'The sun never sets on a British princess's dress': 9,057 hours of stitching behind the glamour

There is a world governed by the principle of one craftsperson, one object. A Hermès Birkin bag takes a single artisan at least 18 to 24 hours to complete, each seam sewn by hand in the saddle-stitch technique. A Louis Vuitton hard-sided trunk is assembled from individually carved poplar wood and thousands of brass nails hammered in by hand. A Chanel 2.55 bag emerges from hundreds of diamond-quilting passes under a craftsperson's fingertips. And a British royal wedding dress — made for a single blazing moment in history — can absorb thousands of hours of human labor before it is finished.

The mythology of a perfect, seamless object invites admiration. But the physical toil of the person who made it is easily erased. The more dazzling the finished thing, the deeper its makers sink into invisibility.

"The finished dress captures the world's gaze, but the artisans who made it remain hidden from view," said Caroline Guiela Nguyen, director and playwright. "Behind even a single object lies history, class — and above all, a human life."

Nguyen spoke in a written interview Thursday. Her play "Lacrima," which tells the story of the unseen hands behind a glittering world, opens Friday and Saturday at the Opera House of Seongnam Arts Center. The production was a sensation at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg in France.

How is a dress made for the highest seat in a kingdom? The spark for "Lacrima" came from a New York Times article about embroidery artisans in Mumbai.

"I discovered that behind the most beautiful and extraordinary embroidery in European haute couture, there were men participating in this work from thousands of kilometers away from the fashion houses where it was commissioned," Nguyen recalled.

Originally conceived as a women-centered performance exploring themes of violence, secrecy and sewing, "Lacrima" pivoted entirely — toward an embroidery workshop in India.

Throughout her career, Nguyen has used meticulous on-the-ground research to place marginalized figures — those obscured by the shadows of history — at the center of the stage. "Lacrima" continues that body of work. Her encounters with the artisans in Mumbai remain vivid.

"I remember very clearly the moment my heart overflowed. Tears came. Not from sadness — from beauty. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the hands at work, the beauty of the collaboration, and the beauty of a craft that transcends borders and generations."

In France, lacemaking and sewing had been entirely women's work. Mumbai was different. "The workshop was a world made up of 99 percent men," she said. "Male artisans were handling fabric for women's dresses with extraordinary precision and patience. I was moved by the sublimity and beauty of their hands."

"The sun never sets on a British princess's dress." (A line from "Lacrima")

Eight months. 9,057 hours in total. "Lacrima" follows a fictional commission: the making of a wedding dress for a British royal princess. Only after that long, grinding labor is the dress — destined for history — finally complete. But the protagonist on stage is neither the princess nor the celebrated head designer standing in the spotlight.

"There are already countless works that place the princess, the king or the great designer at the center," Nguyen said. "The only concern of this project was to put at the heart of the story those who create extraordinary things but whose names are never known."

The journey begins at a haute couture house on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, passes through a traditional lace workshop in Alençon, France, and stretches more than 7,000 kilometers to an embroidery atelier in Mumbai, India. In spaces where extreme secrecy is demanded and silence is enforced, the workers' bodies slowly break down.

On stage, three spaces — Paris, Alençon and Mumbai — unfold simultaneously through split screens and live video feeds.

"The line that echoes the British Empire's old motto speaks to the system of modern labor organized on a global scale," Nguyen said. "When the day ends in Paris, someone in Mumbai is still working. When Mumbai sleeps, a production line somewhere else in the world has already started moving. The video reveals the invisible network of people, actions and skills that contribute to completing the same dress without ever meeting one another."

At first glance, the play might seem like an exposé of exploitation in the making of a royal dress. But Nguyen pushed back on that reading. "It would actually have been easier to tell this only as a story of labor exploitation — invisible workers making luxury objects for the privileged in harsh conditions," she said. While she is clear-eyed about the reality of exploitative labor, she also found beauty in the process: the grace of skilled hands, the pride of the craftsperson.

"In Alençon and Mumbai, I met a small number of specialists with remarkably refined and beautiful hand skills. I don't want to say, 'Look at these poor people working to make things for the rich.' That would be to diminish them in another way — and ultimately to strip them of their power."

Contradiction is the engine that drives "Lacrima." "The core of this work is the paradox of deeply loving your craft while suffering, in the very act of practicing it, under an unjust labor system and the logic of capital," Nguyen said.

When working with the stories of real people, Nguyen thinks carefully about theatrical ethics. "During the creative process, I meet the people directly and try to get close to their lives and realities," she said. "But because this is not a documentary, those encounters ultimately pass through fictionalization." The principle she holds to each time: "Never reduce a person to the story they tell."

"The woman worker in the atelier is not simply a victim of global capitalism, and the embroidery artisan is not merely someone enduring poor working conditions. They have a profession, knowledge, pride, family and desires. My theatrical ethics means not deciding in advance what each person symbolizes."

"All the time it took to reach you." (A line from "Saigon")

Born to a Vietnamese mother and an Algerian-French father, Nguyen has drawn on her own identity and private memories to weave collective narratives on stage.

Her work spans "Saigon" (2017), which alternates between 1956 Saigon and a 1996 Paris restaurant to examine the lingering wounds of colonialism and the grief of diaspora; "Fraternity, a Fantasy" (2021), which explores solidarity and loss among those left behind after a mass disappearance; and "An Archive of Childhood" (2022), which traces the memories of international adoptees and the contradictions of family as an institution. Across all of them, her stage has consistently crossed borders and languages to weave together the voices of the diaspora and the overlooked.

Particularly through her early landmark work "Saigon," she said she came to realize that "my inner narrative is entangled with the vast currents of colonial history and migration." As a director, she names Nobel Prize-winning French author Annie Ernaux as the person who most shaped her creative inspiration and perspective.

"Ernaux's writing helped me understand that a story I thought was purely personal could contain a vast social and historical world I had not yet seen," Nguyen said. "The private is never only private — within it lies an era, a social class, relations of power and collective memory."

Since "Saigon," Nguyen has built a body of work centered on the invisible. As artistic director of the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, she is working to transform the institution into a public space for the many, not the few.

"Today, artists come from many different places — from the four corners of our time," she said. "We no longer see only white male directors on stage. We can now see more women, people of color, transgender people. Through them, more stories, more experiences and more diverse ways of seeing the world have become possible on our stages."

For a long time, "Lacrima" — the Latin word for "tear" — carried the subtitle "a contemporary history of tears." Nguyen wanted to document what causes people pain in the present moment. To Korean audiences about to encounter the breathless 175-minute production, she offered a quiet but weighty wish.

"Korea occupies a very particular place in the currents of contemporary fashion, image, objects and culture. So I am deeply curious what Korean audiences will discover in this story. But above all, I hope they feel that behind the vast global economic system and the objects we consume, there is always a human face — and that they find a new attention to the beauty of the actions of those we have not yet seen."