Sept – 9th – 2010
From the very moment I landed in Shanghai and began making friends with some of the local Shanghainese people, everybody had been immediately asking me whether or not I had already gone to the materials markets. My response was always an apathetic “No”, simply because I had already seen materials/fabric markets while in Singapore and Thailand and I had never been that impressed- either the prices were too expensive or the craftsmanship was less than desirable.
However, one weekend, I did decide to allow a few friends to convince me to accompany them to one local market, and the experience was certainly unlike anything else that I had ever encountered while in any other Asian country. Not only were the prices remarkable but the craftsmanship and the amount of variety were incomparable to anywhere I’ve ever been- even in the states. The specific market was called the South Bund Soft-Spinning Materials Market and it was a three-story goldmine full of various fabrics/materials/tailors and anything else clothes related. The market was also packed with foreigners and locals searching for the perfect store/stall that offered just the right mix of tailoring specialties and fabric selection to custom make the latest clothing items that they had dreamed of and spotted in one of their favorite Italian designer magazines. The whole time I was there all I could think about was how crazy my mother/sister would probably go when I took them there. You could honestly literally find ANYTHING there from sequined tutus to cashmere top coats… so who knows what those two women would be capable of coming up with.
Needless to say, after exploring the market I decided that a hands-on experiment was in order, and that I had to get in on some of the action…
Check out the video below to witness what I saw first hand and see how my experiment went:
