#i was organizing my bags and came across my motherhouse bags and in a fit of love and adoration i burst wrote this

[fishylife]

 I don’t remember if I’ve ever done this before but I just want to make a post about my favourite bag company. It’s a company called Motherhouse. I’ll put my long write up under the cut but basically why I like them are for two reasons.

- They are all about sustainability and treating their workers ethically, in a part of the world where we often hear about workers being exploited (South Asia and Southeast Asia).

- Their bags are expensive, but very high quality. I have two and they are so nice and well crafted. Their goods may be the same price as luxury designer brands, but at least I know that my money is going into the materials, high quality craftsmanship, and to pay workers fairly.

(I have only gone to one of their physical store, and it seems like their online store that’s linked from the Japanese website is only in Japanese. However, the online store that’s linked on their Hong Kong website is in English, so maybe that is a more convenient place to shop for English speakers. But it looks like they currently don’t have as much infrastructure for sales outside of Asia. Their Japanese site does answer inquiries in English though, from what I’ve read. They have physical stores in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong.)

You’ll never believe how I ran into this company.

I was in a period of my life where I relapsed into Japanese boybands and was consuming some of the new content of my favourite boyband (NEWS). My favourite member was Kato Shigeaki. I am not caught up with Jpop at all so I don’t know what he’s doing now lol. (I just know there was drama with NEWS which I will not get into now.)

Anyway, Kato Shigeaki had been on a variety show in 2009, where he went to visit the Motherhouse headquarters in Bangladesh. In that episode, we were introduced to Yamaguchi Eriko, the founder, who explained her life experiences and her philosophies. We saw what their workplace was like, and we got to meet some of the workers. I just went into my hard drive and I was pleased to find out I still had that episode of the show lol. (Tell me if you want to watch the episode and I can....find a way to get it to you lmao.)

What struck me was how Yamaguchi approached this problem with a realistic solution. She wanted to help the people of Bangladesh, but just giving them money wasn’t a long term solution, and for some people, it may hurt their pride too. She felt that creating an industry was a better solution. Through jobs, people could take their financial situation into their own hands.

Yamaguchi was drawn to a strong fiber called jute that was used in Bangladesh, often used for packaging because it’s so strong. She thought about how this fiber could be used to make high quality handbags. Since then, Motherhouse has tapped into a lot of other local materials, including leather from Bangladesh (for bags and wallets), silk and cashmere form Nepal (for scarves), stones from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Myanmar (for jewellery), etc.

In the episode of the show, Yamaguchi had said that she’d been cheated and scammed, and yet she kept trying and trying again. But she’d also said that she’d made some trustworthy friends who helped her when she was down. And from the testimony I read on their websites, it really does seem like the company aims to create good relationships between the people working at the workshops.

I forgot where I read this, but they’re basically like “sustainability can only work if everybody is sustainable,” so by selling sustainable goods, they hope that other people can become sustainable too. The designs that they have are simple, and not really in line with any fast fashion trends. The bags that I have from them, bought years ago, are still up on their website.

They also have good customer service. I’ve only been to their Hong Kong stores, but if you ever bring your leather bag there, they will treat and clean the leather for you. Which is in line with their values of sustainability because they want your bag to last as long as possible. And apparently they have all sorts of bag repair services on their website.

TL;DR Their stuff is good and they treat people well and their boss is kind of a badass, and I think they are a company worthy of support v.v