Carla Fernandez
The future is hand made
Recognized for championing the traditions of textile artisans, Carla Fernández is dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the legacy of the indigenous communities of Mexico. By working with artisans who specialise in centuries-old handmade textile processes, she helps to sustain ancient textile techniques by collaborating side by side with the artisans who produce them. Bringing new meaning to luxury fashion by preserving this rich textile heritage, she simultaneously manages to make it avant-garde.
The Carla Fernandez collection features the work of a wide variety of artists from outside of fashion and textiles. Fernández works across a wide range of techniques, processes and skills, employing hand dying, hand weaving, embroidery, drawn thread work, and much more. The range spans pieces made entirely by hand, to pieces made entirely through industrial processes, with the commercially produced items counterbalancing the artisan heavy pieces and produced in small, mostly women run family workshops in Mexico.
Applying traditional, pre-Hispanic methods in the creation of new designs as an important component of the design development, centres artisanal processes. Fernandez believes that artisanship is too often seen as an embelishment to a design, as opposed to forming the basis of it.
She produces two collections a year, making a commitment to work with the various artisan communities continuously, irrelevant of the season, the material or product. Taking her commitment to the indigenous groups she works with seriously, Carla commits to work with them over the long-term.
“We always work with them, even if they do wool, and its summer”
The collection does not follow the fashion calendar, in part because Mexico effectively functions outside of the mainstream fashion system, but also because of a complete lack of deference to the values of the west. In addition, the majority of the clothing is not sized, as a rejection of an arbitrary ideal of beauty and in celebration of diversity by design.
Mexican indigenous garments are traditionally made from a series of interlocking woven squares and rectangles that are folded and pleated to create volume and form. This textile origami reveals the Mexican cultural heritage that inspires the Carla Fernández brand.
While Carla believes strongly in supporting artisan traditions that have been handed down from mother to daughter for thousands of years, she acknowledges that culture is not static, and sees tradition evolving, giving birth to new and unexpected designs. Nevertheless, she aims to slow the rate of extinction for Mexican handicrafts, so that artisans are able to make a living from their craft.
Carla has a profound respect for the multiplicity of indigenous material culture in Mexico. Her knowledge and appreciation for the textiles and clothing of the indigenous people is unrivalled. She derives enormous pleasure from the incredible diversity of cultural expressions in the country she is from, and takes enormous pride to participate in that rich tapestry of material expression. Fernández is determined to raise the profile and respect for indigenous Mexican craftspeople to the level of highly respected individual artists.
Of vital importance to Fernández, is the telling of Mexico’s hidden stories as a means of understanding the rare beauty of the techniques, the tradition and the culture that produce them. She holds the knowledge these women carry with them in high esteem, seeing their understanding of their craft and the meanings behind it as encyclopaedic. She believes these stories should be honoured as equal to that of luxury western couture and sees Mexico’s couture as located in the mountains, the deserts and the jungles.
Fernández sees luxury as the appreciation of artisanal work, not of anonymous manufacturing. She doesn't believe in a system that values and rewards the work of some more than others, and the supremacy of the idea over the making. She makes fashion to transmit political thought and works to demonstrate that alternative economic and social systems are possible, based on thousand-year-old practices and mutual assistance.
In Fernandez hands, creation is a political statement, with every piece she creates a proclamation of solidarity and respect for Mexico’s indigenous roots, and in opposition to the valorisation of imported goods. According to Fernández, ‘fashion is resistance’, and she truly believes ‘in a future made by hand’.
Fernández sees the wearer as a collector, a participant in sustaining at risk crafts as a legacy, and a custodian of textile history. She hopes her customer know the origin of each piece, understand its symbolic worth and the value of those who made it. Carla sees her designs as a real means of expressing and appreciating the culture it was born from.
When the Carla Fernández NGO Taller Flora sits down with a new artisan group, one of the first things they discuss is pay, as far too often artisans grossly undercharge for their work. In contrast to the mainstream fashion industry, this means that Fernández often finds herself negotiating prices up, rather than down, to ensure the artisans are fairly compensated, with artisans paid three to four times higher than market price (Boisbuchet, no date). By paying artisans for their ideas and not just their labour, Fernández is able to incorporate a diverse range of artisanal traditions not suitable for garment construction.
The Brand has been featured in publications such as Elle, Vogue, i-D, Wallpaper, The New York Times magazine, and the LA Times, amongst others. She has exhibited her work at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; MAD Museum, New York; V&A Museum London; SIFA The O.P.E.N. Festival in Singapore; Museo Jumex in Mexico City; and many more. She has also taught at MIT.
This article pulls on previous publications from the V&A, as well as Domaine de Boisbuchet.
For more information about Carla’s work:
Website: https://en.carlafernandez.com/
Instagram: @carlafernadezmx
Facebook: @Carla Fernandez
