Children’s clothing line puts playful spin on Native art
Sized in miniature and ready for the rigors of playtime, a T-shirt hangs in a little shop on Washington Avenue — waiting to end its journey by finding a home in a child’s closet.
The T-shirt can be seen amid a jumble of toys in a store called Toyopolis and Merry Go Round. Light blue with dark blue sleeves, the shirt bears the image of a Hopi butterfly warrior designed especially to bring a smile to a child’s face.
Tea Collection, an international clothing company based in San Francisco, is introducing a spring fashion line that bears Native American-inspired art and designs, including work from Santa Fe-based artist Gregory Lomayesva and a collaboration with the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture.
Each season, Tea Collection explores a different culture around the world and creates children’s clothes using designs inspired or created by local artists of that region. For 2018, the company decided to focus on the United States and the cultures that make up the nation.
As Tea Collection seeks to bring awareness of different cultures to families, Laura Boes, vice president for design, said the company wanted to honor the cultures in its backyard.
“I think there are a lot of cultures that
make up the U.S.,” Boes said. “It felt really important for us to tell that story to our customers.”
She came to New Mexico in 2017 and her team worked with different pueblos and the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, eventually asking Lomayesva and other Native artists in the U.S. to create graphics that could be reproduced.
By commissioning local artists or creating designs inspired by these cultures, Boes said, Tea Collection tried to translate motifs and styles distinguishing the culture in a way children can enjoy.
“Making the foreign familiar and bringing that into the lives of children is really special,” she said. “I hope that everybody in Santa Fe or with connection to the museum feels proud of our collection.”
Walking into Lomayesva’s studio inside his adobe home in downtown Santa Fe, a child’s T-shirt may not be the first thought that comes to mind. Canvas paintings lean on each other and line the hallway. Metal pieces and wires that would seem more likely to belong to an engineer crowd a table in the open space of his studio. An unfinished canvas at the end of the room begins the portraiture of a woman hushing the viewer.
“Everything I do, I have to teach myself,” Lomayesva said. “I never went to school.”
The contemporary painter and sculptor often uses aspects of his Hopi and Hispanic heritage in his works. More recently, Lomayesva has started creating vacuum tubes for different sound equipment used in recording studios and branching into photography.
When Tea Collection approached him about the fashion line, he said he had to do a lot of tweaking before creating designs suitable for children’s clothes.
“It was nice to chill out and stop trying to be some hot … artist and just return to the craft,” Lomayesva said. “It’s so fun. It’s not pretentious, and I’m [expletive] pretentious.”
Using his previous work, Lomayesva came up with the Hopi butterfly warrior and other Hopi-inspired images. He said working on this project took him in a different direction than his other works, one with more vivid colors and happier meanings. Through it, he started creating animal figurines and a new line of art.
“It opened doors to a place in my brain I wasn’t using,” he said. “I really look forward to the future of what this has brought to me.”
Boes said she and her team worked with representatives of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture so that as the company looked to pueblo pottery for inspiration, it was not disrespecting the culture.
“A lot of clothing brands have appropriated Native American art,” Boes said. “We wanted to make sure we were telling the story in the right way.”
“We’re very careful in how designs are used,” said Diane Bird, archivist for the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture and the Laboratory of Anthropology. “They’re very tasteful and seem to be elegant. I don’t think they’re appropriated.”
Jennifer Forman, owner of Toyopolis and Merry Go Round, has had selections from Tea Collection hanging in her store for the past four years. She said the quality of the clothes and designs are always a hit, with the local roots of the 2018 designs adding to the excitement.
“I liked their philosophy,” she said, “of sharing other cultures with kids in their designs.”
From a distance, it’s just a T-shirt. Move a little closer and it could pass for an artist’s canvas. Get a step or two closer, and it’s culture come to life.
Contact Elayne Lowe at 505-9863017 or elowe@sfnewmexican. com.