please excuse my fingers

A couple days ago i was wandering down our street and i saw an open door with a man sewing inside. Palo had told me that he knew the local tailor and commisioned him to make a saddle bag. He also said he had an amazing porfolio of work that he had done in the states- vampire costumes or something. As a hobby tailor myself, i was really curious to see what he was up to.



The man that i met was Adelso, a very friendly man with about as much english as i have spanish. Turns out, he worked in Albany for a while, and Hudson too- places i´d been hanging out in only a few months earlier. Small world. (Courtesy of fossil fuels).




He had several singers floating around, one with a motor attached and this one totally foot-reliant. I got pretty excited about it and he offered to sell it to me. I would love to put money into the Guatemalan economy and Adelso could definitely use the money, i´m just not sure it makes sense to try to lug a singer all the way back to the states. I´m tempted though.


It turns out he is not the only tailor in town, there is also his brother Jose Luis. The two of them have worked in the states for a variety of companies. I get the sense that Jose Luis is the more adept of the two, it sounds like his US fashion-scene experience is significantly greater than his brother´s- though Adelso was very clear that he can do anything his brother can.

I flipped through the booklets of the places where Jose Luis worked, the stuff was really impressive. I haven´t seen anyhting that he´s actually made, but he claims that he can make, and has made, everything in the catalogs he showed me.

Here´s some of it-
This model reminds me a lot of my friend Alexa, She´s got some pretty sweet model shots i wish i could put up for comparison.


Apparently this model only looks good while scowling in her grandpa´s glasses.

And the crazy vampire stuff


Palo seemed to be particularly into this corporate vampire suit. I love the pale models they found for this catalog. I´d guess they are all actually into the whole vampire thing.


A Proposal

Jose Luis and Adelso are very interested in showing their designs to American companies. They asked me if i would be willing to do this for them, I told them that i don´t know any companies, but i can look for them while i´m in philly and see what i can come up with. I told them that i would post pictures of their designs on Flickr so that people could check them out, and that i´d be happy to try to facilitate some business deals. Here´s the website:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35218500@N03/sets/72157613528491101/

Their idea is to take these high end designs and use traditional Guatemalan fabrics to create them. It will be interesting to see how the designs translate with Guatemalan textiles. They told me they would make a few garments from each catalog and send them home with me. It sounds like a lot, but these are pretty motivated guys. I´m really excited to be helping them out.