VOZ, A Celebration of Indigenous Culture

Fashion Consort News Bytes

Joshua Williams: Hello Sass, who are we featuring this month?

Sass Brown: We're talking about VOZ.

Joshua Williams:Ah, VOZ. They're based in New York City, but do a lot of their work in Chile. Can you tell us a little bit about them?

Sass Brown: Absolutely. They're an amazing brand. They were founded back in 2012 by Jasmine Aarons. And their mission is really to honor and empower artisans, to support them economically and culturally by showcasing their traditions of hand weaving and hand dying. So the collection is built around core items that are handwoven by the Mapuche and hand-dyed; vegetable-dyed through the long tradition of hand weaving and artisanship with cotton and with alpaca from the region.

Joshua Williams: And can you tell us a little about the Mapuche people because that's quite unique, their story, and why she's chosen to work with this particular group?

Sass Brown: For sure. Well then the Mapuche are actually the largest indigenous group in South America. And we never call them cooked by the Spanish. And they have a very long heritage of working with natural fibers, local materials, both animal and vegetable and hand weaving, hand spinning the product. So, they have a very long tradition of it. Like many indigenous groups, there's stories and meanings behind the patterns and the symbolism that's embedded within the things that they weave. It's very graphic visually. Often, it's black on a off-white or a beige base, but it can be and other colors. And if you look at Jasmine's work, she often incorporates all sorts of different shapes. But usually very graphic patterning on a hand-woven base.

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