PERK means to stick up,
to cause one’s good spirit,
and to refresh the appearance of something.
PERK
AMSTERDAM
"We like to stick out by giving new life to something old.
With local artisans,
in South America and Amsterdam, we create renewed products of vintage and antique
fabrics from the South-American Altiplano,
refreshing these woven parts of history into something new and
something to love."
TALKING
TEXTILES
Our textile collection is made of vintage and antique traditional fabrics of the South American Altiplano called “camas” or “frazadas,” or in the local Quechua
language - “pŭllŏs.”
The tradition of weaving camas goes back more than 500 years and presents a pre-Hispanic form of communication. Not one fabric is the same—each is handmade and naturally dyed, but nonetheless its distinctive color-pattern and style gives away the makers identity and location in the remote area.
"The color bright yellow could be made out of corn, the color green is mostly made from the much-loved pepper tree, and many bright colors stem from local flower and vegetables. The availability of the kind of crops people used to grow around them gave rise to the use of particular color-patterns."
FABRICS THAT SURVIVE THE PASSAGE OF TIME
When stumbling upon the beautiful fabrics from the Altiplano we were amazed by its lasting quality. Donatella, our local artisan from Bolivia tells us about how her family-made blanket still lives on.
“I still sleep under my grandmothers "pŭllŏ" when I go back to my birth village Taquina,"
Donatella tells us while working on her own skirt.
"Believe it or not, this blanket
goes back 8 or 9 generations of mothers, grandmothers,
and great-grandmothers.”
"We still live on the same land and still use the same colors to make the blankets.
Each community, even those next to each other, use
their own color-combinations
as a way of communicating
and distinguishing themselves."
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"In my village we feel that bright green, pink, yellow, egg-plant and red are the main colors of our identity.”
