Who's behind Lima?: Meet Txell Enrich, sustainable fashion designer
Txell Enrich is the Head Designer at Lima Apparel, based in beautiful Bali. Originally from Spain, Txell has always been passionate about art and fashion. She studied design and styling in Barcelona before moving to the island. After working for several high-end fashion brands and starting her own label, she found herself drawn to the stunning vibrant culture of Bali. Txell talks about how living in Bali has given her a unique perspective on fashion and design and the island’s natural beauty and cultural richness.
Let's find out more about her experience in Bali...
- What drew you to Bali as a place to live, and what do you love about the lifestyle here?
This is the biggest question everyone asks, and the one that has many answers… what drew me here? I guess it was its magic. After 5 years of coming just for holidays, I realized that Bali has something that other places in the world don’t: peace, joy, and the eternal summer feeling. All Indonesian people have something that I really appreciate and love, and it’s kindness, no matter who you are or where you come from, they will always receive you with their arms open and with a smile on their faces.
There’s a saying here: Bali will either hug you or spit you out, and it's something I didn't believe at first, but over the years I've found it to be absolutely true. Bali has embraced me.
The lifestyle here, this kind of island slow life, so leisurely, where nothing is in too much of a hurry but always on time, everything works as it should, seems to me a point in favor, and one of the reasons why I stayed here.
Being lucky enough to live on an island full of people from different countries, where Balinese and Indonesian culture is adopted and respected, gives me wings to fly, to create, and to have the desire to continue discovering this wonderful country.
Also, I would like to add that here I have learned the value of things, material and immaterial. Nothing absolutely needs to be finished today, and having time for yourself and your priorities is paramount on this island. They don't know what stress is and that’s something that I love and scares me at the same time. We come from cities and countries where the rush is the engine of our lives, and where you have to do many things by obligation, as well as many others are forbidden. Here, on the other hand, everything is much more chaotic but amazingly, life is much easier.
- Can you describe a typical day in your life in Bali, and what activities or rituals are important to you?
I’m a morning person so, I start my day at an unusual time here, which is usually 8.30-9 am. Here, they get up between 5 and 6 in the morning to start their day. Imagine when I told them I wake up every day around 9, they just freak out!
The first thing I do is, of course, have my giant cup of coffee while checking the important things I have to do during the day, facing the pool in the company of my dog, Zeus. When I finish these mechanical and boring things, I arrange meetings with the two factories we work with ( for the simple reason of Bali's "slow life", there’s no rush and you can always move the scheduled time).
Every day, I take a shower with loud music and singing, I get dressed to the beat, and I leave the house happy. I can't imagine a day in my life without music playing in the background! I then, take the motorbike and I start my daily routes: there are days when I have to go to the fabric stores, others when I go to the dye factory, others when I have to go to look for accessories, and others when I just go to have a quality check control to ensure that everything is going well in the workshops.
After this, time to get lunch! I usually eat at home, with my dad. it’s important to have a healthy diet so, we cook easy, simple, and fresh things for lunch. After lunch, I usually go to the gym, or the beach to walk, but THIS is something I have to do every day as I need to release energy! But, here you sweat a lot, and even if it’s not a proper shower, you need to refresh yourself. You won’t believe I drink around 3 to 4 liters of water every day!! The eternal summer has its “bad” things, let’s say.
Between 5-6 pm starts my creative and productive part of the day when I start to be able to create, research, and think about the ideas that our customers send us. It is also the time when I answer the most crucial emails, where customers usually have more technical questions about the process of their productions.
At dinner time, I make dinner for my family. Sometimes, we ask for food in an app that should exist in the rest of the world, called Gojek. It saves our lives on many occasions. And then there are days when I need to go out and see friends, and I take advantage of dinner time to be with them and distract myself a bit. Afterward, I work a bit more. It sounds like I’m lying but I work best at night. I guess that’s the life of an artist! But, before going to bed, I also spend some time watching Netflix to take my mind off work.
I have to admit, this is very normal day-to-day and it would be a perfect, hassle-free day in Bali, and it doesn't always happen that way. There are always unforeseen events, meetings, storms that don't let you go more than 10 km per hour, traffic jams, days when I don't have so much work, or there are ceremonies or something that has happened. But these days, you take them with a different kind of philosophy, and since you work here from Monday to Monday, I have a free day during the week, which I take advantage of to see friends, go to the beach, or go on an adventure to continue discovering this incredible island.
I actually love a lot this non-routine thing we have here, and once this became my daily life, I start enjoying every single piece of it. You should try it sometime! It’s life-changing!
It really has a lot to do with the landscape and the lifestyle. The landscape is above all because of the great variety of things you see in your day-to-day life, in the mix of jungle, beach, and mountain, in its different, surprising colors. Here you can find everything: from the more hipster, hippie, and surfer life of the streets of Canggu and Uluwatu, to the rural areas of the mountains in Bedugul or Kintamani, to the sea and coast life of Amed and Pemuteran, to the crowded, traffic-filled city life of Denpasar. Not just Bali anymore, Southeast Asia exudes an energy that I think any designer will agree with me on how inspiring it is. And the lifestyle, as I said earlier, is something that gives scope to creativity, that gives you wings to have ideas, to play, and to give life to your design imaginations. In a way, you have a clash of cultures here, which opens your eyes and opens you up to a new world in terms of creativity.
That being selfish and being in a hurry gets you nowhere. Knowing how to enjoy the little things in your day-to-day life is priceless. That perseverance, know-how, and hard work are rewarded. And that if you can’t end up things today, the world doesn't end just for that reason, that the sun always rises and you never have to settle. It's a constant struggle between being very hardworking and knowing how to enjoy the magical moments of your everyday life here. With their mix of religions and cultures, they teach you how to respect everyone, even if they think differently, they teach you that life is much easier if you worry less about insignificant things and that if something doesn't really work out as you expected, you don't have to worry about it. Learning to do things with awareness and love, they give much more in exchange. And that above all, time is a relative thing, that things are done well take longer, and that you don't need to run an intensive race when life is really a cross-country race. Basically, the balance is in knowing how to listen to others and listen to yourself.
Trust the process but trust yourself even more, this is what all Balinese people say to me.
That if they want to completely change their lives, and go from the frenetic Western way of living to a more earthly and conscious life, they have to come here without thinking about it. This is like living in paradise, it's like always daydreaming. Of course, you’ll have your ups and downs, but if you don’t ever try, you’ll never know (and that’s something that my dad’s wife, Indonesian by the way, taught me!). But, with one condition: you have to respect their culture and traditions, this is something sacred. This island is magical, actually, all Indonesia is, and if we don't respect that, we will lose it. We have many privileges, and one of them, and the most important, is that being immigrants, these wonderful people have adopted us and welcomed us with their arms open. As foreigners occupying their beautiful country, it should be easy for us to able to learn from them, learn their language, culture, and ways of life, it’s a way of being grateful. If we want paradise to remain paradise, it is in our hands to preserve it, in every sense of the word. Oh, and don’t be ever afraid of changes, this won’t let you see and discover the most beautiful parts of this world and all the amazing people living in it. Changes sometimes are good.
So, if you’re thinking about moving to Bali, just do it!