Oervrouw Magazine: Tantilly in the spotlight with interview with Chantal

This beautiful article was in the great magazine 'Oervrouw', edition 2023.

Tantilly
~ Chantal and her colorful mission with Tantilly ~

Chantal's mission is to make the world more colorful, and she designs and makes beautiful fair fashion women's clothing in sizes S-5XL.

She is very driven, enthusiastic and makes it possible to build a bridge between the fashion world and development work with her company Tantilly in Deventer. In addition to the beautiful shop she has, and all the colorful clothing that is designed, she has many projects to contribute to a better world in her own way.

How she dreamed her dreams into reality....

How it started..

How it all started I was born in Schiedam, in the spring of 1985, as the daughter of a Dutch mother and an Indonesian father.

As a little girl I was already crazy about color and clothes, preferably like this
colorful as possible.

My mother sewed a lot of clothes, and my sister and I wore my mother's handmade clothes on all special days, mostly colorful creations, and adapted to each other. My mother is also crazy about color and prints, and so I got from a young age
From then on, I always wore colorful clothes and discovered the joy of clothes and color.

For every different mood I was in, I found an outfit to match.
My mother was known as the 'colored pants mom' at school because she wore a different brightly colored and printed pair of pants every day.

The discovery path in color

As a teenager I started experimenting more and more with my outfits and my dream was to become a clothing designer.

As a side job I worked for many garment workers, and it did not take long before I was accepted at the well-known fashion academy 'Vogue' in Amsterdam at the age of 17.
I took all the courses I liked and soon discovered that I also really liked styling!

You could do amazing things to combine clothes in a cool way, you could really put your own personality into it and every set I combined became personal.

I learned so much over the next four years and became extremely inspired
through the characteristic Amsterdam, where I spent many hours alone. For hours I could stroll through the small alleys, the beautiful canals and especially visit the small boutiques and small art and photo studios.
I loved the personal aspect.

I really appreciated it when people made their dream come true in the form of creations and showed it to the world through a studio or shop. I learned a lot of new things, e.g. photography, art history, but also things like pattern drawing, fashion and interior styling, and working as a stylist and making reports.

My dream at the time was to become a stylist for a magazine, to make many colorful creations and thus inspire everyone to use more color and creativity in their clothing.

After four years, I proudly completed my training and was ready for my stylist career.

I had done several internships and I soon found out that not everyone in the fashion world was so friendly and well-intentioned. Many people in the fashion world treated interns as helpers.

I was given all sorts of meaningless tasks to do and I encountered a lot of haughtiness, unfriendliness and competition.

Even my best fashion friend didn't tell me that there was a competition for final year students where you could win the coveted prize I dreamed of: to be accepted by a well-known magazine and be allowed to do styling there.

She won the competition herself and I was left with a strange feeling…
That I was crazy about clothes and fashion was one thing.

That I wanted to make people happy and only do things that actually felt good became another important thing. I changed my mission. I wanted to make personality important: to give the feeling that the other person really matters. I wanted to make my dreams come true in a way that I also make other people happy with it, not the opposite.

And I really wanted to contribute to a better world, in all aspects, I just didn't know what to do at the age of 21
how that was going to take shape. I want to make my dreams come true in a way that I make other people happy with it.

And I would like to contribute to a better world.

Wanderlust

I loved traveling, and I still do.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I have Indonesian roots and that I grew up in the multicultural Zoetermeer.

I have always been very interested in culture, in customs, in different dishes from different countries.

From an early age, my friends came from all over the world and I really enjoyed immersing myself in different cultures.

My best friends came from China, India and the Caribbean. How I loved trying all the dishes of their mothers, to get to know new customs of a culture. I did not travel very much, within Europe with my parents, but I dreamed of far destinations and exotic countries where everything was different from the Netherlands.

Where I could truly immerse myself in another world.
My very first trip was to Turkey, with my stepfather.

I hated staying in our all-inclusive hotel. I wanted to go into town, taste the authentic food, get to know the local people :). But that wasn't allowed without my father's guidance, as an 18 year old I was still too young to go out on my own and I was way too
adventurous for the outings with my father ;).

Finally, when I turned 22, the real adventure began.

I traveled to Morocco for the first time, and a new world opened up for me
open. I travelled alone, because I didn’t have many people around me who were interested in my adventurous way of travelling. I wanted to meet local people, try all the local traditional food and make new friends. I was open to everything that came my way. Soon Thailand, Indonesia and India followed… Despite the fear I felt in the beginning as a girl alone in Morocco, it was the beginning of a new life for me. I learned so much!

I got to know myself, to be open to new things and encounters,
protecting myself and standing up for myself, wondering and one of the most important things I learned was to trust.

To trust the signs, to trust that voice inside that points you in the right direction... To trust my own path. As long as I do things
that I like and that makes my heart beat faster, I am on my authentic path...
One of the most important things I learned was to trust my own path.

Tantilly as a real clothing brand

Tantilly's first clothing collection was a fact.

Colorful dresses made of a warm fabric,
in sizes S-2XL. All garments were looser on the hips and stomach area,
The dresses were not too short and most of the dresses had a nice A-line to make your figure look better.

They flew away and soon the shop needed new stock. Of course that required new clothing, to give everything a unique character. Never too much of the same and small editions of fabrics that changed every time.

Tops, trousers, skirts, scarves and vests soon followed...
A complete collection of Tantilly was a fact!
There were also more and more requests from customers, who gave good tips about what they could not find in other stores and brands.

I listened to everything and, if necessary, I adjusted models in the shop on the sewing machine, or the model was improved a season later to make the fit even better.

This is how it started that Tantilly's collection became more and more extensive and I was able to travel to more and more beautiful countries to design Tantilly's clothing, and ultimately also to design the prints.
Fair fashion I have worked and still work only with small craftsmen, often small family workshops, who have a passion for their work.

For me it is important that it feels good and that I click with the people.
The studios employ lovely people, who I often know by name, and who help me design all the beautiful collections.
I visit all the people myself a few times a year and can see that everything is done in an honest way.

I find that very important. Absolutely no child labor, normal working days of max. 8 hours and a fair salary. That sounds very logical to us, but because of the many trips I often encountered completely different circumstances. And for me, that takes the fun out of it.

You can buy something very cheap in a store somewhere else, but when I think that someone worked on it for a ridiculous price, in poor and often unsafe conditions, it doesn't make me happy.

That's why I think transparency is so important, to show who the makers are.

My website even has a nice blog from the makers, in which they introduce themselves and show which article they proudly make for
the customers in the Netherlands.

The customers could then respond in the comments how happy they were.
were and how much they appreciate the work of the creators.

This way you create a great bridge between different cultures and people.

I call it FAIR FASHION: honest, affordable fashion that contributes to the well-being of other people through a fair salary, better conditions and transparency between the customers and the lovely people who make it with so much love. How nice is that?
Quality is also a top priority at Tantilly.

I test everything myself in terms of fabrics, wearability, patterns of clothing, sizing etc. etc. The goal of Tantilly is to make people happy and to contribute to a more beautiful world. Of course, quality is part of that.

I enjoy it very much and am a wonderfully busy bee. I can spend the whole day doing all the wonderful tasks that go with the shop.

Made with love, that's what I believe in.

You feel that, in everything actually.
A better world starts with you I met many sweet, beautiful people on my travels.

I also saw a lot of poverty, which I always found difficult.

Now I have a rule for myself, that when I work in the village where I have the studios, I also try to help the local population. The local animals always get a project too :)

Just because I enjoy it and because I can.
Part of the profit has been going to these kinds of projects for a few years now. Two sisters in Bali whose school fees are paid by Tantilly, a farm with neglected donkeys, shoes for children in India.

Kilos of bananas for the street cows in India, vaccinations for street dogs in Thailand or castrations for dogs in Bali. It's just what I encounter that touches my heart. When I was in India, I was invited to a
birthday party in a tent camp. I had no idea what to expect and I decided to go.

A large boombox provided loud music and 50 kids jumped around.

When I came back the next day with some toys and toothbrushes, I found out that it was a whole village with hundreds of tents with whole families living in them, and that the 20 toothbrushes I had with me were nothing :). Because it touched me so much, I have now set up a project in which we give away 50 to 60 complete food packages, for one family per month, to 50 families there. That makes me really happy and in this way I try to contribute in my own way to a better world.

People are so grateful and can use it so well! That makes me prefer to live simply and give a lot to people who can use it well, than to immerse myself in luxury.
Luckily I have many more dreams and my next dream is to live in the poorest
province in India, to send 500 girls to school! Everything is paid for from Tantilly's profits and many customers are very supportive.

'I buy a nice piece of clothing and at the same time contribute to development aid', is something I hear regularly.

How cool is that?
They can follow the stories on social media, and this way you really feel like you are making a difference too!

Tantilly xxl

After 14 years, Tantilly has become a household name for the people in the area.
collection is not only very diverse, from clothing, home accessories to jewelry, there has also been an online store for a few years. What I also find important here?

Personal service and advice, even if it is online.

Tantilly has an online customer service on Facebook and Instagram, where we give people personal advice and answer questions. I even send several photos with the message, so that you really have an experience as if you are in the store to choose it yourself. Nothing is too crazy and now
is the customer service increasingly busy. What size do I have? Which model suits me with my figure? Which colors of vest go well with my desired dress?

In addition, you can also just order from the website of course. The clothing is even now available in sizes S-7XL, because there is a lot of demand for special clothing in a size more. Clothing is still made in a studio in the Netherlands and we also adjust many things there directly.

Shorten your pants for free, shorten the sleeves of your dress, a
Have your pants or skirt made to measure, it's all possible :). Service with a smile! I think that's extra important in these times.
You don't have to wrap yourself in big black robes if you are a bit fuller. It is actually extra fun to express your personality in a beautiful colored garment that really suits you!

And we are happy to help you with this, to find out what suits you and looks good!

I also often make special clothing, such as double-sided cotton dresses, where
you have two beautiful sides of one dress. Very functional and also a piece
durable.

Or a Triple-G dress, (named after a friend in India) which you can wear as a dress as well
can be worn as a vest over trousers and is also double-sided!

Tantilly has a large collection of double-sided products, such as dresses, skirts, scarves, blouses and vests.
In addition to the double-sided collection, there are also many other beautiful collections, such as warm
winter fabrics (many dresses are often too cold in winter), a silk mix collection, many
products in different types of fabric, and of course many accessories, home decoration and much more.

Everything is still open and I keep listening to what my heart tells me. Then I know for sure that it will lead me on the right path..
Because I am so grateful when people buy something from me, I give everyone who buys or orders something a nice, changing gift. Everyone is happy with a gift! These beautiful items are mostly made by people in India, who I picked from the street on my travels.
A group of women without an income now make the flower belts that we give to everyone as gifts.

The beautiful booklets made from leftover clothing fabrics are made by a sweet father of three children, whose tiny shop in India went bankrupt during the corona period.

Now he has been making beautiful gifts for our customers for three years and is able to generate a good income to provide for his family.
This way I continue to develop new ideas and every meeting in Asia can be a wonderful one
become a new opportunity.

I keep following my heart and that's why I know I'm always on the right track
path stay! How beautiful is it if I keep following the signals and can therefore live in trust?
Every day I feel grateful for what I have, and what Tantilly has made possible for me
made.

The Future

How do I see the future?

In addition to my shop Tantilly, which is expanding more and more, I also have
new dreams of course! My new dream is to have a piece of land in Thailand or Bali and to make the bridge between the local population and the western world there.

Perhaps a shelter for dogs, cats and buffalos that have been mistreated?

A free restaurant for people who are hungry? A school project with volunteers who would like to teach the local children? Everything is still open and I will continue to listen to what my heart tells me. Then I know for sure that it will lead me on the right path.

Love,
Chantal.