Bird's Eye Llama Short Poncho Multiple Colorways

Our Bird's Eye collection of handspun and handwoven llama textiles represent a millennial tradition of Omaguaca communities in the Quebrada de Humaguaca region of Jujuy, Argentina. Seven thousand Omaguaca, which means sacred water in Aymara, live in this Andean region on the northeastern border with Chile. Various indigenous communities live in the Quebrada and the Puna region, which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Various traditional weaving techniques are employed, including the Ojo de Perdiz, or Bird’s Eye design featured in our poncho, shawl and runner collection. Omaguaca weavers dye with a variety of plant and vegetable dyes including, indigo, beetroot, a form of bamboo and even regional wines as well as using the gorgeous range on natural colors of llama fibers.

oma=water y guaca=sacred place

Hijas de la Luna

Our partner, Hijas de la Luna, is a social enterprise founded in 1996 out of a collaboration between indigenous Andean textile artists, weavers, designers, and researchers, who work in one of the cultural landscapes in the UNESCO ́s World Heritage list: the Quebrada de Humahuaca and in three pastoralist communities in the Puna Highlands of Jujuy Province in the North of

Argentina.

Their mission is to rescue textile traditional techniques and recreate pieces and designs from pre-Columbian times or ethnographic sources allowing the transmission of aesthetic Andean forms, while taking care of the fragile ecosystem in the arid areas we are living in. The only form of subsistence in these lands derives from llama herding and its handmade textile production chain.

Hijas de la Luna’s principal objective is to create job opportunities to prevent young people from leaving their villages looking for development possibilities elsewhere. Indigenous identity has been threatened for hundreds of years and now even more, due to globalization with its massive forms of production along with the expanding consumer fashion mandates.