White

BY PERRIN

When we left Taiwan, we wanted to take a trip with our Taiwanese friends, Frank, Jennifer, Julian (4), and Ning Ning (1) to say goodbye.  We first visited Jinmen, an island that is part of Taiwan but is right off the coast of China.  Then we went to Xiamen, which is a city on the south coast of China about 20 miles away from Jinmen.  Jennifer's dad owns a wedding dress factory in Xiamen and he and his associates gave us a tour.

First we explored the cloth storage room where hundreds of bolts of cloth were stacked on the floor and all the way up to the ceiling.  There is one person who examines each and every bolt of cloth for holes and flaws and if they find one, they put a sticker on it so it doesn't end up in the dresses.  The first floor is where the skirts of the dresses are made.  There were people cutting, sewing, pinning, unpinning, lacing, and folding the cloth that would result in beautiful dresses.  

One thing that shocked me about the factory is that EVERYTHING was WHITE.  The room was white, the cloth was white, the lace was white, the sewing machines were white, and everything not white was covered in something that was.

Pleating

Taking out pins

The second floor was where the bodices are made and sewed onto the skirts.  Jennifer's dad told us that pleating (making lots of little folds) is one of the hardest things to do while the task of taking out pins is the least difficult.  This room looked similar to the room below except the work was more detailed and looked more like a dress than just white cloth.  People were fitting the dresses to cloth mannequins, which were sized from 1 - 32.  The largest mannequins are called "big mamas."  Jennifer explained that most of the "big mamas" are for Americans but the factory sells the most dresses in Spain.

"Big Mama"

The third floor was for beading and the finishing touches, but the designers worked there too.  The factory has 1,000 different designs of dresses each made with different cloth, shapes, beads, and sizes.  They also make custom dresses designed to fit individual people.  

Carly and I got to try a few on and it was really funny because they didn't fit very well.  I liked the longer dresses while Carly's favorite dress was a medium length and the skirt was made up of enormous, spirally flowers.

Giving the mandatory "V" signs

That night we had a great time with Jennifer's family and her dad's business partners singing, dancing, playing an accordion and being silly at a delicious dinner before practically sleep walking to bed.  I had learned a lot of random facts and interesting information about wedding dresses, cloth, lace, and design and was ready to go to sleep.  It had been a long day of traveling and wedding dresses.