Kanchana “Chompoo” Shnatepaporn

While looking online for people to photograph in Khon Kaen, I got distracted by a rooster. More precisely, a handbag shaped like one. It led me to BWILD ISAN.

A week later, I parked my rented bike outside the workshop, where Kanchana “Chompoo” Shnatepaporn was waiting for me.

She had arranged a translator and wanted me to meet the two women working with her. She did not want the story to be only about herself. With an MBA from Khon Kaen University, Chompoo came to fashion through her husband’s family fabric business. She learnt pattern-making and tailoring, later working mostly on wedding dresses and with local craftspeople.

When COVID slowed that business, she started BWILD ISAN, bringing designers, weavers and makers together around materials, imagery and knowledge rooted in Isan. High-end craft meets roosters, fighting fish and everyday objects from local culture.

She became aware of the distance that can exist between designers and makers. A complicated textile pattern may look beautiful on paper, but for the person weaving it, it can mean days of extra work. When Chompoo commissions silk now, she involves the weavers in the conversation rather than simply sending them a design to reproduce.

The work is slow, largely handmade, and she spends relatively little on promotion. The objects, perhaps, do part of that work themselves.

When I asked which recent piece meant the most to her, she showed me the Weaver Ant Nest Bag. Layers of fabric fold together like leaves, with oversized red ants crawling across the surface. It takes its structure from the way weaver ants pull leaves together to build their home. For Chompoo, the nest is a metaphor for her creative ecosystem: many workers building something no single one could make alone.

As I photographed her with her workers Kloy and Nuch, she explained that their role is not simply to execute designs. Kloy has 20 years’ experience as a seamstress; Nuch began as a hand-stitcher and has worked with her for 15 years.

As I was leaving, Chompoo tied one of her giant red ants onto my bag. I rode away with it on my shoulder, to my next destination.