Besides being a picturesque former trading town near the beach, Hoi An in Vietnam is known for its many tailors. You can’t go 50 feet without hitting a clothing shop, all of which can make just about anything you can dream up.
Many of us had been planning to get clothes made, and decided to make dinner quick our first night to get to the tailors. We didn’t even have to finish dinner; the small restaurant across from our hotel was next to a clothing shop, whose owner came over with her toddler to say hi and invite us in for a look. It might’ve been clever marketing, but their samples and fabrics looked good, and Matt & Anna reported similar findings at another nearby shop, so we had found our store!
That turned out to be the easy part, as their table was stacked with thick catalogs of styles, and the walls piled high with enough fabrics and silk to satisfy my mom and grandma! We had a fun scramble through catalog pages and fabric bolts, which was certainly more fun as a group. Jenn and Chris provided a good sounding board for my choices, and the final tally was astonishingly low for so many custom pieces.
Then it was on to shoes! Everyone seems pretty well connected in town, so we also were introduced to the wife of the local cobbler, who was similarly willing to make us any pair of shoes in any material. The measurement process was fun: she traced each foot on a piece of paper and wrapped a tape measure around the foot in a couple of spots. And she did all this while quite pregnant!
We returned late the following afternoon for fittings, though a few items weren’t ready yet. Big piles awaited all of us as we cycled through the make-shift dressing room in the back kitchen. Adjustments and the remaining items would be ready that night, after our cooking class, so we’d have everything when we left the following morning.
The cooking class was good fun, until someone looked at the clock and realized we were nowhere near finishing by the time our guide had advertised. Vinam, our cooking teacher, was great, though. She called the 3 different shops and arranged for them to bring all the clothes via motorbike for us to try on there! It was quite a scene of food and fashion, and a level of service that you just wouldn’t find at home.
