Mexican fashion takes its place among elite

Mexican fashion has recently seen a surge in international sales, and designs blending the traditional and unique styles of the country with more modern cuts can be seen on models strutting down the catwalk in cities across the globe.
Mexican designers say their fashion is trendsetting in cities like New York and Paris, and fashion week initiatives within Mexico are showing off the edgier styles that are gaining acceptance among consumers.
Paola Quintero, a fashion coordinator at Elle Mexico, told Fusion that the mindset around ‘Made in Mexico’ clothing is changing. Mexicans who used to only buy local threads as “a form of charity to support local brands” are now buying the clothes that are giving designers at places like Saks Fifth Avenue and luxury department stores a run for their money.
Thanks to brands like Yakampot, Cihua, Lorena Saravia and Man Candy, “Mexicans are showing the world that they too possess the so-called avant garde of Europeans,” Quintero told Fusion.
This surge comes at a time where international designers have been under fire for borrowing pretty liberally from traditional Mexican designs. Paris-based designer, Isabel Marant, features a dress in her new Etoil collection that is identical to traditional huipil clothing worn by Mixes, an indigenous group in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
While many designers in the past have claimed it’s not cultural appropriation, but rather “appreciation,” the huipil narrative is completely erased from the dress, which goes for $290, prompting artisans and residents from the community tospeak out about the copying of the design and the erasure of its origins.
The new wave of Mexican fashion is attempting to bring the traditional designs into the global perspective by collaborating instead of appropriating. Mexican designer Ricardo Seco’s work that inforporates indigenous designs into New Balance shoes has been featured in exhibitions like “Global Fashion Capitals” at The Museum at FIT of New York City, and Carla Fernandez’s clothing draws inspiration from traditional charro outfits.
Seco also runs an initiative called “I am Mexico,” which is looking to promote Mexico’s rising creative industries as a way to counter the preference for everything foreign.
“Designers like Seco and Fernandez are doing a good job of melding the city’s tension between modernity and tradition into their creations,” Ariele Elia, the exhibit’s curator, told Fusion.