Food and Fashion. Pt.2
Dave Says:
So, Hoi An famed for all things cultural lives in the shadow of its low culture while supposedly high couture main source of income. Tourists love a bargain and word of the bargains in Hoi An spread through the grapevine as far north as Sapa. In fact, on route to Sapa was where Archer (please refer to Sarah’s previous post) first informed us that, like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, our fortune awaited us in Hoi An.
Hoi An removes dongs from wallets by tailoring custom clothing for virtually nothing. Sarah, always one to love definitely something for virtually nothing, was very excited at the prospect of a complete new, self-designed wardrobe with money left over for a pair of shoes and a 3,000 dong beer.
They make these clothes quick but the choice is endless so we started shopping on arrival. Literally every other shop in this town is a tailor and the manequins outnumber tourists which, if you remember correctly, outnumber mopeds. Competition is rampant and so are the people who jump out at you to make sure you visit their shop before anyone elses’. As with all Vietnamese retail outlets, they all sell exactly the same thing so the first one to snag you stands a great chance of getting your business. However, we had a plan. Archer had given us a recommendation and, although he was a dynamite expert at a coalmine in a remote region in Australia and, therefore, safe to assume his knowledge of clothing to be limited to the Aussie version of Carhart, it was still a starting place. Archer likes to do things on the cheap so we also decided to pay a visit to the most upmarket place we could find to compare. Not two minutes after congratulating ourselves on such a fine way to defeat the Vietnamese taut and hawker system, the whole thing went south.
Springing out at us from the cloth market (the lowest end of the tailoring spectrum in Hoi An) came CoCo Black Diamond. CoCo is gay - very gay - in fact so gay that Pride Parade in Seattle would need to lay on extra floats just to parade his gayness. Well, that’s how it seemed to us in a country where homongeny, not homosexuality, is encouraged. CoCo was very pleased to meet us and insisted we check out his very “funky” clothing. Sarah feel madly in love with him. I thought him a welcome break from the “what your name? where you from?” people. So we followed him back to his shop.
CoCo had nothing more to offer than anyone else but his vivaciousness was starting to win us over. He hugged us and ran around showing us samples. It was here that we learned you could have anything you want in this town. Just look through the Gucci, Chanel, Gautier catalogs and CoCo could whip it up for you in a day. After 95% promising CoCo we would return (he wanted 98% promise but I talked him down) we left with a spring in our step and a smile on our faces.
Long story short, if it’s not too late, we ended up betraying the 95% promised and went with Archer’s suggestion: a 4′10″ girl called Bi. Not surprisingly, Bi was also very happy to meet us, remembered Archer and promised us a huge discount for a friend. The process of designing your own clothes goes like this: pick a picture from a magazine, say you want this but not that, pick some fabric from the many bolts on display and negotiate your price. We did not negotiate. We had been promised a good discount and we got one. The price was so low, even if one item turned out fine it would still be cheaper than the US. Besides, what price can be put on so much fun?
For me it was fun. I ordered one suit and 5 shirts for less than $100. I returned the following day, tried on the suit, had the pants taken in and the sleeves lengthened and was happy as a clam.
Sarah, on the other hand, had a harder time of it. One dress, 2 shirts, 1 pair of pants and 3 days later she was still have adjustments made. Their system is not very accurate. After the initial measurement is done with a tape measure, all subsequent measurements are done with the amount of air between the index finger and the thumb and for Sarah’s clothes this was proving not at all accurate. After a lot of back and forth and take-ins and let-outs, everything worked out just fine. I now own 5 new shirts, of which all fit great until probably the first wash, and a suit that looks fine if I don’t stand next to its picture in the magazine I originally picked it from. Sarah (for just $40) owns a pair of pants she loves but will only wear traveling, a black shirt that’s “fine”, a white shirt she hates and a cute little halter dress. Of course, all that could be irrelevant because we had to entrust the clothes to the VN postal service to get them home so we may never see them again anyway.