(Paris) Fabrics used by soldiers and guerrillas, dyes from coca leaves… The creations of Colombian designer Laura Laurens reflect the complexity of a country marked by years of violence while wanting to signify that fashion can also serve social transformation.
Laura Laurens, 41, creator of the eponymous brand launched in 2014, presented her way of designing clothing on Tuesday in Paris at the French Fashion Institute, one of the main schools in the sector.
“My responsibility is not just to design a dress above ground,” she told AFP, accompanied by one of her collaborators, Anyi Ballesteros, 25, met at the Bogota craft fair in 2022.
Anyi Ballesteros belongs to the Agroarte association, a community of women weavers from El Tambo in the Cauca department (southwest of Colombia).
Cauca, one of the most troubled regions of the country, is an area of coca leaf production and drug trafficking transit to the Pacific.
To remove the opprobrium cast on farmers who cultivate coca – an economic resource, but also the basic product of cocaine – the association uses the plant for natural dyes.
By cooking coca leaves and flour, it is possible to obtain a range of 96 shades, from yellow to brown to green or beige.
The idea is to “expand the uses of this plant, change its image and that of the people who grow it,” according to her.
To make some of her clothes, the designer spent years recycling fabrics that had been used by the country’s various armed groups and the military. These uniforms “all use the same fabric,” she explains.
“I took this highly stigmatized material and gave it a new twist, I made it a field of roses, I tinted it with deep blues, I made it change places.”
The clothes designed by Laura Laurens are characterized by enveloping and dynamic shapes.
A green dress tied with elegant bows, with a neckline where red flowers are woven. A black jacket with silver highlights. Or light coats in military camouflage, but embellished with gold prints.
For the self-taught designer, clothes tell a story and create dialogue.
“It’s so easy to be seduced by the magic of fashion, what interests me is to use it to get everyone engaged in discussion,” she says.
Through partnerships, it seeks to have an impact on the most precarious social environments marked by violence.
Before meeting Anyi Ballesteros, she worked with transgender women from the Embera-Chami indigenous community. The “chaquiras” (beaded figures) of this community now adorn their clothes.
“Thanks to fashion, they are now models and artisans,” she explains.
After the signing in 2016 of a peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, Marxists), the stylist organized sewing workshops with former fighters of the armed group.
She did the same last year in Sharpeville, South Africa, with survivors of the 1960 massacre, when apartheid police (abolished in 1991) killed 69 peaceful black demonstrators denouncing segregation laws, most of them ‘a bullet in the back.
In Paris, Laura Laurens sought to convey her message: “fashion is one of the systems that excludes the most. What interests me is to make it one of those that is most inclusive.”
