After taking VIETOPIA off social media platforms and not creating a new collection, I wanted to find some words to write a bit about VIETOPIA.
Since people still stumble upon this website, I decided to finally post the blog post I wrote but never shared four years ago.
I changed a few words here and there and added a few more lines at the end, but all in all, the things I wrote four years ago still feel pretty accurate – and since people still check in, I thought: Maybe one or the other will have a little read.
This blog entry is a little flashback about the beginning, the journey, and its open end. It is also a reminiscence about its process: my personal one and the one of VIETOPIA.
It is also a thank you to everyone who crossed paths, was part of it, or reached out a hand.
Some things we start out of a necessity we feel inside ourselves — a need to change something in our lives.
I began working on the first collection at a time in my life when many things were falling apart, and I felt truly disconnected from myself and my surroundings — and, well… life in general.
Vietopia felt like a faint light, something to hold on to when everything else failed.
It brought me hope and joy to interview women for the Vietopia Women section on the website — women I know personally, whose words moved and inspired me, and to which I still return from time to time.
Another wonderful thing was working with the seamstresses and artisans in Germany and Switzerland — Anja, Radka, Katharina, and Bea.
Learning about their craft and understanding how much work goes into actually creating a piece of clothing gave me a new appreciation and awareness toward clothing and the people who make it.
To my own surprise, almost out of the blue, I encountered a support system of friends and strangers — people who reached out their hands to support Vietopia and myself in any way they could: emotionally, financially, or by working together to bring the collections out there — helping with photos, working on the website, lending their songs for videos, and much more.
Having spent many years of my life either stumbling through life or isolating myself — I suddenly found myself surrounded by sweet folks.
While it has been a wonderful lifeline in some areas of my life, VIETOPIA on social media suddenly felt completely out of alignment.
Not only did I find it hard to discern what to share and what not to share — while still trying to keep my head above water — but I also never felt like I was able to put into words what I truly meant or felt.
Social media felt like the wrong place to put a lot of words out. On the other hand I did not want Vietopia to be superficial and to just be about clothes and pretty photos. No matter how much thought or meaning went into the collections, social media always felt a strange place to hang around.
Social media may have its “positive” qualities, yet to me it has become a confusing place:
Reels and pictures of food, spirituality, clothes, quotes — and on the other hand politics, horrible news, growing polarization, and radical opinions and worldviews. Like the whole world packed into a feed. A world that has become (and probably always has been) overwhelming, turbulent, and scary. A world one can never truly comprehend.
So what am I trying to say?
First and foremost, VIETOPIA reminded me of our need for conscious relationships with nature, clothes, people, and ourselves.
People, things, and circumstances are not to be taken for granted.
VIETOPIA also painfully awakened me to the fact that life is unforeseeable and fragile — that not every dream will necessarily fulfill itself — and that human beings (including ourselves) are fallible.
I kept returning to the quote by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard:
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Looking backwards, I see that VIETOPIA was a faint light back then.
Looking forward, I don’t know if I want to give it another try.
If there’s one thing I think I’ve learned in all those years, it’s this: to take it slower, to expect a little less firework from the outside, and to cherish what surrounds us more.
If you read until here: thank you, and take care.
Laura
