Rebozo

 Rebozos are traditional Mexican wraps that are useful and beautiful - my favorite qualities. My great-grandmother used hers to cover up, to tote groceries or babies, to wrap in her hair for festive occasions.

Mexican designer Carla Fernandez's show "The Barefoot Designer: A Passion for Radical Design and Community"  at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is an "extraordinary approach to documenting and preserving the rich textile heritage of Mexico's indigenous communities by transforming it into beautiful contemporary clothing, and proving tradition is anything but static." 

I love that she emphasizes the individual and subtle eroticism of women's bodies instead of a vulgar "sex appeal," that what makes a woman feel sexy may be a delicate wrist, a well-shaped arm, a curve of hip, a long neck. 

 In an interview she states, "I think that indigenous textiles is just as sexy as the erotic attire of the West; it is just that the erogenous zones are different. For the indigenous woman the most important areas are the hair, the feet, and the arms. The challenge for me is to make Western women feel sexy wearing, as you say, clothes that are more like a portrait of your soul, your history, your family, and all the generations you carry with you."

So it is in this spirit of old and new I wear my great-grandmother's gorgeous rebozos framing my long neck and clavicle, one of my very own erogenous zones. I am sexy because I have a sense of my own body and I feel happy in it. And when it comes to men,  in the end it is all men really want: that you love your body so they can too. As a lover once confessed, men are such grateful creatures.

I wind rebozos around my neck several times for modern chic or wrap around my shoulders for elegance and warmth.  I inherited several from my great-grandmother, but I've picked up a few in my travels to Mexico as well.

Everywhere I travel, there seems to be some version of the rebozo in different fabrics: Silk, cotton, wool. The beautiful scarf or  wrap seems to be a universal language.