A fabric market I can't stop thinking about. All of them, actually.
- erika
- Jul 7
- 4 min read
I have tried not to buy things when I travel. Fabric is the exception. It has always been the exception.
I made a rule early on when I started traveling. A practical rule, born of necessity and limited luggage space. I was not going to buy things. Not souvenirs, not clothing, not objects that would need to be explained to customs and carried through airports and found a home in a life that was constantly moving.
Fabric, somehow, did not count.
I am not sure when I decided this. I think it was always true. From the first port city I walked into with a free hour and no agenda, my feet found the fabric stores before my brain had made any conscious decision. It was instinct. It was need. It was something closer to recognition — the feeling of walking into a room and understanding immediately that you belong there.
"The love for fabric is universal. It does not matter if you share a measurement system or a language or a technique. Walk into a fabric store anywhere in the world and you will find people who understand something fundamental about making things. That understanding needs no translation."
The first store I kept returning to was Parisina in Cozumel, Mexico. I docked there more times than I can count and every time, without fail, I ended up inside it. It was one of the most beautiful, most affordable fabric stores I have ever walked into anywhere in the world. Mexican woven textiles in colors that had no business being that saturated. Notions stacked floor to ceiling. I stocked up every visit. I still have fabric from Parisina that I haven't used yet — pieces I bought years ago that I am still waiting to find the right project for. Parisina has since closed in Cozumel but has reopened in Texas, which tells you something about how far good fabric stores travel and how loyal their customers are.
Cadiz, Spain was a different kind of discovery. The city itself is ancient and beautiful and every time the ship docked there, I walked the same streets and found something new. What struck me most was the notions. Hat making is serious business in Cadiz — people make their own hats to wear to weddings, elaborate constructions that require the kind of notions you simply cannot find at home. Trims and findings and tools that I had never seen before. I bought things in Cadiz without knowing exactly what I would do with them. That is, I have learned, the correct approach to a good notions shop.
Finland was an accident in the best possible way. I was in Turku for a contract and the hotel they placed me in happened to be next to a three-story fabric store. Three stories. I walked in on my first afternoon and did not leave for a very long time.
I have a deep love for face prints — abstract, graphic, unexpected prints featuring faces and figures. Finland understood this completely. I found abstract face fabric in Turku that I have not seen anywhere before or since. And then, at a Christmas market nearby, I stumbled onto Marimekko. Finnish design, bold black prints, immediately iconic. It is not cheap. But there was a street sale with discounted precut bundles, and the fabric was in my cart before I had even finished converting the price in my head. Some decisions do not require deliberation.
Ireland was wool. Everywhere, immediately, unmistakably wool. I got to watch it being processed on a farm — the full journey from fleece to fiber, handled by people who had been doing it their whole lives and whose parents had done it before them. I bought locally made scarves and socks, things that carried the knowledge of the people who made them in every stitch. That is a different kind of fabric shopping. Less about what you are going to make and more about understanding what someone else already made and why it matters.
The Middle East was silk and chiffon and the bazaars. I fell in love with bazaars completely and without reservation. The thrill of bartering. The stalls stacked with fabric in colors that don't exist in Western stores — not the same colors, not even close. Notions you simply cannot source at home. I learned how to navigate a bazaar, how to take your time, how to show interest without desperation. It is a skill. It is also one of the most enjoyable skills I have ever developed.
India deserves its own journal entry and will probably get one. Every region has its own textile tradition, its own techniques, its own specific genius. I came home with wooden block printing tools and fabric that had already been block printed in patterns that took someone's hands and someone's time and someone's inherited knowledge to produce. I came home with silks that I am still figuring out how to be worthy of.
And then there is the Fashion District in Los Angeles. Which is not a port city and not a foreign country but deserves to be in this list because it is a world unto itself. I could spend weeks there. Just digging. Fabric stacked in bolts from floor to ceiling, notions in every direction, the particular energy of a place where making things is taken completely seriously and treated as the commerce it actually is.
Every city on this list gave me something different. A color I hadn't seen. A technique I didn't know existed. A conversation conducted entirely through gesture and mutual recognition of quality. A piece of cloth that traveled with me through airports and customs and contracts until it found its way into something I made with my own hands.
I have fabric from ports I have not been back to in years. I carry it around with me the way some people carry photographs. Not as a souvenir. As a piece of somewhere I was. Something that exists because someone somewhere learned how to make it and decided it was worth making beautifully.
That is what fabric is to me. Not material. Memory. Culture. The most portable form of understanding a place that I have ever found.
I am still adding to the collection. I expect I always will be.
Come as you are. Explore as we go.
— Erika
Founder, ELE · Sewist · Ship person · Carrier of fabric from forty-five countries
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