Tea Collection clothing for kids with Native American art

An international clothing company’s spring fashion line exhibits Native American-inspired art and designs, including a collaboration with the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture and work by Santa Fe-based artist Gregory Lomayesva, who is of Hopi and Hispanic heritage.

The company, Tea Collection, explores a different culture around the world each season and creates children’s clothes using designs inspired or created by local artists of that region. For 2018, the company decided to focus on the United States.

Laura Boes, vice president for design, said company decision makers felt it was important to tell the story of the cultures that make up the country. Boes visited New Mexico in 2017 and her team worked with different pueblos and the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, eventually asking Lomayesva and other U.S. artists to create graphics that could be reproduced.

By commissioning local artists or creating designs inspired by these cultures, Tea Collection tried to translate motifs and styles distinguishing the culture in a way children can enjoy, Boes said.

Lomayesva said he is a self-taught artist. The contemporary painter and sculptor often uses aspects of his Hopi and Hispanic heritage in his works.

When Tea Collection approached him about the fashion line, he said he had to do a lot of tweaking before creating designs suitable for children’s clothes.

“It was nice to chill out and stop trying to be some hot artist and just return to the craft,” Lomayesva said. “It’s so fun.”

Boes said she and her team worked with representatives of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe so that as the company looked to pueblo pottery for inspiration it was not disrespecting the culture.

“A lot of clothing brands have appropriated Native American art,” Boes said. “We wanted to make sure we were telling the story in the right way.”