Tops

Woven blouses, knit T-shirts and the huipil:

what separates them first is whether the cloth gives. A blouse is cut from woven fabric such as viscose or polyester chiffon, so it has no stretch and the shoulders and bust have to match yours; a collared, button-front shirt counts as one. A T-shirt, a strappy top or a bodysuit is knit and forgives a size either way. Tunic blouses long enough to cover the hips are a short step from dresses. The huipil is the blouse of Maya dress, sewn from one to three panels woven on a backstrap loom, with an opening for the head. Its design belongs to a particular town, and most women who wear one wear their own town’s. Long huipiles are tucked into the hand-woven wrap skirt and held in place with a woven sash; shorter ones hang loose, which is how many younger women wear them over jeans.

Brocade, double-faced weaving and embroidery on a huipil:

the technique sets most of the price. Brocade is woven in: the weaver lays extra coloured threads into the cloth while it is still on the loom, so the design is part of the fabric. Most brocade is single-faced, clean on the outside and a mass of loose floats inside. The double-faced brocade of San Antonio Aguas Calientes is counted so exactly that the piece reads the same on both sides. Embroidery goes on afterwards, by hand or machine, onto finished cloth; Santiago Atitlán is known for huipiles worked with birds and flowers in thread. Ask about the thread as well: mercerised cotton has a soft sheen, silk turns up on ceremonial pieces, and acrylic is cheaper and warmer but fuzzes with wear.

The price of a huipil and the hours behind it:

one embroidered with flowers can be had from about Q250, and a Santiago Atitlán piece dense with birds runs to around Q1,500. Fully brocaded backstrap work takes months and passes Q4,000, with the double-faced work at the top. A worn huipil keeps its value far better than a shop blouse, as long as the weave is sound, because its buyer is usually a woman looking for her own town’s design, and she weighs it against what a weaver there would charge her new. A mall blouse is the opposite: once the tags are off it competes with a rail of identical ones, so price it to go.

Checking the neck of a huipil and the seams of a blouse:

start at the neckline, which takes the most handling and is often finished with embroidery, ribbon or appliqué that frays before the body does. Then look at the panel edges where they are joined. Backstrap cloth has woven, finished edges sewn together by hand; cut and overlocked edges mean factory fabric, worth a question on a piece sold as hand-woven. On the inside, a tidy machine stitch over a backing is machine embroidery. Where dark motifs meet a white ground, look for haloes of bled colour. On a shop top, read the care label. Viscose shrinks in hot water, so measure the piece against its tag size. White blouses yellow under the arms where antiperspirant meets sweat.

Listing a huipil by its town, panels and thread:

say where it was woven, how many panels it has, whether the sides are sewn shut or left open, the technique, the thread, and whether it was for daily wear or for ceremonies. A huipil carries no size, so measure it flat, across and from shoulder to hem, and photograph the front, the back, the inside of the design and the neck up close. For a blouse or T-shirt, armpit-to-armpit width, length, label size and fibre are enough. A huipil that comes up second-hand is often one a woman outgrew or set aside for a newer one, and a buyer travelling to Sololá or Totonicapán to see it should bring the skirt she means to wear it with, because the two colours have to sit together.