BY Annie Millican | January 5, 2012

Awamaki Lab in Peru

The garment district in Lima, Peru transforms the innocuous act of purchasing fabric into an ultimate test of endurance, perception and agility.  Stores cleverly loop back on themselves as they compete for sidewalk space, stacked incongruously in the six-block radius known as Gamarra.  The area’s relentless rhythm outpaces individual motion and propels us through an Escher-like landscape. Up four flights of stairs, through low-hanging corridors and between congested market stalls we weave, admiring cheap Chinese polyester imports, sifting through sparkly trims and pondering the curious display of homeopathic treatments for UTI alongside pattern paper. 

Customer service is solicited with a jump, shout and hand-wave – a literal evocation of the expression “a head above the rest.”  Simultaneously reminiscent of a circus fun house and a concert mosh pit, the place is completely terrifying and utterly mesmerizing.  We were in Lima to do the improbable: locate fabric vendors who would supply the modest material needs of our Awamaki Lab project.  Though unexpected, getting swept up in the mayhem was half the fun, a fact we readily accepted when we appropriated “Amazing Race” as the prefix to our four-day whirlwind trip.  It was an apt title too, because Gamarra was the site of big ambition for the humble Lab project, an awesome leap forward in development of our production capacity.

Awamaki Lab is an annual fashion residency that connects young designers with rural women artisans in Ollantaytambo, Peru, to create garments that invigorate traditional craft techniques and encourage female entrepreneurship.  Our objective is to harness the talents and capabilities of local women by creating jobs that build confidence and develop professional skills.  Though small in scale, Lab makes use of its resources to build a closed-loop supply chain that connects remote producers to western consumers.  By facilitating access to global market, we hope to enable women in the Sacred Valley to develop a sustainable income for themselves, their families and their communities.

The Lab design program brings together unlikely actors in a production process united by concern for beautiful, hand-tilled craft. Indigenous Quechua weavers living high in the Andes cultivate natural plant-dyes and spin their own alpaca fleece into the richly colored yarns featured in their warp-faced textiles.  We work with an association of 42 women weavers from an isolated village in the Patacancha Valley, a mountain range adjacent to the Sacred Valley that rises 600 meters above Ollantaytambo. Textiles are produced here on the Pre-Incan back strap loom and transformed into garments through collaboration with visiting fashion designers and our dedicated sewing cooperative members.

Seamstresses in the co-op receive vocational training to learn the complex construction and finishing techniques required for production while also dabbling in design. As mothers, wives and farmers, they apply their impressive multitasking skills to a challenging curriculum, and have advanced rapidly in quiet determination over the past six months.  Designers and seamstresses meet with the Patacancha weavers to order textiles to specific measurements, hedging material waste created in the cut-and-sew process. Working together in the Lab studio, designers and seamstresses brainstorm ways to frame woven pieces in contemporary patterns and silhouettes, transforming the seemingly anachronistic into wearable works.  A final cinch to the cycle, we carefully select base fabrics from the domestic market to back our centerpiece woven textiles.

Amidst the bustle of Gamarra, big ideas can spring forth from humble beginnings.  Here in the labyrinth, my friend, colleague and Lab’s season two designer Andria Crescioni and I culled materials in search of fabrics complementary to the hand-woven textiles of Patacancha.  Keeping feet light and staccato, we learned to negotiate space quickly, and eventually found a trove of soft cotton drills, poplins and canvas to fulfill our order.  These woven textiles are produced entirely within Peru, from cotton harvested along the central cost and spun in mills in southern Arequipa.  As an amplified counterpart to Awamaki Lab, they serve to inspire the seasons to come.

To learn more about Awamaki Lab, please visit http://www.awamaki.org/awamakilab.