"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack" Chapter 7
Milan's Brera district smelled of aged leather and fresh bread when Su Yao stepped into the textile union's warehouse. Sunlight slanted through high windows, gilding dust motes that danced above worktables cluttered with silk spools and wooden looms. Fifty artisans looked up as she entered—their faces ranging from skepticism to outright disdain. These were the guardians of Italian craftsmanship, weavers whose families had supplied fabrics to Versace and Armani for generations.
"Another foreigner trying to reinvent the wheel," muttered Giovanni, a silver-bearded master weaver whose calloused hands had shaped silk for forty years. He tapped a weathered thimble against his workbench, its surface carved with the dates of his most famous commissions: 1992 for Valentino, 2005 for Prada. "Metal threads? Seaweed? This isn't innovation. It's sacrilege."
Before Su Yao could respond, a woman's voice cut through the tension. "Sacrilege is watching our rivers turn toxic from dye runoff, Giovanni." Elena Rossi stood at the back of the room, her black hair streaked with indigo—a bold choice for someone who'd trained under Miuccia Prada. In her hands was a sketchbook filled with radical designs: a coat woven from recycled fishing nets, a dress stitched with photovoltaic threads that glowed in darkness. "I've been trying to get the union to adopt sustainable methods for years. Maybe a fresh perspective is exactly what we need."
Su Yao recognized her name from fashion journals—Elena had quit a prestigious design job last year to launch an eco-conscious atelier in Milan's Chinatown. Their eyes met, and Su Yao saw a kindred spirit: someone who believed tradition shouldn't be a cage.
Over the next three days, the warehouse became a battlefield of ideas. Giovanni refused to touch the bamboo loom Su Yao had brought from Shanghai, declaring it "fit for children, not craftsmen." Elena, however, embraced it, spending hours experimenting with ways to integrate Italian bobbin lace techniques into the seaweed-metal fabric. "Look," she said on the third morning, holding up a swatch where delicate floral patterns floated like ghosts between metallic threads. "Your technology, our heritage—they speak the same language."
The breakthrough came unexpectedly. Maria, an 82-year-old weaver with arthritis in her hands, had been struggling with the aluminum threads until Elena had a revelation. "What if we treat them like gold?" she suggested, recalling 17th-century Florentine tapestry techniques. They coated the metal fibers in beeswax from Maria's family farm, and suddenly the threads glided through the loom, leaving a honeyed sheen that made the fabric look woven from sunlight.
Giovanni grumbled but couldn't hide his fascination. One evening, Su Yao found him alone in the warehouse, Secretly, I used my fingers to caress Elena's lace metal accessories.. "My father wove for the Vatican," he said, his voice gruff. "Gold threads, silk from China—he always said the best fabrics tell two stories. This…" he nodded at the swatch, "it tells a hundred."
By week's end, collaboration had replaced conflict. Giovanni taught Su Yao to "listen" to the loom, adjusting tension based on the weather—"Like tuning a Stradivarius," he said. Elena merged Su Yao's humidity-reactive fibers with traditional macramé knots, creating a shawl that rippled like water when touched. Maria, her hands steadier now, invented a new stitch that locked the metal threads in place, preventing fraying.
On the final day, they unveiled their masterpiece: a cape woven from 70% recycled aluminum and 30% seaweed fiber, lined with hand-dyed silk from Elena's Chinatown workshop. When Giovanni draped it over a mannequin, the fabric shifted color in the changing light—from the blue of the Mediterranean to the gold of a Tuscan sunset. "It's… alive," Maria whispered, tears in her eyes.
That night, Marco hosted a celebration at his family's trattoria, where the walls were hung with photos of weavers from the 1950s. Elena slid a glass of Chianti toward Su Yao, her smile bright. "Kering called. They want us to co-design the Milan Fashion Week collection—you, me, the union. A fusion line: East meets West, past meets future."
Su Yao thought of the system's latest prompt, glowing softly in her mind: "Cross-cultural collaboration achieved. Unlocked: Renaissance textile archives, access to Elena's sustainable dye formulas, global artisanal network." But more than any reward, she cherished the way Giovanni had clapped her shoulder earlier, gruffly calling her "figlia mia"—my daughter.
As the party spilled into the street, Su Yao stood under a string of fairy lights, watching Elena and Maria laugh over a spool of thread. The cape, displayed in the trattoria window, caught the moonlight, its metal threads singing like wind chimes. Somewhere, a violin played, and for a moment, it felt like the fabric itself was humming—a harmony of Chinese seaweed, Italian beeswax, and the unspoken language of hands that create.
The system's new task appeared: "Prepare 100 meters of collaborative fabric for Milan Fashion Week. Success will secure global production partnerships. Deadline: 21 days." Su Yao smiled, tucking her notebook under her arm. With this team, she thought, they could weave a revolution.