Carla Fernandez, Ethically Engaging Indigenous Peoples

In this episode, part of our monthly brand feature series, we learn about Carla Fernandez, a fashion designer based in Mexico City that ethically engages indigenous populations to create avant-garde masterpieces.

Each month on NewsBytes, we feature a fashion brand that approaches business differently and innovatively or operates outside of the main fashion systems and capitals. I'm with Sass Brown, an expert in ethical fashion, sustainability and craftsmanship. She is the former Dean of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Founding Dean at Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation.

Sass, it's so great to have you back to feature another brand. 

Sass Brown: Super happy to be here. Thank you. 

Joshua Williams: So, who are we featuring this month? 

Sass Brown: We're featuring Carla Fernandez. 

Joshua Williams: Ah yes, from Mexico City. Can you tell us a little bit about her? 

Sass Brown: Yeah, she's fantastic in terms of supporting and promoting indigenous traditional craft from across Mexico. She's sort of famous from saying that the haute couture of Mexico is located in the indigenous villages. And one of the beauties of Mexico, and one of the things that Carla feels so strongly about, is the fact that there is such a diversity of material traditions across Mexico, across crafts, across communities that are all unique and special. And so, she really sees it, I think, as her honor to be able to work with, and in partnership with, those communities and those people.

Joshua Williams: Can you tell us a little bit about the business model that she uses? Because as you said, she does work with indigenous craftspeople, but she also has a collection and sells that online. Can you talk a little bit about how she manages and balances those two things. 

Sass Brown: Sure, she actually has a for-profit and not-for-profit. It's not incredibly unusual in this space of socially motivated brands who realized there are certain things that they simply can't achieve effectively in a for-profit world.

So, the for-profit arm of the business, to a degree, offsets the costs of the not-for-profit work. She has a long history of working with indigenous communities by going and spending significant time with them. First and foremost, listening and learning from them about what their traditions are, what the meanings and the codes embedded in those traditions and processes are, and what their actual needs are.

And so she works through the NGO, often as a result of the community reaching out to her, or reaching out to the government for support in finding fiscal means of supporting their community. She will work directly with them to develop the traditions and the crafts that they already have into marketable products for them to market themselves and to sell themselves. En route, she will utilize some of that for her own collection. 

Joshua Williams: Often it's a very delicate balance between working with localized craftspeople and also being marketable to a wider fashion audience. Can you speak a little bit about Carla's design sense and how she does that? 

Sass Brown: Yeah, that's the challenge to many, many brands and designers that work with artistanship, particularly from the developing world. And there's differing opinions on that, how much local tradition is included, or isn't included. What the rights and wrongs are of imposing Western aesthetics, et cetera. So there are lots of conversations around that.

Carla has her artisinal collection. It's exceptionally avant-garde and she works to develop those. Pieces with the artisans themselves. She has a very refined, very art-based aesthetic herself. So, I think just her own presence, her own guidance in that process makes her collection aesthetically pleasing to a very broad audience, including Western customers.

And then she develops these other pieces directly with the indigenous communities for their own use, whether it's local tourist markets and so on. And she doesn't look down on one or the other as being better, because one is a route to the self sustainment of that community. And based on the knowledge that many tourists aren't willing to pay for incredibly work-intensive, artisnal pieces, they want more gift-type pieces. So, she works with both. 

Joshua Williams: Could you describe how a more mainstream brand or perhaps a European or American brand, what they can learn from Carla Fernandez's model? 

Sass Brown: Well effectively, Carla has three different ways of working with her collection. So, it's sort of subdivided into three sets. They're not, sub-brands, it's all the same brand, but there are the full artisnal pieces, from beginning to end. So, it might be a hand grown fiber that's hand-spun, hand-dyed, hand-woven, and then embroidered and made, et cetera. 

Then there are the pieces that involve some part of artisanship. So, it may be from a ready-made fabric that has artisanal embroidery on it; or maybe it's hand woven, but it's in a more contemporary design.

And then there's the industrial pieces that have little to no autism content that are very much more commercial and sold through her standalone boutiques in Mexico. And they are, in part, what finance the artisanship. So, I think it's that balancing an understanding what customers are willing to pay, what your audience is and looking at your finance model to see if one needs to support another.

And that's what she does really well. 

Joshua Williams: So, it's really a portfolio model. It's very interesting. Sass, can you tell us how listeners can learn more about Carla Fernandez and perhaps even find her store online. 

Sass Brown: She has several stores actually in Mexico, should you have the opportunity to visit. But she also has the e-commerce site, Carla Fernandez through Google will bring it up.

She has a really engaged social media platform through Instagram. So, she's very easy to find. 

Joshua Williams: Great. Thank you so much. And we can't wait to have you back next month. 

Sass Brown: Thank you. It was a pleasure.