Who is it? 12 years ago, in a small valley hidden in the Amdo region of the Tibetan Plateau, a mother, Kim Yeshi – an American anthropologist married to a Tibetan academic – and her daughter, Dechen, founded Norlha. Today, their yak khullu atelier – yak khullu wool comes from the soft under-down of a yak – produces two seasonal collections a year in a nomad settlement comprising 230 families, 6,000 yaks and 20,000 sheep. “I had this idea to do something with yak wool,” explains Kim of the label’s origins. “I had a friend in Kathmandu who worked with cashmere, and we were always talking about the animals that had precious wools in the region. One was the camel, one was the yak, and I came to realise people knew very little about the yak; it wasn’t something out on the market. The idea was to fulfil the potential of this precious fibre, something that hadn’t been done before.”
Kim encouraged Dechen to pursue this journey into the unknown – her daughter was then a Connecticut College graduate interested in directing documentaries – eventually settling in Ritoma village where Norlha began its life. “I didn’t have a background in textiles and was much more interested in filmmaking,” says Dechen. “I started to talk to young people here and realised that they were very open to having an alternative source of employment and, more than anything, wanted to be more in touch with the modern world. What Kim had told me about starting a business with yak wool, plus the Tibetan’s interest in doing something bigger, suddenly clicked together. Filmmaking became a bridge to ask people questions, and through their answers I realised there was a future for us too.”