Antolina Paris is the name of a new collection of shoes based on the special concept created by Mariela Montiel. Antolina was her paternal grandmother’s first name whose personality and tenderness suffused her childhood. Antolina, a name that at once evokes her Paraguayan origins, a country deep in the heart of South America.
These shoes are made from a hand-woven material traditional to the Makas Indians, a Paraguayan ethnic tribe. The cotton is hand-picked, spun and woven after dying the material with vibrant and luminous colors inspired by the surroundings; azure blue for the sky of the Guarani territory and the mighty River Paraguay, the ever present greens of the tropical forest, intense red of the earth, and the pulsating yellow of the sun that burns bright each day in the sky above this country.
With these magnificent fabrics and the designs, the shoes take on a life between the hands and the factory of the master creator of espadrilles, Louis Castaner who since 1927 has produced the most elegant espadrilles worn by generations of refined women such as Grace Kelly.
The exclusive colors of the shoes not only decorate the feet but also provide a means of living for the indigenous tribes, a beating heart in the forest of the South American Indian. Thanks to Giuseppe Baiardo, whithout whose support this project would not have been possible, an endangered craft is revitalized and a struggling community is rejuvenated.
