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The Meaning of Polleras (vs. Women’s Hiking Pants)
The more I learn about the handmade clothing worn by traditional people in the Andes, the more impressed I become. The outfit above isn’t a museum piece, although it displays like one in the “Perú Hecho a Mano” boutique at Saga Falabella, in Lima’s Jockey Plaza mall. It is a very elaborate version of the typical dress worn to this day by Quechua women of the Andes. You see people dressed like this all throughout the Peruvian sierra when you venture away from the relatively big city of Cusco. Each piece of clothing is made by hand, often from handspun wool, and features intricate embroidery, beading or tassels. That green…
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Beautiful Ch’ullos
These colorful knit hats with earflaps, known as ch’ullos (CHEW-yohs), are worn by men in traditional Andean villages. You don’t usually find many high-quality ch’ullos in Lima, but this past Monday I found a virtual forest of them on the third floor of Saga Falabella department store, in Jockey Plaza, where the hats are being featured in a high-end artisanía exhibit, “Perú Hecho a Mano.” (Check out my story on the “Hecho a Mano” exhibit in this week’s Living in Peru.) You can find cheap mass-produced ch’ullos all over Cusco, but the most beautiful, and the most highly prized, are those that are woven by hand, in elaborate designs distinctive…
