Textile Journey
From the hands of the Tribes to the hands of the Artist.
Corinna explain her Textile's travels journey.
"Each CORA piece is a tapestry of stories.
As a Painter and Fabric Storyteller, I travel the world collecting handwoven fabrics, embroidered fragments, t-dyed wonders and ancestral patterns.
I search for authentic textiles in markets, villages, sacred lands — each fabric holds the essence of its place.
Once in my studio, I cut them with intention: sometimes in raw, organic shapes for patchwork, other times following paper patterns to become part of the final design.
Some fabrics become a background, others a detail — but all are woven into one unique Artwear".
1. Mexico
My Textile Journey began in 2013, during my first time living in Mexico.
I became fascinated by the ancestral tunics called Huipil, traditionally woven on backstrap looms by women from different regions.
In the state of Oaxaca, I searched for more Huipiles and met women from the villages who still create them today.
They are important Ancestral Memory — the most ancient language, kept alive by the hands of women until our days.
From that moment on, I began collecting them with the intention of keeping them alive — and using them to create my own clothing interpretations.
At the time, I had no idea what exactly I would do. I was simply passionate — deeply moved — and I couldn’t let them go.
I bought my first Huipil, weaving red cotton from the Guerrero region — it was comfortable, protective, and didn’t need to reveal my body to feel powerful.
It allowed me to move freely through the rural countryside of Mexico, while honoring both my spiritual values of simplicity and my deep respect for their
2. Guatemala
Later, while travelling through Guatemala, I heard about the vintage market of the town of Chichicastenango — a mythical place for textile lovers.
There, I found traditional blouses from every region of Guatemala, embroidered by women across generations.
Each blouse felt like a diary of color and meaning, holding the essence of its maker.
That was the moment I truly understood: textiles are not just fabric — they are the oldest Ancestral Memory, kept alive to this day by generations of women.
I bought a generous number of them, and once back in Mexico, I started creating tunics for myself.
When I returned to Europe and wore them, people began to appreciate my style — and that’s when the idea came to life:
to create a brand of one unique Artwear, supporting and weaving together textile traditions from around the world.
3. New York – The Birth of CORA
In autumn 2014, I moved to New York, and it was there that I started working on the idea for my logo.
One thing was clear: I wanted to use a symbol from the Mayan calendar called Lamat — the Mayan Star.
Lamat is the glyph for Venus and represents new beginnings, harmony, beauty, and abundance.
I had seen this symbol in a dream, and later, while researching online, I found its exact shape manifested in a crop circle in England.
That was my sign — that was going to be the logo.
But then came the challenge: the word Lamat didn’t feel right as a name for a clothing line. It lacked the sound I was looking for.
I started brainstorming with a friend while visiting a big textile shop filled with fabrics in Manhattan.
The only idea that seemed to work a little was One Tribe, but I didn’t want to use an English name — I was looking for something that could come from any culture, something simple, universal, and easy to pronounce.
After hours of overthinking, I left my friend and took the subway home. And right there, inside the train wagon, I had a clear vision:
Some time before, while living in Brazil and then again in Mexico, people often struggled to pronounce my name Corinna.
So they started calling me CORA. It was soft, warm, easy to say in every language — and it held my essence.
The name and the logo had found each other. That’s how the name of CORA was born.
4. Back to Mexico – The First Collection
In spring 2015, I came back to Mexico, to the town where I had lived before: Tepoztlán, a magical place about an hour and a half from Mexico City.
It’s known for its ancient pyramid and for being a place where people often see UFOs — and I saw many of them myself.
About thirty minutes from town, in a small village called San Juan Tlacotenco, I had made a personal tunic the year before, with the help of a local tailor.
This time, I returned with the idea of creating my very first clothing line together with her.
I travelled to the mountains of the Puebla region, and in the rural villages, I went door to door searching for hand-embroidered fabrics.
The idea was to use those ancestral pieces to create my first one unique Artwear tunics.
I also wanted to include the CORA logo, printed along with a few simple messages that expressed the soul of the project:
“Be Natural, Be Yourself, Be CORA”, or “One Tribe”, “Love, Life, Light”.
I went to Mexico City to buy cotton fabric and metal snaps. I wanted each tunic to be made of two separate panels — front and back — that could be opened and joined with snaps. It was an old idea I had during my design school years, and it was finally time to bring it to life.
During that time, I also discovered a series of books published by the Mexican Archeological Institute, filled with sacred symbols from many Mexican Tribes.
I began to study them with curiosity and devotion — and I started using some of those symbols, screen-printed on cotton and patched onto the pieces through my own technique of spiritual patchwork.
5. Mistakes and Miracles – The Birth of the Signature Embroidery
Everything was turning out well — until the day I went to pick up the t-shirts with the CORA logo printed on them.
It happened to be the election day for the new city mayor, and the screen printers were overwhelmed.
They didn’t focus on the work properly, and more than half of the t-shirts came out ruined:
the color was spilling over the edges, blotches everywhere… it was a disaster.
The manager of the shop felt sorry (but didn’t offer a refund). He started telling me about his personal life — how he could only see one third of what a normal eye sees.
And then he gave me a speech, totally unexpected: he spoke about the Power of going through difficulties, the power of real-life challenges, and how they can bring unexpected strength.
I never forgot him. And I never saw him again.
I went back to the village in despair. I had invested a lot of money (a lot for me at that time) in those t-shirts, and I felt hopeless.
I went to sleep that night with such a low vibration.
The next morning, I went to see the tailor, who already knew what had happened.
She came up with an idea: "What if you covered the screen-printing mistakes with the same patchwork you were using for the tunics? I know a woman of the village, she can hand embroidery around the patchworks...".
The idea was looking good, the same morning, she introduced me to a woman in the village who was a skilled embroiderer.
She could add hand embroidery around the patchwork, making the t-shirts not only wearable, but actually beautiful.
We started working together for that same morning — and the result was amazing.
Just like the discovery of penicillin or LSD — the signature CORA hand embroidery around the patchwork was born by accident.
From a mistake… came something that became my recognizable sign.
It was a powerful personal lesson:
Never give up. Transform failure into vision.
And with that new spark of hope, I went on to finish the entire first collection — using exactly that technique.