The Cha Dao Collection: What Tea Teaches Us About How to Get Dressed

Taking it back to the foundational and basics. One sip at a time, we are adding new rituals to support a slow life that is aligned with what brings natural expressions of joy.

Mayra wrote that in April, wearing the Tender Top and Short set from the Cha Dao collection. She was describing something that had been building for a long time in the brand's philosophy: the understanding that tea and clothing are not separate practices but expressions of the same one, the cultivation of quality attention in the ordinary hours of the day.

Cha Dao is the Chinese philosophy of tea. The way of tea, but dao cannot be reduced to way without losing something essential. Dao is the natural order, the path that is also the destination. The way of tea is the practice of using the preparation and drinking of tea as a vehicle for presence. For the full arrival into this moment, this cup, this breath.

What Tea Teaches

Tea teaches you that the way you do anything is the way you do everything. The quality of attention you bring to the cup is the quality of attention you bring to the conversation, to the work, to the relationship. Cha Dao is not primarily about tea. It is about the cultivation of a quality of presence that then extends to everything else.

What you wear operates on the same principle. The same linen. Chosen with awareness produces a different wearing experience than chosen automatically. The act of dressing slowly, of feeling the fabric settle, of noticing the quality of what you are putting on your body, is a form of Cha Dao. The way of dressing as a vehicle for presence.

The Third Pot

There is a teaching in Cha Dao about the third pot. The first pot washes the vessel. The second pot opens the leaf. The third pot is where the tea becomes what it is.

Mayra returned from Taiwan with this teaching. With the understanding that the third pot is the metaphor for everything worth doing. The brand is now in its third pot. Ten years of clearing and opening have produced the collection that is being made now, the fullest expression yet of what the four pillars of Astrology, Tea, Kundalini, and Slow Fashion produce when they are truly integrated rather than merely listed.

How the Cha Dao Collection Was Made

The Tender Top and Short set came from the understanding that the tea ceremony costume has always been clothing designed to disappear. To not compete with the quality of attention the ceremony requires. Natural linen or cotton. Minimal construction. The palette of the tea house: the palette of natural materials, of earth and water and the ceramics that hold them.

This is the Cha Dao collection: garments made for the woman who understands that the way she gets dressed is also a practice. You can read more on our slow fashion page and our about page.

A Piece for This Threshold

The Cha Dao Collection. Only a few pieces remain from the current batch. For the woman who is adding rituals to a slow life, one sip at a time.

Shop the Cha Dao Collection →

Natural linen · The way of tea · Handcrafted in Bali

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