I wanna feel something, let's go to Mexico

Alfonso Cuarón's erotic and bittersweet road film about friendship, gender and sex, 'Y tu mamá también', was what first drew me to the dusty sun-kissed roads of Oaxaca state. My instinctive beckoning was proven correct when I was seduced by the generous amount of coriander on everything, the abundance of textile history, the most delicious sea and the sweetest mangoes I've ever eaten. The way light and water are portrayed in the film feel like a big deep golden exhalation, like falling off the hamster wheel into warm sand. On my Mexican adventure, I wanted the full sensory experience, the tart joy of tequila and lime and the freedom of wearing as little as possible, all the time. It felt nourishing for nudity to not be sexualised but instead celebrated. It's funny, how much I love clothes but how little I like wearing them. That's how I want my clothes to feel, hot, earthy, and dramatic - with just the right amount of disclosure. Mexico is warm in nature and nurture, it has a thousand variations of bread all with different names, and countless different traditional dresses all with unique characteristics, in essence: women, clothes, food and nature are all cut from the same cloth. The walls in some villages I visited were all painted different colours and had little notes written on them, the general sentiment being to make love not war. Someone I met in the notoriously liberated beach town Zipolite let me paint a nude lady on a wall, just because. Most mornings, I was woken by the offering of tamales and mango, with boomboxes blasting early 2000s songs I played on my pink iPod 15 years ago. It was the perfect alarm, there's no going back to sleep after hearing Avril Lavigne's electric guitar at 6.30am. 

After feeling myself morph into a mermaid, I spent some time on dry land and went to Oaxaca City and some villages close to it such as San Antonino, Mitla, Teotitlan del Valle and Ocotlan. All these places are devoted to keeping traditional crafts alive, through weaving, embroidery, natural dyes, and a lot of innovative creation from age old techniques. A weaver I met in Teotitlan del Valle told me 'In Oaxaca, our hands are the most hard working machines', and that is the truth. The creation and preservation of textiles, as well as cooking and growing whole foods are all done by hand, in collaboration with the earth instead of through its exploitation. It was a magical and confronting experience to witness the process of cotton coming from the bud then being spun into yarn then being woven into cloth then being dyed with plants and insects. Quality and respect take time. In Teotitlan, I learnt how to dye cotton with cochinilla, indigo and pomegranate that was woven by Miguel who co-runs a weaving and dying studio in Teotitlan with his wife. 

I learnt an obscene amount of life lessons in those 7 whirlwind weeks in Mexico. Being a typically overambitious Sagittarius and a creative-borderline-chaotic woman running a business, my blind optimism and perhaps the London girl in me told me I could make an entire sample collection in a month. I was given a much-needed reality check when I realised how that is simply not possible. It was important for me to learn through experience to take things slowly. I get quite obsessed with things and then do them continuously until I hate them, be it listening to the same album on repeat, eating the same tacos every day, compulsively searching vintage stores thinking I can FINALLY stop looking because I found the perfect jeans. Yes, jeans, not man, let’s be realistic. Usually being realistic doesn't bode well with me and my over-ambition - and I learnt through experience that even making one dress from scratch takes so many hands. From the spinning of the cotton yarn to the process of naturally dying of the fabric, to the cutting and sewing of the garment to the embellishments, it took not just a village, but many villages to bring one garment from idea form into reality. The process included much travel, as well as working and communicating and putting trust into many different people. I loved every second of it, not for the final product necessarily but for the process of collaborative creation and the many mistakes I learnt from, and I soon learnt that this is where growth lies.

I have always thought convenience to be quite unsexy, and the antithesis of passion, but I'm glad that this experience taught me to value ease and making the best out of what I do have. Time and time again life keeps showing me that I need to slow down and trust the process, so I decided to breathe life back into vintage fabrics with history and stories already woven into them, and simply give them some fairy dust and love. Upholding cultural heritages through the continuing of traditional craftsmanship, and moving away from trend based fast fashion is the goal, and while building relationships like the one I have established in Morocco is beautiful, it also takes an immense amount of time and resources. The best thing to come out of any kind of experience, but especially while exploring foreign lands, is the organic-ness from which relationships are built. I want to introduce our new summer collection to you by telling you about its very rich past. The whole collection was inspired by and designed in and around Oaxaca, and made from vintage huipiles. Fashion is, or at least should be, a business built on humans and stories more than anything, and clothes are physical relics of places, memories, the entire history of a group of people. Learning about huipiles from a woman called Guadalupe, who has the most gorgeous collection of textiles from Guatemala and Mexico, was so special. 

A huipil is a traditional Mexican and Guatemalan dress, originally worn as an expression of cultural identity by Mayan people. There are different styles according to different regions, and the ones I am working with are deconstructed huipiles from Isthmus de Tehuantepec and Guatemala. The lace is from the skirts of big Tehuana dresses, made famous by Frida Kahlo. Tehuana dresses are strong emblems of matriarchal Zapotec culture from Oaxaca, and Frida wore these dresses as an ongoing political statement, especially during the Mexican Revolution. 

     Frida Kahlo in front of her painting 'Self portrait as a Tehuana'

Guadalupe had the most incredible collection of traditional dresses from all corners of the country. The difference in design is relative to the varying climates and groups of indigenous people to whom the land belongs. Way back before the Spanish invasion of Mexico, clothes were material culture and forms of communication within indigenous communities. To this day, in villages like San Antonino and Ocotlan, the embroidery speaks to the landscape of the region: the flowers are small and sporadic, to represent the campesino flowers of the nearby Sierra Norte. Women’s infallible connection to landscapes, family and creating is the best thing in life, we are made to live in tune with nature. In an ideal world, how incredible would it be if women could be naked in forests and beaches and create real magic together. And instagram wouldn't exist. 

 Teresa, her daughter, and her daughter in law who are all embroidery artists

However, the world isn’t ideal, and it is important to stay connected to reality. She says, with breath that is bated. Like many other things, the introduction of industrial fabrics has meant that any kind of hand made and artisanal craftsmanship is being demolished by the 'faster = better' mindset. People have forgotten that doing things with your hands is simply hot. However, as much as I want to devote a big portion of my life to keeping traditional craftsmanship alive through art, I am not a young woman in Mexico experiencing the many archaic injustices, our realities are far apart even if the end goals are the same. When speaking to an artisan I became friends with in Ocotlan, she told me that it saddens her that her daughters don't want to continue their family tradition of embroidery and that they do not believe in Catholicism. One of her daughters who is 20 years old confided in me about various things from her dating life to her career aspirations, she had views that her family wouldn't agree with. She wanted to work in the military to try and fight against sex and drug trafficking because that is what ultimately matters to her and for her future. When she was described by her mother, she just said 'ella es diferente'. She wanted to do something which directly contributed to systemic change in Mexico, and embroidery didn't feel like a priority, which was totally understandable. We are all living in such different realities, which obviously lends itself to tackling social issues through different means and timelines. Teresa, the 92 year old grandmother of the family, had spent her whole life sewing and embroidering, and she taught me how to properly honour a shot of mezcal after a hearty lunch. She was evidently the matriarch, powerful by nature. Their family called me, saying she has passed away. I will always remember Teresa, and I hope to be as much of a badass aged 92. 

Teresa and her daughter in law 

One of my favourite things, and something I never get bored of, is seeing the different perspectives and ideas my grandma, mother and I have on life, love, the ever changing but oh so eternal "definitions" of womanhood. It was so interesting to witness the same thing, as an outsider, to a family in a Mexican village who let me into their lives. Everything is cyclical and a double-edged sword, and it’s impossible to go back in time. Maybe it happens generationally, my fascination with the way things used to be done could just be a response to the overwhelm felt by the corporate rat race and my rejection of such a life. But I do believe many truths should and can exist at once, that is the true mark of intelligence, and something I wish my younger self could understand. I just want to continue to learn more about women and how they used to create and what it meant to them before everything became synthetic, machine made, and wiped of culture and tradition. I want to go back to when clothes had personality, stories and intentions, rather than blind trend following and plastic fibres. I believe that women hold so many qualities that are built for leading the world in the way it should be led. The world just needs to catch up. Anyway, before getting carried away with a spiel of despair on modern life, I hope you love my new summer silhouettes. Inspired by our early 2000s princesses, Britney, Christina and Paris, as well as the colours and free exuberance of Mexican tropics, they mix worlds together, letting concepts and ideas not only co-exist but also thrive. Stay flirty, fun, and honest - it's good for the soul. 

With love always,