Sanmao - ‘The Wandering Writer’
Echo Chen Ping or Echo Chan
Pen name: Sanmao; Taiwanese writer, philosopher & travelling poet (1943 - 1991)
Penned seminal works including her autobigraphical travelogue 'Stories of the Sahara' & 'Gone with the Rainy Season'
We love this excerpt from 'Stories of the Sahara'
“I looked around at the boundless sand across which the wind wailed, the sky high above, the landscape majestic and calm. It was dusk. The setting sun stained the desert the red of fresh blood, a sorrowful beauty. The temperature felt like early winter. I’d expected a scorching sun, but instead found a swathe of poetic desolation.”
Sanmao is considered a fashion iconoclast at Viatrix Atelier. We draw inspiration from her memoirs, personal taste and find a kindred spirit in her works. Notably, “My Treasures”, a collection of 86 short essays that celebrate clothing, jewellery, and other objects she acquired on her travels.
“The jeans I was wearing were bought in Shilin, my boots were from Spain, my bag was from Costa Rica, and my jacket was from Paris,” she writes. “An international smorgasbord; and you could say they all united harmoniously and peacefully — and that’s exactly me.”
She is the ultimate Viatrix vixen. A little bit of Sanmao is in all of us.... and in all of our wardrobes.
