A NEW York fashion designer whose plans for a big Co Down wedding were upended by Covid-19 has launched a new creative venture from a Kilkeel sheep farm.
Yuri Lee and Thomas Keown were originally due to marry in May, with the couple returning to settle in Manhattan to launch a new fashion brand. But with the US closing its borders, the 38-year-old shifted the new business from the Big Apple to a farm in Co Down.
Love Wonky has now built up a network of local knitters, and is generating employment for women in Latin America severely affected by the pandemic.
“It was never supposed to happen this way,” said Yuri. “But I’m so glad that it did. We were supposed to start in New York and create clothing with ladies in Bolivia but what has happened here is so beautiful.”
Hats and scarves knitted in Co Down are now selling for between $80 and $200 in the US, with profits used to generate employment for women in poor communities in South America by training them to make clothing by hand.
“Women in these communities of Bolivia have not had access to education and really struggle to provide for their children,” said the designer.
“By training them to create beautiful handmade garments we get them working and join them in transforming their families lives in a sustainable way. And it all starts here in Mourne with ladies doing what they would be doing anyway. But for purpose.”
Elizabeth Watterson from Rathfriland has been knitting for Love Wonky since October. She said: “It’s nice to know you can sit on your sofa with your fire lit, knit a wee bit, and realize that you are helping another lady in another country, and there’s a reward in doing it, a wee satisfaction for
yourself.
Yuri’s background in fashion includes designing roles for DKNY, Anthropologie, and Victoria’s Secret. But she found the success unfulfilling.
“I had seen the worst of the fashion industry and the ways in which people who produce the things we wear are exploited and mistreated,” she said.
“I believed that there was a better way and I wanted to use my experience to help find it.”
She quit her job and spent six months journeying through Africa and India, encountering different communities of women in India and Kenya. She also found Thomas Keown. The Kilkeel-born man leads a charity proving education and shelter to children in Africa and Latin America. Between them, the idea for Love Wonky was born.
“The idea first came because of Thomas’s grandmother, Sadie, who despite never leaving Northern Ireland knitted almost every night for 80 years for pre-mature babies in Malawi that she would never meet. I wondered if there might be more Sadies around here. And goodness there were.”
As for their wedding plans. The couple were eventually married in front of seven members of Thomas’s family with two iPhones beaming the ceremony have to Yuri’s family in Korea.
Now known as Yuri Lee Keown, the designer said she is enjoying her new life in Kilkeel.
“I love it here. The difference between the pace of life and the attitude of people here I just love.
“Even the little things like waving at people over the steering wheel when you meet them driving. “Wherever Wonky goes in the decades ahead, it will always be the kindness of Northern Ireland that started it,” she said.
“And that this was also able to provide ladies with something meaningful to do with their time and skill during lockdown is so perfect for what Wonky seeks to be in the world.”
