These Shoes Were Made for...

The more technology invades our lives with impersonal, colorless and "branded" objects, the more value we find in beautiful [handmade wearable art]. In ways we can't always describe, we morn the loss of beauty and sensuousness in a merely functional world. It takes a long time [to make these objects] and the result is something that only time can deliver. ~Tony Cohan in Mexican Textiles: Spirit and Style

Latina magazine recently had a sidebar about a young entrepreneur named Kerry Clarkson Valdivia who commissions Peruvian cobblers to bring to make her line of shoes ideas.

Those of you who visit the link will see that she has some refreshing things to say about what inspired her entre into the fashion industry. For a young woman in her early twenties, she has a keen understanding, it seems, of the appeal of things exotic or unique-- not to mention the price tag that can be put on items possessing these attributes.

This should make folk think a little about how all things created--musical forms, foods, textiles, housewares--have meaning beyond their outer "skins." For example, the African ceremonial mask or Central American rebozo has virtually no meaning if the buyer of it does not respect the culture, traditions and belief systems that gave life to the product. Enduring art is fused, like a Siamese twin, to the handed-down ways that people communicate with God. To borrow a phrase: To love the fruit, we must respect the roots.

(Image copyright J. Watson-Aifah, 2005)