Company, community tied together with single thread
The way Ana Holschneider explained it, everything Caralarga makes is jewelry. It all depends on how you wear it.
You could dangle it from your ears, like the design firm’s signature “plume” earrings that resemble upside-down versions of the half-circle headdresses worn in Aztec times. Or you could drape it from your shoulders, like the loose, apronlike garments Caralarga started producing when it expanded into shirts and dresses.
Or you could hang it on your living room wall or drop it from an atrium ceiling, like the braided rope sculptures, some more than 20 feet long, that Holschneider described as “jewelry for the home.” These interior decor pieces alone have transformed Caralarga from a two-person operation to a company with 60 employees who make and ship products throughout the world.
The common thread is cotton that Caralarga converts into such things as handbags, necklaces, mirrors and pendant lights. Holschneider, 39, who founded the company and serves as its chief designer, is determined to make the most of every scrap of raw material that arrives in her workshop, which is located in the Hercules neighborhood on the outskirts of Queretaro, Mexico.
The small barrio was founded on fabric more than 150 years ago, when El Hercules textile company opened there. El Hercules lost its strength in the early 21st century and it reduced its operations by about half. That is when Holschneider’s part of the story began.
She and her husband, Luis Gonzalez, took over the other half of the sprawling complex to start a brewery. During the building conversion she noticed piles of fabric and excess thread that the factory was discarding as below standard.
Holschneider, was not a designer at the time, but she paired up with a colleague, María del Socorro Gasca, and together they developed the refuse into earrings. Those caught on with buyers and she continued experimenting. She brought in Yasmin Tellez, an acquaintance who knew how to sew, and turned the discarded bolts of fabric into apparel. That proved popular, too.
“We were buying the excess of the factory’s materials, so it was good for them, as well,” she said. “The cotton was not going to be in the trash. We were transforming it and making jewelry and other things.”
The decorative braided pieces that have propelled the company’s fortunes evolved from shorter necklaces Caralarga made by wrapping the cotton strands around spheres of papier-mache, a traditional Mexican craft. “We are trying to innovate always, but not trying to reinvent the black thread,” said Holschneider.
Those pieces grew longer and longer as architects and interior designers ordered custom sizes for clients, and that increased the need for more hands in the production process. Caralarga took over the factory’s empty warehouses and began hiring additional workers.
Together with the operations manager, Ariadna García, they have transformed the space into a manufacturing plant where teams of employees make everything by hand, sewing fabrics, snipping and brushing threads and tending to the custom-made metal racks that allow them to drape the cotton strands as they convert them into LargeScale Pieces.
Just a decade old, the organization has managed to be nimble despite the numerous logistical problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Two years ago, El Hercules was sold to a larger corporation that moved its operation to the city of Puebla. Holschneider and Garcia had to persuade the new owners to keep supplying their raw materials, which are now shipped 200 miles.
And just as El Hercules did, Caralarga hires locally, resurrecting the idea of the company town for a new era.