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In mexican The mountain town of San Isidro Buen Suesso, Virginia Veronica Arce Arce starts her days the same way she has for decades: sitting at her old Singer sewing machine, guiding bright threads into intricate patterns passed down for generations.
Arce is part of a group of talented women indigenous Artisans who collaborate to create the colorful embroidered dresses and huapiles – traditional blouses worn by indigenous women – that have become a wardrobe staple for the Mexican president claudia sheinbaum and he got a place new York Times “Most Stylish” list.
Since beginning her campaign for the presidency, Sheinbaum has worn clothing that honors the textile traditions of various Mexican indigenous communities.
“Not only is there a lot of work that goes into each embroidery, there’s tradition, there’s history, there’s heritage…each embroidery represents something that was designed and thought about by a woman,” Sheinbaum said Wednesday.
A platform for artisans
The president’s style caught the attention of The New York Times, which this month included him on its list of the Most Stylish People of 2025 and said he drew attention to the country’s indigenous fashion by wearing “embroidered clothes.”
Arce learned the art of Nahuatl embroidery from her father at a young age. His motifs of flora and fauna from the La Malinche Mountains in the central Mexican state of Tlaxcala became his signature and soon attracted Sheinbaum’s attention.
The President wore one of Arce’s embroidered designs on an elaborate purple gown to lead his first Mexican Independence Day celebration on September 15.
When the President stepped onto the balcony of the National Palace to raise the Mexican flag, millions of Mexicans watched Arce’s work.
“It was very emotional,” Arce said of how her family gathered in front of the TV to watch the familiar stitches. “When she came out and was wearing the dress, it was very emotional to see her with it, which had the embroidery of Tlaxcala and, most of all, my community.”
Repurposed, reused clothes
This wasn’t the first time Sheinbaum wore something made by Arce. One of Arce’s traditional huapiles was worn by Sheinbaum during his presidential campaign and later transformed into a formal suit by Olivia Trujillo Cortez, one of the president’s seamstresses.
Sheinbaum’s team often recycles its clothing. When Sheinbaum has worn a blouse or dress multiple times, Trujillo said, she asks to repurpose the piece into a suit or jacket, giving them new life without spending too much.
Using the embroidery and textile patterns of indigenous artisans from Oaxaca, Chiapas, and other places, Trujillo began producing suits, dresses, and formal wear for debates, campaign rallies, and, eventually, the presidential palace.
Trujillo said of Sheinbaum’s embroidered clothes, “People of all social backgrounds now want to dress like the president. It’s become a trend.”
protection against plagiarism
Like former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum has exhibited and defended Mexican popular art from plagiarism. In August, his administration accused sportswear company Adidas of ‘cultural appropriation’ by copying the design of traditional shoes known as huaraches made by the Zapotec indigenous people in Oaxaca.
In 2021, the federal government asked brands including Zara, Anthropologie and Patoval to provide public explanations as to why they copied embroidered blouses from indigenous communities of Oaxaca to sell in their stores.
These pre-Hispanic shoes and clothing, whose patterns and fabric vary by region, were viewed with disdain within Mexico for centuries. There were times during the colonial era when huipiles were burned in public bonfires in an effort to exterminate everything that came from the indigenous people.
For years, if someone wore a huipil “it looked bad,” the President said, adding that disdain for the clothing, which is an expression of racism, persists to this day in some places in the country.
From discrimination to arrogance
Claudia Vasquez Aquino, an artisan from Oaxaca state and one of several women behind the president’s signature style, is grateful that Sheinbaum is showing the world the value of indigenous clothing.
Sheinbaum was sworn in on October 1, 2024 in a beautiful ivory dress with a round neckline, long sleeves and colorful floral embroidery on part of the skirt. The dress was designed and embroidered by Vasquez in the style of the southern state of Oaxaca and sewn by Trujillo.
“You have no idea how important this is for each artisan,” said Vasquez, who still remembers how as a child she would change out of her traditional clothes to avoid being made fun of when going into town.
“We went to the extent of taking off our huipil, wearing casual blouses or pants… We didn’t want to look like an indigenous woman in the capital,” she said. “Today everything has changed.”