KEY POINTS
- President Sheinbaum rejects global luxury brands to champion local artisans, primarily women.
- Her wardrobe choices highlight support for Indigenous rights and national craftsmanship.
- Key garments for historic events feature handiwork by specific, previously overlooked artisans.
- Analysts note her deliberate fashion is a strategic political tool, not just personal style.
MEXICO CITY: Beyond the corridors of power, the political strategy of Mexico’s first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, is being woven in a different kind of room: the small tailor shops and homes of local artisans.
Her wardrobe, a deliberate departure from global luxury brands, has become a potent emblem of her platform, championing Indigenous rights, women’s empowerment, and national craftsmanship.
Conscious rejection of ‘fast fashion’
The leader has openly shunned “those brands that are super expensive,” which she associates with cultural appropriation and elitism. Instead, her sartorial philosophy is rooted in economic and cultural solidarity. “I support the weavers, the embroiderers, all those who use backstrap looms in our country, mostly women, who are a source of national pride,” Sheinbaum has stated.
This stance aligns with the Mexican government’s legal challenges against major brands like Zara and Carolina Herrera over the use of traditional Indigenous designs.
Artisans behind the authority
The president’s style is a collaborative project with local creators. Olivia Trujillo, a tailor operating from her home in a bustling Mexico City neighbourhood, is a key architect of Sheinbaum’s public image. She notes the president’s affinity for purple and burgundy, colours loaded with meaning.
Image consultant Gabriela Medina explains that purple symbolizes not only power and royalty but also the feminist resistance movement, a subtle yet powerful sartorial signal.
Each garment tells a story of revival. For Sheinbaum’s historic swearing-in ceremony in October 2024, she wore an ivory dress adorned with hand-embroidered wildflowers by Claudia Vazquez, a 43-year-old Zapotec Indigenous artist who had nearly abandoned her craft. “It changed my life,” Vazquez told AFP, highlighting the tangible impact of the president’s patronage.
Diplomatic threads and embroidered statements
Sheinbaum’s choices carry her message onto the world stage. For her first trilateral meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney in Washington, she wore a finely embroidered purple dress fitted by Trujillo at the National Palace.
Similarly, for the iconic Cry of Independence ceremony, another first for a woman, she donned a gown featuring a meticulously embroidered swallow, a two-month labour of love by artisan Virginia Arce from San Isidro Buen Progreso.
Beyond stereotype: Image as instrument
While gender analyst Laura Raquel Manzo warns of the sexist trap of over-scrutinizing women leaders’ attire, she argues that ignoring Sheinbaum’s deliberate fashion calculus would be a mistake. “To deny how image shapes authority,” Manzo notes, is to overlook a strategic political tool.
Sheinbaum, recently named one of The New York Times’ most stylish people of 2025, leverages her visibility to redirect economic and cultural capital back to marginalized communities.
In a political landscape where image is paramount, President Sheinbaum stitches her convictions directly into the fabric of her presidency, transforming every public appearance into a testament to the people and principles she governs for.
Sheinbaum, an energy engineer with a doctorate from UNAM, has co-authored over 100 articles and two books on sustainability. She contributed to the UN’s climate panel and was named one of the BBC’s 100 Women in 2018.
