Blog

I’ve been thinking so much about design education recently! And, unfortunately, not for the best reasons. My university’s end of term a few weeks ago was also my first in-person experience of what a “finals week” looks like for design students and I must confess that I emerged almost traumatized from it.

Today I bring some initial referents that may help us identify some of the aesthetic expressions native to Latin America, well beyond the tropical auto-exotization allowed by the global spread of the so-called “Caribbean chic” style.

We need to constantly think and rethink Latin American and Latinx fashion in order to strengthen the diverse expressions of fashion in Abya Yala. [1] I believe that a first step towards that aim is to redefine fashion from our local ideas and histories and from a deep knowledge of the diversity of cultures that have inhabited this territory since before the European invasion.

How do we even begin to think about fashion in Latin America, when the word itself is so often detached from the region? How do we think about it, when we’re used to believing that fashion is superficial, vain, pretty—but never substantial? How do we do it in our own terms, when most narratives, ideas, and histories circle around the same names —at times extremely difficult for us to pronounce— of a few, most of them foreign and quite distant from our local realities?