Artisan Heritage

The Maison

Hand-dyed in Vietnam — the artisans behind every scarf

Every Silk & Bears piece is made by hand, in Vietnam, by silk artisans whose families have worked with mulberry silk for generations. No machines doing the work that hands should do — just slow, deliberate craft, passed from mother to daughter.

Lengths of brightly hand-dyed silk drying outdoors in the Vietnamese countryside — Silk and Bears
Hand-dyed silk, drying in the open air — never by machine.

Two thousand years of mulberry silk

Vietnam has produced silk for over two thousand years. Our artisans live and work in the same Red River Delta villages their grandmothers did — using techniques their mothers taught them. The patience is the same. The pride is the same.

From cocoon to colour

A Silk & Bears scarf passes through many hands before it reaches yours. It begins, as silk always has, with the cocoon — and ends with colour drying in the Vietnamese sun.

Silkworm cocoons gathered for reeling — the raw material of Silk and Bears mulberry silk
It begins with the cocoon — the raw material of mulberry silk.
Raw mulberry silk being reeled onto spools in a Vietnamese workshop
The filament is reeled and wound, finer than thread.
A Vietnamese artisan working at a traditional wooden silk spinning wheel
Spun the traditional way, on a wooden wheel.
An artisan hand-dyeing mulberry silk over dye baths in Vietnam
Colour is worked into the silk by hand, batch by batch.

Six steps, every piece, by hand

  1. Preparation. 100% mulberry silk, inspected length by length.
  2. Dye mixing. Small batches, mixed by eye — no two batches identical.
  3. Hand-dyeing. Dipped, folded, tied, or brush-painted, depending on the design.
  4. Setting & washing. The colour is heat-set, the silk softened in cold river water.
  5. Air-drying. Outdoors. Never tumble dried.
  6. Hand-finishing. Rolled hems, hand-tied tags, gift-boxed by hand.

Total time per piece: three to seven days, depending on the design.

A hand-dyed mulberry silk scarf catching the light and the breeze — Silk and Bears
The finished piece — light enough to drift on the breeze.

Three techniques you'll see in our collection

Emerald green hand-dyed mulberry silk scarf — Silk and Bears artisan technique

Hand-dye Solid Colour

Single-tone and gradient pieces dipped in small-batch dye, often over several days for depth.

Turquoise blue shibori hand-dyed mulberry silk scarf with resist pattern — Silk and Bears

Shibori

A resist-dye tradition. The silk is folded and tied before dyeing — the pattern emerges where the dye couldn't reach.

Turquoise and emerald brushstroke hand-dyed silk scarf — Silk and Bears

Brushstroke

Painted by hand with a horsehair brush, one piece at a time. Gestural, loose, impossible to replicate identically.

Grey to white ombre hand-dyed mulberry silk scarf — Silk and Bears

Ombré

The gradient pieces — colour graduating so softly it only fully reveals itself in the light.

Why every order ships in a gift box

Silk & Bears began quietly, in 2020 — a small act of preservation by a founder who couldn't bear the thought of these techniques being lost to fast fashion. Every single order — even the smallest scrunchie — leaves in a signature gift box, tissue, and ribbon. It's how silk this carefully made deserves to arrive.

Explore the Hand-Dyed Collection