Carla Fernández: Tradition is not Static

For over three thousand years, those who have sewed and embroidered have transmitted this important expertise from mother to daughter. If the techniques have survived, it is precisely because they are a form of expression. They are a simultaneous manifestation of the subjective and the collective. Despite everything, tradition is not suspended in time. In small towns and artisan communities all across Mexico, styles change and evolve. Creativity is not dormant; on the contrary, it is very much awake and gives way to new and unexpected designs.
- Excerpt from Manifiesto de la Moda en Resistencia by Carla Fernández.

Fashion designer Carla Fernández, based in Mexico City, works creatively with over 187 artisans from sixteen states in Mexico. Her fashion house advocates for textiles as the fabric of civilization. Fernández explores the squares and rectangles of traditional Mexican patterning for the loom and sustains long-standing creative partnerships with artisans, who preserve the rich cultural heritage of Mexico’s indigenous communities. She believes that tradition is always changing and developing and says it “moves the way the earth does — slowly and beautifully.”

Humans express themselves through clothing, for which playfulness and flexibility are key ingredients. In this image, taken during a fashion shoot in the Little Salon at the Museum, a mask that became a bag plays at being a mask again. The iconic Tecuán or Jaguar mask, held by the model, originates in the town of San Francisco Ozomatlán in the southwestern state of Guerrero, and the artisans Santos and Claudio Nájera have used the same centuries-old, hand-painted mask-making technique to create a handbag line with Fernández.