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Xtant, the textile craft festival that wants to rethink the way of creating and consuming

2022-05-23T03:58:33.960Z


Between June 7 and 20, Mallorca will host the best teachers in the world to share experiences, discuss the current situation and "transform the model from below"


Kavita Parmar and Marcela Echavarria met more than 15 years ago, but they became friends when they realized that they both had the same radical vision of what craftsmanship should be and, above all, fair fashion.

"I had obtained a scholarship in New York that involved an investment round for my brand," explains the first, who at that time was focused on the IOU project, a firm that connected clients, artisans and producers through QR codes printed on the labels.

Before, she had created Raasta, a brand that valued the textile tradition of her native India.

“The day I was leaving, I stayed with Marcela and she told me not to take that money because she was going to regret it.

I was drowning in the project, but I saw it clearly”, she recalls now.

In 2020, just before the pandemic, they held the first edition of Xtant in Mexico City, a festival or, more specifically, a meeting between textile artisans from different countries focused on sharing experiences, creating synergies and, above all, transmitting knowledge, from ancestral techniques to technological innovations.

Everything from that authentic and radical approach that shapes their projects.

For Echavarria, “it is not a fashion event, because fashion has erased the language of textiles, and we must return to the original codes”.

“We wanted to create a real, non-digital community of people we've gotten to know throughout our careers.

It is not necessary to wait for them to come from above to give value to their projects.

It has to be done from below”, explains Parmar.

More information

"The heritage textile is the way of weaving of the ancestors": a tribe of artisans returns to the roots

Last year they held the second edition, "because in the first we realized that there was a market, some participants sold out."

This time they chose Mallorca.

“We needed a Spanish region with heritage textiles and that was well connected.

A friend left us his farm,

Sa Forteza

, and we saw that it was the perfect place”, they say.

Now they are preparing for the third, which will be held, also on the Balearic island, and this time with the support of the regional government, from June 7 to 20.

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A post shared by XTANT (@_xtant_)

The first part, from the 7th to the 17th, will be made up of educational talks and immersive experiences, from local gastronomy dinners to olfactory tastings.

There will be a debate on topics as necessary as cultural appropriation (“a complex concept, because you don't have to record everything or let them plunder you”, they comment);

greenwashing

, that

is, the face washing of corporations to appear sustainable;

and, above all, the role of technology in crafts, which, for Parmar and Echavarria, “is just a tool”, they say.

“Technology is not going to save us;

on the contrary, it is promoting accumulation and wealth being in the hands of a few.

You need to go back to the beginning, and use it with a human intention.”

Xtant will culminate, as in previous editions, with a market from June 17 to 20 in which each participant will be able to sell their work “horizontally, because even the purchase is an act of re-education”, explains Echevarria, “there are known participants but here they are just one more, and they sell alongside strangers”.

Among those relevant names is the American designer Ulla Johnson;

Emily Bode, the creator who has been on everyone's lips for three seasons thanks to her updating of North American textile techniques;

the Royal Tapestry Factory;

or the founders of Marrakshi Life, the firm that has managed to successfully converge luxury in the most classic sense with the vast Moroccan textile tradition.

DVD1106.

Interview with fashion entrepreneur Kavita Parmar in her studio.

Alvaro Garcia.

05/11/2022alvaro garcia

“Artisans are all invited by the festival.

The only requirement is that they want to share their wisdom, because we have met some masters who have refused to reveal their techniques”, says Parmar.

The organization, which already has almost a dozen professionals and 40 volunteers, is in charge of paying for their trip, providing them with space for sale, creating the visual story (photos and videos that they can later share on their social networks) and, course, promote the space to meet and dialogue with other artisans from all continents.

“We have been the seed of incredible synergies.

One of the Indigo masters, who lives in India, stayed in Oaxaca, Mexico, teaching the artisans a faster way to dye.

Another of them, in Ethiopia, learned here to make natural dyes and has set up a business”,

The idea is to create a global network from the local.

“You have to rethink the whole model.

We cannot continue putting patches on the old model, just as YouTube is not a patch on television, textile crafts cannot be seen as a patch on the current industry”, says Parmar.

Marcela Echavarria goes further: “You have to rethink even ways of life.

For example, most weavers are farmers, they understand the land, but today that ancestral union between fabrics and crops is missing.”

Textile crafts condense wisdom, create communities, transmit heritage "and leave aside concepts that are harmful to the contemporary world, such as competitiveness or individualism."

"It's an exercise in honesty."

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-05-23

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