The House of Wandering Silk

An Aussie who's lived in London, Osaka, now Berlin, and works out of Delhi, Katherine Neumann is a traveling fool, topping 70 countries visited and more in her daydreams.  Wherever she goes, Katherine turns her roving eye to the local hand crafted textiles and the artisans creating them. Having worked in non-profits trying to improve the lives of women in poverty and witnessing their failure again and again, she had another idea.

A business by and for women.  Her love of textiles + her heart for empowering women = The House of Wandering Silk.  The purpose is simple: 
 

to provide fairly-paid, dignified
and sustainable livelihood opportunities to marginalized women,
with the objective of empowering them
to achieve economic independence
and create better lives for themselves,
their families and their communities. 

Sound familiar?  I think Katherine is my long lost sister!  

Together, with her team in India, she's created the
 HOUSE (as in a Fashion House, a Safe House for women to work)  
of WANDERING (a nod to travellust)
SILK  (evoking handmade luxury + vibrancy)
Makes perfect sense, right?

Katherine grounds her work in words spoken by Mahatma Gandhi:
There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.  
I couldn't agree more.  
The ancient technique of itajime, first developed in Japan, has wandered over to western India, where fluid silk is folded, clamped, and dyed by hand.  Now it's wandering west again - to Ibu. You just can't stop it - silk will wander the world in the hands of women - like water flowing, like power sweeping, rushing, brimming over.  Hand to hand to hand . . . the wandering silk and its sisters are growing in force.  And finding, in one another, a place like home.

#womensupportingwomen. 
Let's do this. 

with joy in my sisters ~
Susan Hull Walker
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