Across the Amazon, annatto has long been used to colour bodies and textiles, its orange-red hue staining skin, fibre and memory alike.
When I visited the Yanesha in the Peruvian Amazon, the first thing
@vabiperu did was to paint my face with fresh annatto – achiote seeds straight from the pod. She did it withouth ceremony; a communal act as natural as the feast we went on to share.
In The Nature of Fashion, I write about another people of the rainforest, the Guaraní, who once called themselves Abá, The People. For them, red carried a very particular meaning. Unlike in Europe in the Early Middle Ages, where colour so often signalled rank, red was not a marker of hierarchy. It was the colour of the people.
More than that, uru’ku – their word for annatto – embodied the idea of becoming rather than being. It spoke of life as movement, not a fixed state. It did not point back to a lost past, but forwards towards Ywy Marã Ey, the Land Without Evil – a future that is always in the making.
In their world, colour did not fix identity. It kept it open. Ever changing. Always becoming.
The Nature of Fashion is out now with
@chelseagreenbooks @rizzolibooks
Photos of me: Carola Solis
Photo of Yanesha man and drawing of achiote pod: by me
#thenatureoffashion #textilehistory #fashionhistory #culturalanthropology #Indigenousknowledge
#slowfashion #naturaldyes #paraguay #annatto
