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Indigenous Bolivian dresses go global
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CENTURIES ago, Spanish colonizers forced their Bolivian servants to wear the puffy skirts that have come to symbolize the country’s “cholitas,” or indigenous women.
Today, one local designer is turning the tables with plans to export high-end cholita fashion — blossoming skirts, bowler hats and intricately woven shawls — to Madrid, Paris and beyond.
Fresh off her first show at New York Fashion Week, Eliana Paco, a 34-year-old indigenous Aymara designer, is ready to bring her take on a once-stigmatized style to the world.
“Cholitas” — a diminutive of “chola,” a sometimes derogatory world for a woman from Bolivia’s indigenous majority — were once seen here as a silent underclass of maids and manual laborers.
But in a changing Bolivia currently governed by its first indigenous president, Evo Morales, Paco said she sees the traditional women’s costume as a symbol of “identity and pride.”
She has already made her mark on the local fashion scene, where TV presenters and cabinet ministers now regularly sport the indigenous look, updated and embellished.
Her mission now is to “use that sophisticated touch to cross borders,” she said.
She took a big step in September in New York, where she made headlines with her latest collection, “Pachamama” (Mother Earth, in the Quechua language).
“It’s the first time a chola women’s suit has arrived on the runway. There were 12 international models wearing our designs,” she said.
“I love cholita clothing. It reminds me a lot of Yves Saint Laurent and the best era of Armani, when he used bowler hats,” said Spanish designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada.
“I would love to take (Paco’s designs) to Madrid, to Paris,” she said in Lima, Peru, where the designer was presenting her own collection.
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