Huipil

Vervaardiging: Dominga Guzman

Woven huipil, a typical part of the Mexican costume. The huipil consists of three strips of undyed, tightly woven cotton, which have been joined together. The middle strip is outlined with two purple bands, which indicate the borders between the three strips. In many traditional huipiles, a long band of other colored cotton is used to join the three parts, here it's imitated with the purple embroidery. The middle strip has a hole in the middle with a diameter of 19 cm and this hole is surrounded by a pink and blue ribbon. The blue ribbon forms the basia for the pink ribbon, the blue ribbon is sewn around the circumference of the hole and on top of this, the pink ribbon is sewn in a pointed form (with the points facing outwards). It is sewn on with dark pink yarn and this yarn also outlines all the points of the pink ribbon. The ends of the ribbons are left slightly long and fall along the fabric at the back of the huipil. The hole is used to put the head through and in this way the garment can be put on. The fabric is folded in two to create a front and back. At the bottom these two sides are sewn together over a length of about 15 cm, the rest remains open. On the undyed cotton extensive decorations have been embroidered in dyed cotton. This has been done in bands of approx. 2 cm wide over the width of the three strips, each band has two purple lines as outer borders and a lot of space has been left between the bands (approx. 6 cm). When sewing the three strips, not all of them ended up at the same height, so they are not straight across the entire length of the huipil. Because these are three strips that were later formed into a huipil, it is not so that the front and back of the huipil are equal. The patterns that are shown between the purple lines are: lozenges, many diagonal hourglasses, vertical short bands (twice the same color with another color in between), hourglasses between two lozenges of the same color, open lozenges filled with another color, pyramid shape, open squares with a different color in the middle and double circles (on top of each other) filled with another color. Under the collar, on both sides three bands can be seen directly below each other, the middle band consists of vertical zigzag lines, the two adjacent ones have a pyramid-shaped pattern. At the front a number of other bands are embroidered at the bottom, on the middle band a pink-purple band of about 1 cm thick and on the two outer bands a band consisting of two purple lines with a green line in between. There is a large variety of colors used for the embroidery, colors that are used are: different shades of red, different shades of blue, purple, different shades of green, orange, yellow and different shades of pink. This is a long huipil that reaches to the ankles. It is made especially for the tourist industry and is therefore probably less refined than the huipiles worn by the local population. Because the tourists don't wear these huipiles, it is not necessary to make them of such good quality that it costs more time and money.