Tianguis, the famed street markets of Mexico, represent routine commerce on the one hand — fruit, tools, huaraches — and more transcendent concerns on the other; they function as weekly axes around which rotate “history, tradition, and community,” as investigative journalist Eileen Guo has noted.
“In my family we spend Sundays together. It’s essential to wake up tempranito to go to the tianguis...,” says model Samuel Coronado, who appears on the following pages together with four peers, all of whom have based their looks on key pieces sourced from the tianguis.
Linguistically derived from Classical Nahuatl, the lingua franca of the Aztec Empire, and literally derived from pre-Hispanic open-air markets of the period, tianguis remain a fundamental aspect of weekly life in Mexcio a half-millennium later. In rural areas, tianguis often serve as the principal place to shop, as Guo has noted; in cities they endure as popular, more affordable alternatives to retail stores.
The tianguis itself are language, structured systems of communication where goods and services are signs and symbols; countless queries and replies emanate from the stalls like a grand diction. Of the voices that weave in and out on any-given market day, the following five set a new tone in the vital, multi-directional conversation of global fashion.
