Fashion Designer Carla Fernández

Episode notes

(Photo: Galerie 19M / Elea Jeanne-Schmitter)

Carla Fernández is a Mexico City based fashion designer who creates new clothes inspired by traditional, indigenous garments. 

Huipils are one such outfit. They are ubiquitous in much of Mexico and Central America.  It’s a sort of blouse. Sometimes as long as a dress. Imagine it flat on a table – it’s long and rectangular, with a hole in the middle. The hole’s for your head, and the sides flap down on your front and back. 

Rebozos are another clothing she designs – they are wrapped around your body, worn almost like a shawl. You can even carry a baby with it. 

These forms are native to Latin America and often central to identity. Often they’re intensely regionally specific – generations of weavers in one small town making one very specific style. Carla grew up surrounded by these forms.

The Museo Franz Meyer in Mexico City recently had her work on display.  To design the clothes for the exhibit, Carla brought a mobile design laboratory to the homes of traditional masters. Weavers who made rebozos and huipils. Embroiderers who make the incredible black-and-white suits that charo horseback riders wear. The people who carve the wooden muddles used to make hot chocolate.

Her work is a revolutionary approach to fashion and is absolutely breathtaking. Carla joins us on Bullseye to talk about her “Manifesto de moda Mexicana,” thrift shopping and so much more. 

Currently, Carla’s work is on display in Paris at la Galerie du 19M, the show is called “Carla Fernández. L’avenir fait main.” She’s also participating in the exhibit of “Inventing Isabella” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. To see more pictures and buy Carla’s clothes click here.