BOLIVIA: Indigenous women in La Paz show off 2008 styles at a fashion show where colorful indigenous clothing is enjoying a revival

Record ID: 197350

  • Title: BOLIVIA: Indigenous women in La Paz show off 2008 styles at a fashion show where colorful indigenous clothing is enjoying a revival
  • Date: 2nd August 2007
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) DESIGNER VERONICA DIAS MENA SAYING: "This year we will want to show the elegance more than anything, the pastel colors. We want to put in some gold colors and more of everything so the cholas in La Paz can show their elegant colors. There aren't so many flower prints or yellows anymore, but more pastels so cholas can be elegant in any situation."
  • Embargoed: 17th August 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Fashion
  • Reuters ID: LVAOERLFW72SXJTWZRK4BJG80IN
  • Story Text: Bolivia's indigenous women took to the catwalk in La Paz on Friday (July 27), showing off the latest twists on traditional garb.
    Indigenous women, known locally as cholas, have rediscovered pride in their traditional layer skirts and bowler hats, making them hip fashion items under the country's first Indian president, Evo Morales.
    The clothes, long denigrated, are suddenly cool in South America's poorest country as models strut down catwalks in glamorized designer versions of the voluminous pollera (poh-YER-ah) skirts once considered peasant garb.
    "We wear these clothes more proudly, more hopefully, now that a man of the people is leading the country," said 22-year-old model Taty Chaira.
    Bolivian market women have long charmed tourists in their distinctive skirts and bowler hats, a style imposed centuries ago by European colonizers, and some congresswomen have worn the pollera proudly for years.
    But Morales' message of indigenous empowerment has inspired secretaries, college students and bureaucrats to embrace luxury versions of the traditional outfit. Some young women who once rejected the pollera now wear it on special occasions.
    Sensing a business opportunity when her fans raved over her outfits, 28-year-old Veronica Diaz, host of the Fiesta and Folklore television program, opened a small shop stuffed with her extravagant pollera and shawl designs.
    "This year we will want to show the elegance more than anything, the pastel colors. We want to put in some gold colors and more of everything so the cholas in La Paz can show their elegant colors. There aren't so many flower prints or yellows anymore, but more pastels so cholas can be elegant in any situation," Diaz said at Friday's show.
    People like Diaz are even championing a new term for women who wear the pollera and bowler to replace the word cholas: "pollera women".
    Morales has promised Bolivia's majority indigenous population he will attack poverty with a state takeover of oil fields and give them more dignity by redesigning government to follow traditions dating back to the Inca empire.
    He eschews suits in favor of folksy sweaters, jackets with traditional textiles and the occasional Andean poncho and hat.
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