Yaks for haute couture (2)

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Tibetan children with shawls and scarves of the yak wool produced by Norlha.Photo provided to China Daily

"We want to make sure that people who collect fibers and turn them into luxury products are local Tibetans," Yeshi says, "and that the profit would go solely to the villagers — a big challenge for the workshop, but that's also what sets us apart from other producers."

Born to a Tibetan father and an American mother, Yeshi majored in Asian studies and film at Connecticut College. Upon graduation, she decided to make a documentary about the land her father came from, with a "very romantic idea" of filming Tibetan lifestyles against a scenic background and promoting Tibetan culture to the world.

Her mother, Kim Yeshi, bought her a camera and entrusted Dechen with a more practical mission — collecting khullu, the dense fibers that were naturally shed by two-year-old yaks and had never been used by nomads.

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