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Vietnam’s unique history and its vibrant craft culture will make it a hot contender for the production of haute couture, says Chunkichilli’s Tim Wilson.

Impeccably polite, the Vietnamese textile merchant answers us with his hands pressed together and a supplicatory bow.

“We can produce this material for you,” he says softly, “but please only small quantities. No large orders.”

Vietnam, which not so long ago was one of the poorest countries in the world, is wedged between two of the world’s most successful garment producers, China and Thailand, and it might be difficult at first to see how it can possibly compete. But for anyone producing a designer collection, Vietnam now has one very special asset in its favour – its focus on the small.

Here on an EU-sponsored trade mission, we were amazed to find a country bursting with micro-firms willing to hand-make designer clothes and accessories in small quantities, or even as one-offs.

This is in contrast to China, which may be formidable at bulk production on wafer-thin margins, but getting a Chinese company to make up a small designer collection can often be about as easy as getting a passing oil tanker to fill up your outboard motor.

In Vietnam, on the other hand, the boutique is king. Amazingly for a communist country, only about 5,000 of Vietnam’s 200,000 companies are state-owned. The bulk of the remainder are small, private firms with little access to capital, machinery and expertise, but a great hunger to improve themselves.

What is particularly noticeable is that, unlike its communist counterpart to the north, Vietnam never really embarked on the kinds of statist development projects that have left huge swathes of rural China scarred by big, smoky and problematic old state factories.

And what this means is that whereas the handicraft culture in China has been dying out, in rural Vietnam this is thriving, particularly in the ethnic minority areas in the country’s mountainous north.

Meanwhile, the private sector is growing apace and already accounts for well over half of the country’s industrial output.

In fashion and footwear, this all adds up to the emergence of a boutique culture, with small and flexible companies owning little by way of machinery, but possessing a great talent for producing unique and beautiful items with the tools they have.

Here, there’s no M&S and no Top Shop. In the downtown of Hanoi, the capital city, there isn’t even a supermarket. But there is a stunningly colourful array of boutiques stocked with the hand-spun, the quilted, the embroidered, the woven, the crocheted, the tailored and the dyed.

Although the design and quality of these items can vary, the amount of work that goes into them is awe-inspiring. And while these companies are crying out for help with design and marketing, there are great opportunities for up-and-coming European designers to both contribute to the redevelopment of Vietnam and develop their own unique style.
As an example of what is possible, have a look the website of Charlie Rollo-Walker (www.arightcharlie.com ), a recent St Martin’s graduate who has spent the last two years in Vietnam, developing a line of embroidered fabrics.

We were in Vietnam as part of a trade mission sponsored by the EU’s Asia Invest Programme, which issued travel grants to 40 eligible European companies. They are hoping to make the trade mission an annual event, so to find out more about it, visit the mission’s website here ( www.viet2006.com ), or visit the website of the organising firm, The Innovatory, here ( www.theinnovatory.com ).

Tim Wilson is general manager of Chunkichilli Knitwear Ltd ( www.chunkichilli.com )