ORIGINAL 2023 Textile Extravaganza: 400+ Mexican Artisans

Coming up in Mexico City from November 15-19, is ORIGINAL. This is a major textile and folk art event that will attract visitors from all over the world. We have organized a long weekend tour to Mexico City that will take us to ORIGINAL every day where we will meet and have private conversations with […]

Up, Up and Away: Traveling to Oaxaca’s Sierra Mixe

Many of you may have heard about the remote mountain village of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec. It’s a two-and-a-half hour drive up the misty mountains beyond Teotitlan del Valle and San Pablo Villa de Mitla, Oaxaca. It is way off the beaten path and tourists rarely visit there. During our recent Oaxaca Summer Mountain Tour, ten […]

The Social Justice of Textiles

Many of us find comfort in the handmade. We know that most handwoven, embroidered, appliqued, and other ornamental elements of cloth are made by women, many of whom live in rural areas that struggle with poverty, lack of access to health care and limited educational facilities. We buy, collect, wear handmade not only for its […]

What do we call them? Huipiles. Not Caftans!

In addition to cultural appropriation, there is a debate raging about what to call the hand-woven, back-strap loomed garments from Mexico that many of us know as huipiles. This is plural. The singular is huipil. (Some huipiles for sale below!) How do you say it? Whee-peel. (or What do you do with a banana? We […]

Beauty and Fashion: Did Carolina Herrera Copy Mexican Designs?

Why should we care? Yes, I agree that Carolina Herrera’s new 2020 resort collection, just unveiled, is beautiful. The collection, the company says, is inspired by Mexican indigenous designs. When you look at the clothes, some of the designs are startling — exact duplicates of textiles made by hand in Mexican villages for centuries. Excusing […]

Appropriating or Appreciating Indigenous Fashion: Playing Dress-Up?

It’s the end of #fashionrevolution week. It begs us to ask the question: #whomademyclothes What do we wear and how does what we wear make us feel … or do we even think about it? Some of us, me included, choose to wear clothing designed and made by indigenous women. These are ancient designs, considered […]

Chiapas Boundaries, Borders and Cloth: Cultural Tourism

Long before the Spanish conquest of the Americas beginning with Mexico in 1521, Maya land was contiguous. Maya peoples spanned what we now know as Chiapas, the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. While spoken dialects differ, the language of cloth tells a similar and familiar story of the universe and creation: corn, […]

Zaachila Zancudos: Dancing on Stilts is Cultural Heritage

The Stilt Dancers of Zaachila are called Zancudos because stilts are long and leggy like mosquito legs. Stilts are called zancos in Spanish. The Zancudos are very proprietary about this dance. They consider it part of their  cultural identity and heritage. After I wrote the blog post about the Lila Downs concert during Guelaguetza season […]

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