TONG is the next chapter of a friendship that began long before Nana & Bird. Through the shop, it grew to hold designers, makers, customers and the friends they brought along. We came to know the people behind the products and the people who wore them, and found a place in one another’s lives. When the doors closed, the friendships stayed.
Our lives have changed since. There is less time to meet, and more to talk about when we do. More people rely on us, and we ask more of ourselves. What we treasure now are friends who know our history and make room for who we are becoming: who remember what we love, and show us what we might love next.
TONG is how we keep exploring, together. We look at the world through an Asian eye, shaped by our lives as two Asian women. In what we wear and read, the spaces we inhabit and how we care for ourselves and each other, we look past the object to the people, craft and meaning behind it. What we find, we pass on quietly, to the people who will care. Sometimes we share an instinct; sometimes our differences start the conversation.
Our name, 同, means together. We draw on Nüshu and the bonds women nurtured by sharing stories in their own script. That spirit lives in small, everyday gestures: remembering what someone loves and thinking of them when you find it; offering an honest opinion, or knowing when to listen. It is about trying something new or rediscovering something precious, together. That’s TONG.
TONG publishes long form stories each month at t-o-n-g.co and in a newsletter, about makers worth knowing across Asia and beyond. Through the year, it hosts gatherings where readers meet those makers and see the work in person.
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