Ethical Fashion Blog

Fruit Salad

Bananas? Check.

Grapefruit? Check.

Lemons? Check.

Sounds like a grocery list, but I’m talking prints people! Fruit is showing up everywhere these days.

Heavy hitters like Prada, Stella McCartney and Charlotte Olympia are sending these citrus-y digs down the runway.

Fashion Never Gets Old.

Advanced Style: Age and Beauty from Ari Cohen on Nowness.com.

A great little liberating piece about fashion. Click the image above to watch the video.

Festival Fashion

Going to any festivals this summer? You can count on Mata to have some of your must-have festival looks.

Mata Traders got its start in festival booths! So, being the veterans that they are,

Mata doesn’t disappoint when looking for festival gear (made from 100% cotton so you can breathe!).

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Neon Lights

Try out this year’s huge neon trend! Neon goes great with the ‘Kaleidoscope Skirt‘.

Forget Me Not.

Wearing the ‘Forget Me Not Dress‘ on a gray and rainy day. The color is so rich!

She's Got the Look

My friend, Cody, always looks effortlessly cool.

She wore the ‘Sula Dress‘ to a casual brunch the other day and I had to snap a picture.

Crop Top

I could wear Mata’s ‘Aurora Crop Top‘ an embarrassing amount of times. It’s a great staple piece!

Trending; Spring 2012

Mata’s pieces are so right on for the upcoming season. I could go on and on about their spring/summer line (peplums, jumpsuits!, and more), but they are best known for color and hand-block prints, which are the heavy hitters this spring.

A Mata for Every Mata

Mata means mother in Hindi, y’all, and Mata Traders was so named in part to honor the women at our cooperatives.

Glitter Girls

Our intern, Carmen, came in the other day with gold nail polish and a solo sparkly nail.

LET’S TALK IKAT

Ikat is a print known and loved around the world. Mata uses ikat prints in many of their pieces, and, as we all know, Mata’s pieces are handmade by Indian women artisans. I thought I’d delve into this world of ikat and really see what is behind the scenes. I was in for a surprise. Hopes of a DIY ikat project were shattered when I found out how intricate this process is. I didn’t even know how to pronounce ikat correctly until I heard Maureen say it; it is pronounced ‘ee-kaht.’ It is a style of weaving where the yarn is dyed in zigzag or geometric patterns. The weaver chooses the exact pattern by wrapping the yarns with wax and clay before dipping it in different dyes. It is like a puzzle that gets more complicated with each color that is in the ikat design. Since the threads are dyed before they are woven it gives an “inaccurate” color distribution resulting in the enchanting blurred edges of the finished product.

CUT. IT. OUT.

You might have noticed something missing from fashion lately:

SPRING IS IN!

Do we get the most photogenic interns or what? That’s Mallika and Laura in New Buffalo, Michigan and our own talented Taylor behind the lens.

SWEET 16

A family friend asked for an advanced order on our best-selling Spring dress, the Forget Me Not. She needed it in time for her granddaughter’s 16th birthday. We literally just got it in, so I shipped it out right away. It hasn’t even gone live on the website (next week, after we send out our wholesale orders). My mom sent me this pic of Ally in the dress, and she’s looking sweet in Mata spring. What a cutie! The dress is perfect on her.

Ethical Fashion Blog

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