Carla Fernandez Vestido Chenalho

Chenalhó, properly San Pedro Chenalhó, is a municipality in the highlands of Chiapas, and it is Tsotsil country. It sits in the same cluster of highland towns as San Juan Chamula, in a part of Mexico where the weaving is not a heritage activity that survived; it is a working practice that never stopped, and the designs on a backstrap-woven cloth from these towns identify where the weaver is from as reliably as an address would.

The dress carries that name. It does not carry, on any record we can read, a fiber, a color, or a place of manufacture, so this page will not tell you what it is made of. What can be said is that a dress is the garment where this house’s geometry is most legible, because there is nothing between the shoulder and the hem to interrupt it.

Why we selected it

We wanted the plainest dress this house makes rather than the most striking one, because the plain one is the one that gets worn. It carries the name of a town in the part of Mexico where she has worked the longest.

Carla Fernández names garments after the highland towns of Chiapas among other places, and this is the dress carrying Chenalhó.

Materials and construction

We do not hold a fiber content, a color, a weave, or a country of origin for this dress.

Fit notes

A dress built from panels hangs from the shoulder and releases below, forgiving through the waist and hip and dependent on shoulder width. No size attribute is on the record for this dress, so please ask before choosing.

Styling

Under the Chicomecoatl Coat or the Capa Charra Gris Calado Negro. Over the Pantalón Tepehua if you want it shorter in effect. On its own.

Care

Follow the care label on the dress itself, which outranks anything general we could tell you. Our care guidance covers the principles.

Related pieces

The Vestido Rebozo Corto is a short dress named for the Mexican shawl woven as a long rectangle, the Tunica Mictecacihuatl Gris is a tunic carrying the name of the Nahua Lady of the Dead, and the Falda Meztli is a skirt named for the moon in Nahuatl. Everything we carry from Carla Fernández is listed together.