Fashion for the Future

Collaborations of fashion designers with indigenous and with inner-city artisans produce wearable art that can command high prices and can help to sustain poor communities. Engaging local styles and skills also preserves and enhances traditional arts while encouraging artisans to explore new possibilities through personal creativity. Fashion as a communicative system, a vehicle for development, and subject for photographic art will complement our program’s focus on the partnership between new vogues and traditional aesthetic values.

Stitching Communities: Lecture and Workshop by Carla Fernandez, founder of Flora, a Fashion Design Initiative in Collaboration with Indigenous Artisans.

November 28th and 29th, 2007

Fashion designer Carla Fernandez gave a lecture describing her work with Flora. After years of researching traditional Mexican garments, Carla Fernandez noticed their unique and exclusive use of square and rectangle patterning. Where this departure from Western tailoring might mean that indigenous artisans (who depend on their creations for their livelihood) are stuck with seemingly imperfect and unsellable garments, Carla saw a unique opportunity for artistic and community development. Flora is a fashion label that works as a mobile workshop and fashion laboratory, collaborating with indigenous communities and women co-ops to make full use of traditional handmade textiles, patterning and sewing techniques to create contemporary designs of geometric beauty and world-market appeal. In the process, Flora aids to preserve ancient textile practices; promotes the artistic and economic development of indigenous artisans and their communities; fosters fair trade and environmentally responsible practices in the fashion industry; and educates the public at large about the past and future of Mexican textile arts and fashion design. Carla’s talk was followed by a two-hour workshop. During the first hour, participants learned to use paper, scissors and tape to make paper models based on the square and rectangle patterning of indigenous artisans. During the second hour, participants “sewed” their designs using fabric and staples or pins. The conclusion was a cat walk with participants wearing/carrying their designs.