knitting with the natives : haute couture in pakistan

Talking about fashion ... I have two friends from Australia, Cathy Braid & Kirsten Ainsworth who have started their own fashion label Caravana in Pakistan - a label which has buyers from Dubai to New York to Sydney. These two girls are living and working their dream and it's been two years of 'knitting with the natives'. I visited them last year in Chitral, a remote area in the Hundu Kush mountain range of Pakistan, an incredibly beautiful region steeped in Islam and a town where women aren't allowed to cross the main bazaar.

A recent article describes how they managed to make magic in the mountains : an excerpt :

During a long and stubborn winter in the Hindu Kush in northern Pakistan, eight figures rose on the horizon of the Lowari Pass. Seven porters, 20 suitcases and an Australian fashion designer. They crunched over the snowy track at 3,000 metres laden with an improbable cargo of spring and summer clothing. "Winter is tough and you just have to work around that," says Cathy Braid, who launched the Caravana couture label with friend and business manager Kirsten Ainsworth in 2003 from Pakistan's northern town of Chitral.

They really are living this mad dream & making things happen for other women & themselves & I love them for it.

For more on Caravana and what it's like for my friends working in a remote Muslim province of Pakistan, read the transcript from an interview with the ABCs Foreign Correspondent late 2004.