Min & Mon Bolsas Wayuu

Meet the Min & Mon Bolsas Wayuu

Craftsmanship is the very heart and soul of Min & Mon.

Our company was inspired and committed to preserve the ancient tradition of leathercraft in Colombia. And now, it is our honor to uplift another kind of Colombian tradition!

We are thrilled to announce the launch of a unique collaboration with the Wayuu communities in the Guajira region of Colombia. We had the extraordinary opportunity to commission these skilled artists to take our designs and interpret them into new ancestral patterns, resulting in an exquisite blend of ancient traditions mixed with Min & Mon motifs, all centered around the celebration of art, color, and culture.

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Meet the Wayuu

When we hear the words bolsa Wayuu, we immediately think of brightly patterned bags bought on trips to Cartagena, of marketplaces lined with zigzags and starbursts of color. These bolsas Wayuu are so embedded in our DNA that their style is synonymous with Colombian art and culture, and their colors and patterns are a large part of the inspiration behind Min & Mon.

Behind the beautiful hues lay centuries of craftsmanship and care. Wayuu bags originate in the La Guajira region of Colombia, where they are crocheted by hand by the indigenous tribes who reside there. These tribes have resisted colonization and built their own matriarchal society in the Colombia desert, where they have relied on the art of crochet and weaving to support their people for generations.

These susu e inuushi, as known in the Wayunaiki dialect, are handwoven by Wayuu women in the indigenous reservation Mayabangloma. Each tribe has a unique pattern and colorway they work into their designs, the diagonal lines representing the journeys their ancestors made across different topographical landscapes.

 

Ancient Meets Modern

When we approached the tribe with our designs, it was so important for us to honor those techniques and journeys. We worked carefully with the tribes to merge our illustrations with the graphic patterns of mochilas, going back and forth over several weeks to fine tune the details. The clouds pattern was especially collaborative - we had to find a way to take our curvy clouds and turn them into blocks of color. We found that the end result had an unexpectedly pixelated feel, amusingly giving this handcrafted bag the look of modern 8-bit video games.

In some ways, it’s like our stories are being told with their voice, and in that way we can honor their traditions and culture while also giving their voice a louder platform in the digital world. Our creativity combined into a beautiful duality, bridging the past, present and future, all in a celebration of Colombian art, heritage, and of course, color.

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