A Mexican senator accuses designer Isabel Marant of plagiarizing pre-Hispanic designs

As announced on social networks, the president of the Senate Culture Committee has denounced this Thursday the "plagiarism" of textile designs of Mexican indigenous peoples for the new winter clothing collection of French designer Isabel Marant.

The outerwear presented by the dressmaker bears the original motifs of the Purépecha Indians of Michoacán.

"Marant has already done it on another occasion with the culture of Oaxaca," Susana Harp has accused.

And it has not been the only one.

Other prestigious designers have been in the spotlight before for plagiarizing the crafts of indigenous communities in their dresses.

Harp has requested the union of the senators to transfer this matter to the Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard.

In recent times, it is not difficult to find indigenous-inspired garments in the most sophisticated fashion stores.

Many in Mexico understand that this is simply plagiarism without these peoples receiving anything in return.

The controversy with the designer Carolina Herrera and her fashion based on pre-Hispanic iconographies opened up a debate that is still raging, in which it is a matter of elucidating who owns the rights to those designs and if those who invented them should receive something in return.

There are some dressmakers, such as the Mexican Patricia Govea, who in the last New York fashion contest paraded clothes made with the collaboration of up to 300 people from indigenous communities who make some of the garments that her models wear in exchange for a salary.

Govea understands that these artisans are actually artists "with a natural handling of color," he said months ago in this newspaper.

The president of the Culture Commission on this occasion accused the French woman of repeating the same procedure that she used before with designs from Santa María Tlahuiltoltepec (Oaxaca) and showed Marant's clothes in the Senate.

In the case of Carolina Herrera, in June of last year, the Mexican Government also expressed its discomfort over the collection of the famous Venezuelan, to whom it sent a letter of complaint.

For the Ministry of Culture, the origin of these designs "is fully founded."

The economic issue is not trivial in these accusations of plagiarism, because generally they are collections of great dressmakers that cost a potosí in the fashion market, while the situation of indigenous peoples is still extremely poor in most of the countries. cases.

In addition, some of these motifs that are now recreated in haute couture are loaded with community, family meanings, what has been called the cosmovision or cosmogony of native peoples, far removed from the stock market values.

On this occasion it is the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, through the mouth of the also singer Susana Harp, who raises a diplomatic conflict or, at least, the intervention of the Foreign Ministry to debate it as a State issue.

Isabel Marant has achieved several fashion awards with her workshop and the brand that bears her name and her garments have high prices in the boutiques.

In 2015, the Mexican senator discovered a shirt in a Las Vegas store that she immediately related to a municipality in Oaxaca, but the contentment soon collapsed when she discovered that it belonged to Marant's collection and uploaded the photos on social networks, where the practically identical invoice of the outfit they wear in Santa María Tlahuiltoltepec can be seen.

The always smiling Isabel Marant tried to demystify last year in an interview with Icon magazine (EL PAÍS) the profession of designers: "They are too pretentious, we are only making clothes, not saving lives," she said in June 2019.