The pandemic allowed teacher Carla Azcorra Aguilar to have more time to improve the technique of her hobby, which was to design garments, so she found on the Internet that the paints she used could be made with pigments from fruits, roots and seeds. That is how the business “Bhogi” was born.
In an interview with Peninsular Punto Medio, she pointed out that this technique took her some time to develop, as there was the case of the bugambilia flower, which could give an excellent ink, but after she applied it, in the first wash it was gone.
She explained that she started this business as a hobby, since she is a university professor and in her free time she used to do it, but due to environmentalism she started to look for options and that is how she found the natural pigments and now it can be said that most of them are obtained from those products, since there are colors that cannot be obtained and she has to continue using artificial ones or someone asks her to do it with that material, but it is the minimum.
Among the fruits, flowers, roots and barks he uses are cempasúchil flowers, avocado seeds, onion, roots such as cúcura, bark such as Brazilian and blue wood, indigo and the nopalero grana cochinilla insect, which is from Oaxaca.
When the Europeans arrived, they used the grana cochinilla for makeup and for food coloring, mainly for sausage and ham, because it provides an intense red color.
She said that after she put each of the fruits, flowers and bark in water, they released the ink, she tried it and realized that it can be worked on cotton, linen and wool fabrics.
Carla expressed that there are colors that are difficult to obtain, such as black and gray, because they are obtained from trees that do not grow in Mexico, so if someone asks for a garment of that color, she tells them that it has to be made with an artificial dye.
Vegetable dyes represent a sustainable source compared to their synthetic counterpart, since they are a renewable resource; synthetic dyes are not, they come from petroleum.
Synthetic dyes are dangerous for consumers and very dangerous for industry workers.
Azcorra Aguilar pointed out that the garments she sells are cotton t-shirts, shorts, dresses and skirts, and although for now she tends to buy more people who are attached to environmentalism, there are more and more people interested in this.
Fast Fashion means that the garments cost 50 or 70 pesos, while the handmade garments cost up to 350 pesos, but there are people who realize that it is a handmade work and value the quality.
Among the drawings she makes are: hearts, spirals, small spots, horizontal lines, and to make the drawings she uses rubber bands and threads.
On average she sells between five to ten garments in a month and in a high month she has sold up to 20 garments.
“I do not dedicate myself completely to this, I combine it with the classes I teach at the university, so I also have the support of a photographer and sometimes even people to see them,” she said.
He considered that there are few people who use natural pigments, he only knows of a couple of girls and some plastic artists for their works.
She currently has a few points of sale, supplies to artisans, also attends bazaars and belongs to the collective of entrepreneurs Kilómetro Zero (environmental products), which was created by Rosana Guzmán Alcudia, a business graduate.
The garments are priced between 290 and 350 pesos. For further information, please call 9991 09 21 76.
TYT Newsroom
