14 - Sunday, October 22, 1989 - North Shore News

NEWS photo Cindy Goodman

A YEAR and a half ago, fashion designer Helen Hamann opened the
map and decided to move from her native Peru to Vancouver. She took
her kids but left her 400-employee sweater business which she now runs

from North Vancouver.

Colors,

quality

make Hamann
sweaters sell

WHEN PERUVIAN fashion de-
signer Helen Hamann moved into
her Seymour River home last year
she accidentally destroyed her
hardwood floor.

By ELIZABETH COLLINGS
| News Reporter

It was the language barrier, she
explains. She mistook an industrial
strength detergent for floor wax.

“It’s going to cost me a lot of
money but now I know. Trial and
error, that’s how you learn,”’
Hamann laughs.

But apart from the floor
debacle, errors seem to have
played a small role in Hamann’s
transition from Peru to Van-
couver.

Only 17 months in her new
home and business is thriving.

With the use of a fax machine
and a MacIntosh computer, 34-
year-old Hamann runs her 400-
employee Southwind Trading
Company in Lima from here. Her
high quality sweaters are sold in
Canada, United States, Europe
and soon in Japan.

In 1988 alone Hamann directed
the production and distribution of
7,000 sweaters — a large number

when you consider each sweater is
handknit, requiring 40 to 50
hours of painstaking work.

Next year Hamann plans to in-
troduce a line of garments to com-
plement her fall line of sweaters.
in addition, she plans to start pro-
duction of wool sweaters in
Uruguay next year.

Aside from innovative business
techniques (this month Hamann
appears in Equity magazine), the
key to Hamann’s success is the
sweaters themselves.

Although they’re designed on a
computer, Hamann derives her
ideas from the Incas.

“‘] like their textiles a lot. They
had a magnificent textile industry
there,’’ Hamann said.

She flips through books of Incan
pottery and fabrics before putting
a geometric pattern on the com-
puter. “‘it’s just a matter of play-
ing. Then I adapt to color. Ob-
viously some designs are more suc-
cessful than others. It’s a type of
game.”’

Like the Incan sweaters,
Hamann’s are made out of the
yarn from pima cotton and the

See Peruvian
Page 15

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