Spotlight On

Spotlight on
Graziano and Gutierrez

Alejandro Gutierrez

For Issue 2’s Spotlight On feature, Fecund is proud to highlight Graziano and Gutierrez, a Portland-based brand whose vibrant yet cooly simplistic apparel repurposes traditional Mexican textiles to create artisan-made, sustainably sourced fashion focused on preserving weaving techniques of the communities they work with.

The Graziano and Gutierrez brand was founded in 2018 by myself and Samuel Graziano, while we were studying at the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. During that spring I travelled back to my hometown in the Yucatan and worked closely with artisanal communities, in order to learn and research different weaving and dyeing techniques such as weaving on pedal looms and natural dyes. It was during this time that I travelled to Oaxaca and Chiapas to source our fabrics, where I met the families and communities we are currently partnered with.

After returning from the research trip that summer, we started creating the foundations of the brand and what would be our first collection. It took us about a year—and several different ideations of our collections—in order to establish what exactly the brand’s identity would be. However, we are still adapting and adjusting over time, and always learning better ways to reduce waste, provide support to the communities, and better integrate what our customers want. Graziano and Gutierrez became mine and Sam's senior thesis project, and we released our first collection upon graduating in May 2019. After graduation, I relocated to Portland, Oregon to work on the brand full-time, and I do all pattern-making and sewing.

About

Graziano and Gutierrez is a Mexican-American workwear and apparel brand working in collaboration with artisanal textile makers from Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico. The brand focuses on repurposing Mexican textiles commonly used for upholstery or tablecloths, to give them a new, unique, and personal use.

Our goal is to create pieces that preserve, honor, and share the incredibly rich heritage of Mexico, while also providing a platform for the artisans’ work to shine. Working directly with these communities allows us to provide consistent fair-work and pay, and to teach our customers about Mexican traditions—specifically, those of the communities that weave the fabrics used to make the clothing. We offer small, seasonally appropriate capsule collections released throughout the year in limited quantities. This supports a sustainability model that produces less general waste and clothing built to last. We also consistently offer a line of natural fiber essentials, as well as custom/made-to-order garments.

Oaxaca

Our Oaxaca fabrics come from Teotitlan del Valle, a small village outside Oaxaca established in 1465; it was one of the first villages in the area founded by the Zapotec people. We work closely with family Bautista Martinez, who have specialized in textile making for fifty years. While working with wool is one of their specialities, they also work with cotton to make lighter fabrics that can be used as comforters, tablecloths, or, in our case, clothes. They acquire their cotton regionally and make their fabrics on pedal looms in their local workshop.

Chiapas

We work with a local family business owned by Jorge Giacobone, who started working with indigenous communities in 1980 in order to preserve traditional techniques, such as weaving on pedal and back-strap looms. These fabrics are made on pedal looms by artisans in the communities of San Andres Larrainzar, Chamula, Oxchuc y Tenejapa in the state of Chiapas. Together with local communities, they’ve adapted centuries-old weaving techniques in order to create high-quality hand-woven textiles. The hieroglyphics are based on traditional Mayan motifs found in ancient sculptures within the region. The cotton is acquired from Mexico City, and taken to these communities to weave their fabrics on pedal looms.

Environmental responsibility and transparency

We are always looking to have the most earth- and human-friendly solutions to every aspect of our production. All of our garments are handmade from beginning to end. The fabrics are hand-woven on pedal looms by artisan communities, and each garment is hand-cut and sewn in our studio. We utilize only environmentally and socially sustainable fabrications, including both hand-woven cotton fabrics from the artisans we work with, but also compostable natural fiber textiles like organic cotton and hemp. We also keep all fabric leftovers in order to provide our customers with repairs as well as to create one-of-a-kind garments with them.

We strive to be transparent, and we do this by providing our customers with as much information as possible about all that goes into our products. Every piece comes with a label detailing garment origins: fabric origins, production, and artisan and collaborative partners. In addition, our social media is utilized as a platform to educate our customers about traditional Mexican culture, the communities we work with, and the processes behind the creation of each garment.