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In October 2010, Luz Medina Bonta’s Madreselva Collection – 15 silk, cotton, and bark cloth outfits colored with natural dyes – premiered on the runway at Fashion Week Honduras. This marked the first time that truly ecological fashion had been on display in that country, and the first foray into high fashion for a Honduran-born artist based in the Mississippi Delta. But most notable about the Madreselva Collection is the fact that it is the culmination of a non-profit effort supported by the United Nations Development Program, the Honduran government, and the indigenous development organization MOPAWI to showcase the skills and potential of indigenous Miskita women artisans from the remote Mosquito Coast region.
The project, Bonta’s brainchild, demonstrated decisively that traditional Honduran natural dyeing and color-fixing techniques, when combined with the expertise of a trained artist, can lead to the creation of clothing of sufficiently high quality to be attractive in even the most demanding of markets. This is a far cry from the typical emphasis on handicrafts for the tourist trade, and has potential to return a much higher profit to local artisans. Bonta, who herself grew up in small Honduran town, is keenly familiar with the struggles of impoverished rural women in her country, who are particularly marginalized in the Mosquito Coast and in her own home province of Olancho, along the rainforest frontier. Indeed, Bonta’s entire professional trajectory has been grounded in the realities of daily life in the Honduran ‘outback,’ one of the most underdeveloped terrains in the Americas.
Luz Medina Bonta, growing up in Juticalpa in the 1980s, first became fascinated with natural dyes through observing the turmeric (curcuma or yuquilla) and annatto (achiote) her grandmother put in foods to turn them a pleasing yellow or orange. But by that time Honduras, like almost every country, had been using synthetic dyes for its fabrics for over a century, and natural dyes were retained only for certain household uses, an important part of the culture but a distressing loss when you consider that at one time, native indigo had been the major ingredient of ‘Mayan Blue’ used by the rulers and scribes of the great city-state of Copán in western Honduras. Indeed, Honduras, part of the vast cultural domain of Mesoamerica that gave the world such staples as corn, tobacco, and several races of cotton, had known cochineal dye from the scale insect, purple dye from molluscs, and numerous natural colors of all hues from the amazing diversity of plants that grew in its forests and grasslands. After contact with Europeans, Honduras came to play a key role in the international dye trade—which at one time was centrally important in the world economy—and was particularly known for its brazilwood and fustic.
But as is always the case, as the centuries wore on, only the remotest of Honduran communities—often those that were still indigenous—retained knowledge of these and dozens of other natural dyes. But even where the plants and some of the dyeing practices are still remembered, natural colors typically only emerge through the work that certain cooperatives do in creating handicrafts. Even on the Mosquito Coast, as Bonta discovered, only a few of the many local natural dye plants are still used regularly, and in most cases the necessary color fixing techniques have been lost or neglected; without these mordants – which can often be obtained from alum or various muds – cloth easily fades in the sun and colors run upon washing.
The rescue of Mesoamerican dyeing techniques is already well advanced in countries such as Mexico and El Salvador, but lags far behind in Honduras. Bonta’s years of experimentation as a student in the fiber laboratory at Delta State University—often with local plants such as osage orange, elderberry, and goldenrod—had shown her the potential of such dyes, and also their generally benign effects on human health. By contrast, synthetic dyes, not to mention certain mordants, can be extremely hazardous. But natural dyeing is far more than producing ‘natural colors’—it also is compatible with a wide range of stamping, tie-dyeing, Shibori, and other techniques, and like all textile art, demands a high degree of imagination and skill in the elements of design. The production of a naturally-dyed AND (and mordanted fabric) is labor-intensive, but the next step—the creation of a wearable garment that is attractive to potential consumers—adds several more layers of complexity. Nevertheless, Bonta believed it possible to start ‘at the tree’ so to speak, literally in the middle of the Honduran rain forest, and end up on the runway, without the use of synthetics and without damaging the environment. That is to say, the entire process of creating the Madreselva Collection was to be sustainable and earth-friendly to the maximum extent possible.
It went without saying, then, that the natural dyes had to be applied to natural fibers. Honduras, while once an important producer of cotton, today is known primarily for bark cloth (tuno and tuno blanco) harvested from certain trees, including a species of rubber. The fabric that results is highly versatile and receives several natural dyes extremely well; Bonta worked with these on the Mosquito Coast as well as with raw cotton and various silks that were not available locally. During the course of summer seminars with the Miskita women, Bonta not only worked with the dyes the women were already using for handicrafts, but also introduced dyeing with the sawdust of mahogany from a local sustainable-harvest cooperative, and with the wood from branches of various other rainforest trees. In another part of the country, Bonta obtained sawdust from a ‘waste tree’ known as palo de brasil— the brazilwood or brasiletto, once one of the most famous sources of red hues and now a forgotten species. Once the requisite amount of fabric had been prepared, it was ‘simply’ a matter of having the 15 outfits sewn, as well as training 15 volunteer models and dealing with all the other minutiae involved in putting on a runway show. In Bonta’s case, this was mostly achieved long-distance, via Facebook, as she had commitments in Mississippi up until almost the last minute. This included some desperate fundraising in the Delta, as the funds provided in Honduras had run out, and not doing the show was not an option. Indeed, the stateside fundraising showed just how interested many people were in this unique effort to marry indigenous artisanry and the ‘save the rainforest’ mantra with ecologically-sustainable fashion. In addition, the ‘tree to runway’ demonstration project is also the topic of Bonta’s presentation at the International Symposium and Exhibition on Natural Dyes (ISEND-2011) in La Rochelle, France, where she will hopefully be joined by two of the Miskita women involved.
As has been hinted at several times, there are many benefits for an income-strapped country like Honduras in the rescue of natural dyes and fibers. If a fair-trade model can prevail and a demand develops, then income generation for small producer groups will follow. Natural dye sources are found throughout the country, not just in the rainforest: indeed, any community can start a dye garden and quickly grow their own dyes, which have value on their own (particularly well-known ones such as indigo and brazilwood). Most importantly for many, the harvesting of dye materials can be sustainable, through the removal of fallen limbs and other non-harmful practices; this is particularly attractive for conservationists looking for ways that local communities can be enticed to preserve natural resources. Of course, successful initiatives, especially those that seek internationally-recognized certification, need to adhere to strict environmental standards, since even the use of firewood for heating dye pots, and disposal of waste materials, has to be done in an ecologically correct manner.
There is also the matter of accessories: Bonta was delighted to discover that the women of Krausirpi, along the Patuca River in the Mosquitia, are already producing naturally-dyed handbags woven of majao, a fiber from the bark of certain trees. Using her ceramics skills, she also made the jewelry for the Madreselva Collection, and she points out that small-scale pottery production still exists in Honduras, thus there is plenty of potential for artesanal involvement in the creation of a wide range of fashion accessories.
Realizing that all the supply in the world comes to naught if the demand is not there—and the means to connect the two--Luz Medina Bonta brought her demo collection back to Mississippi to begin the arduous task of promoting the Madreselva Collection overseas, helping it stand out in the burgeoning ecofashion world, on a shoestring budget but with strong ties to the Delta artist and university community, and via Facebook with kindred souls across the planet. She hopes to attract interest in what she has done and what she can do, and by extension what the women of Honduras can do, if somebody invests in them and helps them connect to the world.
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