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from the V&A's collection and some distinctive examples worn by Frida Kahlo.
When Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera in 1929, she wore floor-length skirts and a
fringed rebozo (rectangular shawl). She would later acquire a range of indigenous
clothing from several places in Mexico and Guatemala. Kahlo's fondness for
indigenous clothing reflected her admiration for artisan traditions, and her
commitment to her native Mexico, where distinctive styles of dress in Oaxaca and
other regions are intimately linked with cultural identity.
In most indigenous communities in Mexico, textile skills centre on the creation of
clothing. Skilled weavers create cloth of great beauty and complexity using the native
backstrap loom. Although the apparatus is simple, with no rigid framework, it is
extremely versatile. Traditional garments are not tailored in the European manner:
instead they are assembled from squares or rectangles of cloth. Texture and patterning
are crucially important. Brocading, often mistaken for embroidery, uses
supplementary weft threads (the yarns that run across the width of the fabric) to
embellish garments with flowers, birds, animals and geometric motifs. Gauze-
weaving is another ancient skill: threads, crossed by hand, form open-meshed cloth
with the delicacy of lace.
The clothing of the Tehuana
After the Revolution, when Mexican leaders and intellectuals were keen to build a
sense of nationhood, the Tehuana became a cultural symbol. Widely represented in
the popular media, Tehuanas (Zapotec women on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec) were
admired for their flamboyant style of dress. Today, Tehuanas remain proud of their
cultural identity.
Women wearing richly embroidered Tehuana clothing for the Feast of the
Assumption in Santa María Reoloteca, Tehuantepec, Oaxaca state. Photograph by Chloë Sayer,
2004. © Chloë Sayer
Visual and written sources document the evolution of clothing in the region. In 1828,
the Italian artist Claudio Linati published a lithograph showing a 'Young Woman of
Tehuantepec'. She wore a wrap-around cotton skirt, woven on the backstrap loom.
Covering her head and torso was a white gauze-like garment, known locally as a
'huipil grande'. By 1859, when Desiré Charnay (the French explorer and
archaeologist) visited the Isthmus, women had adopted a very short huipil. A print
made after a photograph by Charnay showed the frill of the huipil grande framing the
wearer's face. Tehuana clothing has continued to evolve, reflecting the changing tastes
of wearers.
Kahlo took pleasure in combining indigenous garments from different regions.
Sometimes her idiosyncratic ensembles included European or Asian garments. But
she was especially fond of the flamboyant style of clothing worn on the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec. A famous photograph taken by Nickolas Muray in New York shows her
wearing one of her Tehuana ensembles. Her voluminous skirt is trimmed with hand-
made lace; geometric designs, chain-stitched on a sewing machine, decorate her huipil
of commercially made cloth.
Detail of satin skirt with chain stitch and floral motif embroidery.
Museo Frida Kahlo. © Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Archives, Banco de México, Fiduciary of
the Trust of the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums
The resplandor
Kahlo's Self-portrait as a Tehuana, painted in 1943, shows her with the Tehuana's
ceremonial lace headdress. The origins of the huipil grande – now also called a
resplandor – are unknown. Worn in two ways, it resembles a small huipil with a
ruffled collar and a wide frill along the bottom. Vestigial 'sleeves', glued fast by
starch, are never used. On full-dress occasions, the wide frill surrounds the wearer's
face like rays of white light, while the collar and sleeves hang down behind. In
church, however, the ruffled collar frames the wearer's face: the garment covers the
shoulders like a cape, with one sleeve in front and the other behind. In her self-
portrait, Kahlo has chosen the second style.
Self-portrait as a Tehuana, by Frida Kahlo, 1943. © The Jacques and Natasha
Gelman Collection of 20th Century Mexican Art and The Vergel Foundation.