dot.city

This evening after supper, Hachiro joined him for a glass of wine in their private lounge at the hotel.
‘I just talked to Robyn, one of the town planners from the New Zealand Team,’ Hachiro said, leaning back in his armchair. ‘I know Alice is against it, but I hope we’ll build more than one town. And I hope that each town will have its own focus.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our first Easy Town will focus on the neurological patient. Everything is centred around that: research, treatment, making the town part of the healing process, giving the damaged brain stimuli and so on. But I think every other town could have a focus of its own. I’m dreaming of a fashion town. A vibrant centre for dot.international. And while I love Japan and Rebun Island, my home, I have a great fondness for New Zealand and its people. And I’d love to build dot.city there. Besides, I love the Maori body paintings and their work with feathers. It would be great to learn from them. I already had a chat with Tangaoroa from the New Zealand Team. He’s sceptical, but I think he might open up, given time.’
‘Hm. How would you focus a town on fashion?’
‘Simple, we’d have everything we need to create, produce and present fashion in our town. And we’d teach all the arts of everything involved: tailoring, drawing, design, composition, production, management, photography, advertising, storytelling, darning, repair, recycling, raw material management, understanding and producing fabrics, designing and building any machinery we might need, smart technology, prosthetics, colour production, ecology, sustainability, durable fabrics, production methods, farming for resources that can be used in fashion, psychology with a focus on what people need to feel good about themselves as well as warm, anatomy, fashion shows, stage management, light design, sound design, research, the history of clothing, and we could have a fashion museum. And I’m sure I forgot at least half of all the possible fashion angles. There are so many different aspects to creating outfits. And we could bring them all together. And we’d have a whole town of people who enjoy fashion and fabrics and planting and design and colours and celebrating. It would be fantastic.’

book 2, travelling, Australia