One of the most recent fashion stories related to legal matters and copyright law is about designer Carolina Herrera being accused of cultural appropriation by, well, the Mexico government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Some of the designs in Herrera's Resort 2020 collection seem indeed to move from traditional motifs: the bright and bold multi-coloured dresses evoke the combinations of colours of the traditional sarape shawls of Saltillo, in Coahuila state; black dresses with floral elements call to mind embroideries from the region of the isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca (Frida Kahlo adopted this style from the local women) and a white dress with motifs of bright animals and flowers conjures up memories of embroideries from the culture of the Tenango de Doria community in Hidalgo state.
The Mexican culture minister, Alejandra Frausto, wrote to the Venezuelan fashion designer Carolina Herrera and her Creative Director Wes Gordon asking for a public explanation for the use of the indigenous Mexican designs in the Resort 2020 collection and wondering if there will be a percentage out of the sales for the communities that indirectly provided this inspiration.
And while Herrera and Gordon maybe had good intentions as they wanted to pay homage to the richness of Mexican culture and crafts, the collection has now reignited a debate that has been going for a while in the Mexican government about a possible law to tackle the plagiarism that different indigenous peoples and communities have suffered.
According to Frausto there is an issue to bring to the UN's sustainable development agenda - promoting inclusion and making visible those who are invisible.
Now, this story is about a womenswear collection, but Mexico found its way also in a recent menswear show. On Craig Green's S/S 20 runway at London Men's Fashion Week there were not just his trademark urban warriors in geometrical parkas, tabard-like tops and floating ribbons, but also bright and bold ensembles in a light nylon fabric.
The latter seemed very original considering the cut-out motifs of flowers or doves that decorated them, but your opinion kind of changed when you learnt that they were inspired by something that Green saw in Mexico - the papel picado flags.
These multi-coloured hand-cut paper banners that probably go back to when the Aztec people chiseled spirit figures into mulberry and fig tree bark, feature designs of birds, hearts, flowers, skeletons and other assorted symbols depending from the celebrations they represent (Independence Day, Christmas, Easter, the Day of the Dead, but also christenings, quinceañeras and weddings).
Specific patterns of papel picados hold significant meaning and influence: wedding papel picados feature doves, hearts, churches, and wedding cakes, while a person in need of help may ask a shaman to cut a figure into a papel picado that will symbolically assist them in their needs.
San Salvador Huixcolotla, a municipality in the Mexican state of Puebla, is considered the birthplace of papel picado and here there is a large community of craftsmen who produce high-quality papel picados.
The Ministry of Tourism and Culture in Mexico officially recognizes and supports the art of papel picado and in 1998, the governor of the state of Puebla decreed that the style of papel picado produced in San Salvador Huixcolota is part of the Cultural Heritage of the State of Puebla (Patrimonio Cultural del Estado de Puebla).
The bright papel picado inspired garments represented the main part of the collection, but Green worked better when his references weren't so literal and when he combined papel picados with diagrams about folding shirts that the designer saw on a Marie Kondo video and transferred them on his trademark silhouettes. So in a way, the collection would have maybe worked better if he had avoided too many literal references to the traditional flags (mind you, there were also suits in which Green recreated the male human form that vaguely called to mind more iconic designs by Issey Miyake or Jean Paul Gaultier View this photo so he didn't just borrow from traditions...).
There were no complaints yet from the Mexican government about the papel picado reference in this collection (and, mind you, a couple of dresses in Herrera's Resort Collection also seemed to evoke the cut-out tissue paper of papel picados and their motifs, so maybe the Mexican government didn't look at all the images...). But the use of Mexican references in fashion is not new: in 2015 Isabel Marant included in her S/S 2015 Étoile collection a blouse that seemed entirely lifted from the 600-year-old traditional dress of the indigenous Mixe community living in the village of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, Oaxaca, southern Mexico. The Virgin of Guadalupe, one of Mexico's most pupular religious and cultural symbols, has also become rather popular in fashion.
In November 2018 the Mexican government started working on a law to protect the culture and identity of the indigenous populations, hoping to stop designers from stealing images. Until they manage to establish copyright laws that protect these traditional motifs and techniques, though, the Mexican government may not have grounds for any lawsuit. The traditional motifs employed indeed by Herrera for example are not formally copyrighted, and do not fall under the property of any specific named individual, but they are associated with particular communities. Besides, the idea of establishing laws to legally bind traditions and lock them away from designers seems a bit too much considering that some designers built their career on transnational styles and multi-cultural assimilations and combinations of garments (think about Jean Paul Gaultier).
So what's the solution to all this? Well, while it is important to remember that borrowing from specific traditions may end up offending somebody (consider the symbolism behind some of these traditional embroideries that often tell the story of the community that generated them…), in most cases the communities would only like to be asked permissions to use certain motifs and there are ways to avoid offending traditions or being accused of stealing and appropriating.
One solution is avoiding the misuse of such traditional motifs by collaborating with local artisans as other designers have done in the last few years (somehow you feel that Green would have worked better if he had collaborated with papel picado artisans such as Carmen Lomas Garza and Margaret Sosa, maybe developing with them his own symbolic papel picados....), or learning traditional techniques to radically reinvent them. Another way to pay homage to a culture without offending it is choosing less literal and more subtle references. An example comes from Bonnie Cashin: in the '60s she lined her black leather bags for Coach with a colourful fabric that represented a homage to Mexico rather than an appropriation, adding in this way a playful twist to a bag that from the outside would have looked rather formal.
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