. The reader of gossip news will immediately think: “What are you trying to tell me, your dress was sewn in India!”
In Germany, you do not have to specify the country of origin for a product. What is regulated by law, however, is the definition of the country of origin. The country in which the essential part of a product was manufactured corresponds to the country of origin. It should be clear to everyone which parts of a garment are essential. Nevertheless, it does not prevent fashion brands from producing the majority of a T-shirt somewhere in Asia and having the label sewn on in Germany in order to label it with “Made in Germany”. Those rumors exist and whether these incidents actually happened, I could not investigate in a hurry, because the Internet mainly tells me that VW has damaged the good reputation of “Made in Germany” with the emissions scandal. Thanks to this rumour, however, some people are sceptical when they see that the organic cotton from the Parisienne comes from India, the fabric was woven in Portugal and the dress was sewn in Germany. The reader of gossip news will immediately think: “What are you trying to tell me, your dress was sewn in India!”
I know the origin of my fashion
There might be fashion brands that work this way. But I don’t do that. I know the origin of every garment in my collection, from the material to the place of manufacture. I know that all the work is done under environmentally friendly and fair conditions. I am proud to say that the fashion of l’amour est bleu is entirely made in Germany. I know the people in Jahnsdorf who sew my collections (not every single one, but some) and I know the seamstresses who sew my made-to-order collections in Berlin. I share this information openly with you, because I want to create awareness in our society for the origin of our clothing. It is my wish that we not only ask ourselves where the person next to us comes from, but also where the dress in my hand comes from and under which conditions it was made.
