Hilo, Part 5 of an Ongoing Series August 2026 By Rosalinda Cruz, Founder of The Asor Collective When I started this series, I thought I was writing about history. I was wrong. Hilo has traced Puerto Rican and Caribbean textile heritage across five centuries, from TaÃno cotton cultivation and the craftswomen of Moca to the […]
The Thread Leads Here: Land, Ancestors, and the Greenwashing of Esencia Read More »
The Hilo, Part 4 of an Ongoing Series By Rosalinda Cruz, Founder of The Asor Collective When I started this series, I thought it would be four parts. I was wrong, in the best possible way. The more I have dug into this history, the more I have found that it refuses to be contained.
The Organizers: How Puerto Rican Garment Workers Reshaped American Labor Read More »
The Hilo Series, Part 3 of 4 By Rosalinda Cruz, Founder of The Asor Collective There is a sound that defines this post. It is the click of wooden bobbins meeting each other as threads weave into lace. Nellie Vera Sánchez heard that sound for the first time when she was seven years old, sitting
The Craftswomen: What the Women of Moca Wove Into the World Read More »
Hilo Part 2 By Rosalinda Cruz, Founder of The Asor Collective There is a version of the sustainable fashion conversation that begins somewhere around the 1980’s. Conscious consumers, ethical sourcing, the slow fashion movement became more mainstream in the 1990’s from an activism perspective. And it really wasn’t until 2010 that the consumer became awakened.
What Borinqueños Taught the World About Textiles Read More »