Eight years ago, I took a four-week trip to Mexico and fell in love with the country's culture, cuisine, and history. It was a memorable trip, as I had the opportunity to learn about Frida Kahlo's story up close. In Mexico City, I stayed in Coyacan, the neighborhood where Frida lived until her final days, and took the opportunity to visit her home, which is now a museum.

Frida has beautiful works, but my favorite is a painting called "El marco" (The Landmark) from 1938. It's a painting with vibrant colors and flowers in the background. The colors in this work inspired me to create the color chart for my collection, and the flowers in the background became my central theme.

Like Frida, I love flowers. Flowers have many meanings, such as affection, emotion, seduction, colors, feminism, devotion, purity, and many other adjectives. For me, flowers especially represent rebirth, hope, that everything in our lives is a phase, just like the four seasons. In spring, flowers bloom, in winter some die to be born again. Flowers bloom anywhere. An example is abandoned places, the atmosphere of my collection. When I chose the theme for the 2023 collection, I was a bit lost, tired, and unmotivated until I discovered my pregnancy in November 2023. My son, who was due in mid-July 2024, came early, being born in April 2024. His premature birth left me so frustrated that I was unfortunately diagnosed with postpartum depression. For months, I saw no light, no hope at the end of the tunnel. The colors that had always been my light lost their shine, and everything went black. Today, I am reborn, just like flowers that bloom in abandoned, dark places, giving life, light, brightness, and hope.

Frida used flowers as her main accessory to illuminate her life. She wore colors, and her skirts had volume, typical of the clothing of Oaxacan women, representing the feminine with strength without losing their ancestral heritage. Braided hair has been worn for over 2,000 years by various peoples. These elements shaped my silhouettes. The volume isn't too exaggerated, with elegantly differentiated fabric textures. In Mexico, they often use papel picado as decoration, especially on the Day of the Dead. I used papel picado in two silhouettes with a laser machine to create a beautiful effect. I made all the 3D flowers by hand, like the women of the villages. The print, made from recycled fabric, is inspired by Frida's painting "El Marco," described at the beginning of the text. I used the colors from the painting and drew some typical Mexican flowers.