CONTENTS

INDULGE textiles to buy, collect or simply admire 10 HOW TO Make paper flowers: The Paper Florist by Suzi McLaughlin 77 SHOP TALK We go shopping at Onora Casa by Marcella Echavarria 96 SWATCH Favourite Fabric: No49 Ojo de Dios by Sarah Jane Downing, illustrated by Nina Fuga GLOBAL textiles from around the world 12 MOUNTAIN MAMA The Huichol of central Mexico photographs by Anne Menke. 48 RED THREAD Lena Bergner from the Bauhaus to Mexico by Viridiana Zavala Rivera 62 BAG OF TRICKS Angela Damman spins green gold in Yucatán by Laura Gray 78 A NATION’S SHOPKEEPER Remigio Mestas Revilla by Marcella Echavarria ANECDOTE textiles that touch our lives 24 FAMILY TIES The importance of the Great Grandmother in Oaxaca photographs by Eric Mindling 28 THE COLOUR PURPLE Tixinda, the last sea snail purple by Keith Recker, photography by Marcella Echaverria, Thomas Eyck, and Eric Mindling. 32 THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD Madda Studio honouring tradition through minimal design by Marta Turok 40 OLD HABITS Joanne Arnett is the best dressed nun in the room, illustration by Paula Sanz Caballero 58 ON THE FRINGE Tassels and fringes by Sarah Jane Downing 68 WOVEN IDENTITY Finding meaning in the textiles of Chiapas by Norma Schafer. ATTIRE critical reporting of fashion trends 20 GROUND RULES Casilda Mut’s traditional designs take flight by Kate Cavendish, photographs by Ana Hop 36 WOMEN OF THE CLOTH The Mexican Rebozo by Lydia Caston 39 NI EN MORE Wear the fight by Berenice Hernandez photographs by Almendra Yanez 52 PUTTING ON A ZOOT SUIT A case of race and class in the first truly american suit by Clarissa M. Esguerra 72 MEXICAN MAGIC Textiles in Mexico by Marcella Echavarria INDUSTRY from craft to commerce 42 DESIGNING MODERN MEXICO Clara Porset, Anni Albers and Cynthia Sargent by Ana Elena Mallet 64 WITHOUT CORN THERE IS NO COUNTRY Fernando Laposse’s act of resistance by Marcella Echavarria

MOUNTAIN MAMA The Huichol of Central Mexico

GROUND RULES Casilda Mut’s traditional designs take flight

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Claire Coello’s designs for Casilda Mut are grounded in indigenous traditions, and that enables them to soar. This Mexican fashion house creates simple, feminine clothes that follow what Coello calls ‘primitive’ lines, which showcase the fabrics and traditional embroideries she loves. She is drawn to textiles with a thick, substantial feel natural fibres like imported linens and cottons that lend themselves to an enticingly minimalist silhouette. For summer 2019 she’s selected a black, natural, white and navy palette, all of which feature the weave of the textile as a design element. She complements this cloth with intricate, handembroidered motifs in vibrant colours. Although Coello honed her technical skills at the Lanspiac Fashion Institute in Guadalajara, coming home to Chiapas gave her designs meaning. She engages women artisans of the highlands of Chiapas to realise her vision, promoting both their creative and social development. As she puts it, the women ‘narrate through seams and stitches,’ telling ‘stories of empowerment’ through their work. The relationship between maker, silhouette, textile and embroidery feels organic: a navy blue cross-over top with artfully frayed edges forms a flattering canvas for white ‘flat stitches’, a technique that takes some 14 hours to complete. There isalso a version in cream, with dark embroidery, its 90-degree angles echoing the precise edges of the cross-over style, softened by the long side ties.

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THE COLOUR PURPLE Tixinda, The Last Sea Snail Purple

At low tide, a few shirtless Mixtec men walk along the humid Pacific coast of Oaxaca looking for sea snails. Dodging the waves, navigating wet rocks with bare feet, they look for sea snails known as tixinda to the Mixtec. After prying one off the rocks by hand or with a mango-wood stick, they press just the right part of the snail’s ‘foot’ to encourage it to secrete a milky liquid. Left to their own devices, the snails deploy this liquid as a neurotoxin that paralyses the smaller shellfish they consume. To these seekers of tixinda, however, the secretion is a treasured and ancient dyestuff, and they apply it directly onto a skein of cotton yarn looped around a forearm. Once ‘milked’, the snail is gently returned, unharmed, to its habitat to live another day. The cove where it lives will be visited only once per lunar cycle by the dyers, to give the snails time to recover. Dyeing occurs only from October to May so as not to interfere with the snails’ breeding season. At first, the tixinda liquid stains the yarn a bruisy greenish colour, but as the liquid oxidises, it turns first blue, and then a brilliant, colourfast reddish purple. ‘This is one of the most ancient dyeing methods still in practice today,’ comments author, photographer and tour organiser Eric Mindling. ‘Mixtecs have lived on and near this coast for at least 1500 years, and they revere this practice as integral to their heritage as a people. For about three hours a day, as long as the water level is low enough, a dyer might encounter about 400 snails -

enough to dye a single 250-gram skein. That’s 400 snails, lifted, milked, and settled carefully back onto the rocks one at a time over a few hours.’ The leader of these Mixtec dyers, Habacuc Avendaño, has made purple yarns this way for over 60 years. One skein per low tide, however, would have been a meager yield back in the 1950s and 60s, when he learned his craft. ‘When I was little, there were many more snails back then, and larger ones,’ he says. ‘We would dye one costal of yarn [about 40 skeins] during two weeks at the coast. Sometimes we would double- and triple-dye them to get very dark shades of purple.’ Across the entire 2017 harvest season, his group was able to colour a mere 15 skeins of single-dyed purple yarn. Patrice Perillie, founder of non-profit group Mexican Dreamweavers which supports the Mixtec dyers and weavers of Habacuc’s community of Pinotepa de Don Luis, says with

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dismay, ‘We’re heading rapidly towards the disappearance of this art. Snails large enough to produce dyestuff are fewer and fewer. The problem is the pressure put on the snail population by more and more people living here and visiting here. Local fishermen gather the snails, as well as little lapas (a type of limpet), their favorite prey, and cut them up for ceviche.’ The few skeins Habacuc’s group can currently dye go directly to the women of a 60-member weaving cooperative in Pinotepa de Don Luis. Habacuc’s wife, Margarida (known as Teresita), is one of them. As an expert backstrap loom weaver, Teresita requires about three months to weave her community’s traditional long wrap skirt, the posahaunco, which features bands of tixinda purple, cochineal red, and indigo blue. Ancient motifs, rich with meaning to their Mixtec creators, bring certain of these bands vividly alive. In Pinotepa there is still immense prestige associated with making and wearing posahuancos.

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‘These clothes represent the way things were always done, up to just a decade or two ago,’ says Eric. ‘Since less than 40 of these amazing garments can be made a year now - and maybe less than that there is rarity and value to each and every one of them.’ To Habacuc and Teresita, this sense of value goes beyond colour and textile, and deep into Mixtec culture. The snail and the purple colour it helps them make are considered sacred. The

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