Both wet.
Not the same.
One island sits on the edge of the Pacific and the other on the edge of the North Sea. Water all the way round both of them, and rain with two completely different tempers.
兩座島，一個櫃 — the story
Two ways of being wet水的兩種寫法
Taipei rain is warm and it falls straight down. It can come back three times in a day, and five minutes of walking will have you taking a jacket off, because the layer keeping the water out is also keeping your own heat in. Clothing there learned one lesson early: stop the water, let the heat leave. Thin fabrics, fewer seams, vents under the arm, and a face that dries in an hour.
British rain arrives sideways. It is cold, and it is in no hurry - it will happily take the whole afternoon. Clothing here is not solving heat, it is solving duration: laminates, taped seams, a denser weave, something that is still working five hours in.
Two islands asked to keep the rain off, and they built two different objects. Neither one is the better answer. They were answering different questions.
繁中 door · / — its own opening, not a translation of this
TW Rain by the hour, not the afternoon 台灣 — where the rain is warm
Taiwan gets a British year of rainfall in a season and gets it at thirty degrees. That is the climate the island's technical clothing was cut for, which is exactly why it behaves so unreasonably well in a wet British February.
Taipei rain is a quantity. British rain is a duration.
Journal 005 · Two islands, two kinds of rainWhy a shelf為什麼要有一個櫃
Because both islands have a gap on the rail. What Taipei cannot buy is hanging in a British shop. What Britain has never seen is folded in a small shop off a Taipei side street. Ten thousand kilometres apart, and nothing in between putting the two good things on one shelf.
The shelf is small on purpose. A handful of pieces at a time, and every one of them has been picked up by hand, turned over, had its wash label read and been photographed. Only what can be seen goes on the rail. That is the one rule; everything else is negotiable.
From the journal Three lines
Read it all →“Nothing on a good jacket is where it is by accident. The zip runs both ways so you can sit down in it; the seam is taped because a needle makes a hole.”
“Oyster shells and plastic bottles, ground down and spun into a yarn that behaves like wool and does not mind being rained on.”
“Start with the weather and the clothes make sense immediately. Start with the labels and you are just reading names.”
TW The shops off the main street 巷子裡的那種店
The best shops in Taipei are usually not on the main road. One frontage, one rail, someone sitting at the back who knows every piece on it. That is the thing this shelf is trying to be a version of.
What is on the shelf now The story ends here; the clothes are this way
If you would rather look at objects than read about weather, this is the door.