The People — WURDOO 乌朵

Several hand-braided wurdoo chains in different colourways hanging side by side on a wooden rack — each one different

Founder · 创始人

Sarah Chen

From one teaching trip to a workshop on the plateau

In 2017 a volunteer teaching trip brought Sarah to Yushu, Qinghai — and the connection never broke.

For years after, she and a group of friends with the same wish sent clothing north season after season, for the children and the women who had none to spare.

The wurdoo came by accident. She came across it, and recognised something three thousand years old.

Her first move was not to buy. She asked: would the nomad women of Yushu like to braid it? They said yes. So she sent up different kinds of weaving material — and asked for nothing back except their own imagination.

Which is why nothing here is designed. Every piece you see is one woman's own inspiration, made by hand — a palette, a combination of knots and pom-poms she chose herself, on a day of her own.

See what they made

A hand-knotted wurdoo with a yellow pom-pom resting on snow at altitude

Brand Ambassador · 品牌代言人

Nelly ZHUANG

庄楚君 · 上海

Social entrepreneur & influencer working on fashion's diversity and inclusion, based in Shanghai, China.

In 2015 she survived a serious dust explosion in Taiwan — extensive burns over most of her body, against a 33% survival rate. What could have ended her relationship with fashion became the reason to go further into it.

She has spent the years since breaking stereotypes around fashion and beauty by working with relatively disadvantaged women — through products, experiences and communication.

Since 2023 · 三个品牌

Since 2023 she has been building an innovative fashion-inclusion O2O ecosystem, launching one brand a year:

WooU Inclusive Co-Benefit CommunityAccessibility and inclusive social development communication.
BYGONESTORYA Xinjiang fashion accessories brand, co-founded with a hearing-impaired designer.
PowerFoldA KOL IP brand inspired by ancient Silk Road blessing motifs, creating original Eastern lifestyle products with sustainable fashion designers and women in difficult circumstances.

Nelly ZHUANG in a whitewashed monastery lane in Tibet, wearing a wurdoo chain across the body

「让不被看见的人，
大胆地被看见。」
Letting the unseen be boldly seen.

Nelly believes that diverse women all have the ability to express their own aesthetic and fashion sense. They are not recipients of help — they are creators. Her co-benefit model has been included in a UN ESCAP guide on cooperation between disability-inclusion organizations and enterprises.

As the first and only burn-survivor woman standing in the fashion spotlight nationwide, she takes letting the unseen be boldly seen as her mission — leading more women to create real income through fashion products, letting consumers enjoy goods and do good, and showing the world a life force that refuses to be defined.

What brings her and Wurdoo to the same page is simpler than a collaboration card. Three thousand years ago the women of Maozha Township were the ones who knew how to braid a wurdoo. They are still the ones braiding it today — in their homes, on their own schedule, before the caterpillar-fungus season.

We share one conviction: women who make things are not waiting to be given something. They are the ones who already know how.

Nelly ZHUANG in a black top wearing a wurdoo chain as a waist wrap, prayer flags behind her on the highland