The Textile Atlas

Heritage textiles carry rich stories of cultural history. While many ethnic minorities don’t have a written format to their languages, for generations they have been creating motifs onto their costumes to tell the ancestors’ stories. With the trend of people leaving their traditional textile crafts to work out of town, many cultures are also quickly disappearing. Sharon de Lyster, championing sustainable practices and heritage crafts, sees that in order for artisanal businesses to sustain, there needs to have a systematic resource and network platform to promote such practice. The Textile Atlas aims to preserve a record of disappearing crafts with their reflected cultural stories, and provide a resource platform for both the commercial industry and academia through searchable maps.

de Lyster is a fashion trend forecaster and founder of textiles studio Narrative Made. She specializes in researching and analysing how Asian cultures impact style preferences and textile creations. de Lyster combines extensive experience and knowledge in Asian heritage textiles, sustainable fashion production and design to champion textiles cultural conservation and ethical sourcing through her brand Narrative Made. She is a consultant at global trend forecasting agency, WGSN, contributor of online handcraft magazine, The Kindcraft, and guest lecturer at The HK Polytechnic University. Her work has been featured by international media such as Associate Press, The Washington Post, SCMP and Not Just A Label.

de Lyster was educated in Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London, Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and holds a degree in Fashion and Textiles Design from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.