dutzi bags parte de la expo 'Hilos y entramados" en Morelia
Meet the designer
Ariane Dutzi, founder and owner of dutzi design
Born and raised in Germany, Ariane Dutzi is very much a global citizen, with something of an innate resistance to putting down roots in any one place.
Ariane is also a born creator. She boils over with ideas and inspiration, and when she enters the airy workshop that houses dutzi design, her energy sweeps in behind her, rushing through the space. It takes up residence at a low simmer, but when ideas flash, it ignites and pops with excitement. dutzi is literally an extension of Ariane’s life force, a product of the person that she is.
Paris, of course, is where it all began. Ariane left home to attend Sorbonne University, and after school landed a job as a foreign correspondent with a German media group. She spent ten years covering fashion, art and design in the industry’s European epicenter, and then another four years in New York.
“Then,” she confesses, “came the midlife crisis – the first one.”
Pursuing a need for change and relief from the pace of New York life, Ariane ended up in Tulum, Mexico, a quiet beach town on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. There, the high-end hotel business that had attracted several of her friends roped Ariane in as well. In the end, what was originally intended to be a three-month sabbatical turned into a long term, on-again off-again love affair with the Mexican mistress: the Yucatán.
In her New York life, Ariane moved on from the media group and began working with the vintage buyer for Ralph Lauren. It was here that she made the official transition from correspondent to designer. Interacting constantly with top designers for the industry’s best brands, “I started to understand how their minds worked and see my own design ideas grow,” she says. “I was learning there from the best of the best.”
In her Tulum life, Ariane started her own vintage shop and even toyed around with some handbag designs, hiring a local artisan to put together a prototype. But still, Ariane remained unsure as to where her heart lay, until finally in 2007 she took the plunge and moved in with the Mexican mistress, buying and renovating a house a short drive from Tulum, in a small city called Valladolid.
Before long, the new project – the fresh idea and unique opportunity that Ariane had been looking for – literally knocked on her door. Two years after being hired, the artisan she had partnered with brought a handbag prototype to Ariane’s home. Instantly, dutzi design, Inc. was born.
“The first half of my life, I was collecting experiences,” Ariane says. “The second half of my life I want to transmit to others and create.”
Ariane knew that if she was going to launch her own line, she was going to have to do things differently. For her, responsibility is central: we all have a responsibility toward each other as fellow human beings; and the Earth is a resource that we have a responsibility to protect. These two fundamental beliefs were built into dutzi from the beginning. Not only would it be a company centered around beautiful, high-quality design, it would be a company founded on giving back.
Today, dutzi employs 23 indigenous Mayan artisans – most of them women – from Valladolid and the surrounding communities. Given a chance to employ their skills and earn an income for their families, the sense of empowerment that dutzi affords its artisans is fundamental to Ariane’s business plan. “Just to see these artisans’ expressions,” she says, “to give them hope and give them their dignity back: It’s all worth it.”
The materials that dutzi uses are eco-friendly, as well. The majority of Ariane’s bags are made from recycled burlap that she has spent years sourcing from all over Mexico. No mass production is involved: each bag is individually sewn and one-of-a-kind. Even the mecapál straps are hand made by one of the last families in the region trained in the traditional technique.
According to Ariane, “You have to establish something first and then give back.” A lifetime of travels, of learning from the world’s best designers and eventually becoming one of them herself; years of connections, discoveries and experiences collected: this has all lead to the formation of Ariane’s creative flow. Now, her vision is serving as the foundation for a project that is changing women’s lives in the Yucatán while preserving the Earth that we all call home.
El Presidente Municipal de Valladolid Roger David Alcocer vista la tienda dutzi
El Presidente Municipal de Valladolid Roger David Alcocer vista la tienda dutzi... Gracias para venir! Buen domingo a todos
— with Roger David Alcocer Garcia and Noé Rodríguez
Feliz Día International del los pueblos indígenas
Feliz Día International del los pueblos indígenas from dutzi design... Thank you to all our clients out there for supporting my women's workshop and helping me to make this World a better place little by little.
Gracias,
Ariane
Uniqueness
I hear more and more people asking me: "What's your secret on getting all the press? What's the best way to get "in"?" And I answer: "Believe it or not… People just LOVE MY BAGS. They think, they are unique. I don’t have a PR firm. Sometimes I think, I should get a PR firm, but I don’t like it. So much money spend for what? Yes, I would probably have much more sales. But somehow, I want to keep it real. People just discover my designs/our bags little by little and than they fall in love. They see the product and see the design and feel the love and the hard work we put into it. I think, it just speaks for itself. We are real. I love people. Love my work. I think, we are all unique. Thank you dear World and client out there. Thanks for recognizing us. Thanks for spreading the joy and love and feel fabulous wearing the bags. They are as unique as you are.
By the way, I love to do special orders, special design, personalize them with your monogram.
Please feel free to email me, if you have a special request for your or your love one:
info@dutzidesign.com
Enjoy the summer and thanks for spreading the word about dutzi!
Karla Franco
Hi everyone!
Please meet our new summer intern Karla Franco!
My name is Karla, I came to Valladolid from Cancun to work with Ariane Dutzi at Dutzi Design, Inc.
I studied Fashion Design in Cancun in a great school in front of the Caribbean Sea called Instituto Superior de Estudios Creativos.
At first I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, or what to study, but my parents were really supportive. I took a trip to Paris and stayed there with my family for three months and that’s when I realized I wanted to study fashion.
I love designing clothing and now here working with Ariane I am learning more about the world of accessories, and all about the business.
I’m still not sure about what I want to do next, there are so many things in the fashion industry I could do, let’s just hope it takes me back to Paris.
Karla
dutzi bags exclusively at Pop-Up Store in Atlanta
is proud to announce, that Jill Sharp Brinson is introducing dutzi design to Atlanta this weekend.
Jill Sharp Brinson—the amazing interior designer, stylist and Ballard Designs creative director who I had the profound privilege of working with on a Better Homes and Gardens feature about a year ago—is hosting the first in her series of highly curated pop-up shops, Stable, at King Plow this Sunday. The lofty setup will showcase jewelry from Charlotte-based Twig & Twine, dutzi design and many others.
For more info:http://www.stablelove.com/
Come visit her pop-up loft shop this Sunday and get your own dutzi exclusively made for Stable amongst other items.
We love her!
Ariane
dutzi black - black is not always black
Sacred sheep and woolen clothes made for dutzi black - a bag with a soul
First of all, sheep are part of the culture of the Tzotzils (indigenous people of Chiapas, a State in Mexico in the Mexican highlands); since they are sacred animals protected by the local religion, it is forbidden to hurt, to kill or to eat them. Secondly, they are also the exclusive responsibility of women, who take every decision over any issue related to these animals and also keep and manage any money derived from their sheep. The Tzotzils believe that every person has an ‘animal companion' who suffers the same fate as his or her soul mate. When a person is ill or dies so does his or her animal companion. Even when most animal companions are wild animals, it is recognised that sheep can be the secondary soul mates of shamans and healers, and this is the reason for not hurting or killing them. However, it is only sheep that are sacred, and cows, horses or pigs are just domestic animals for the Tzotzils, who raise them, kill them, eat them, or sell them as needed.
The importance of sheep is related to the traditional clothing of the Tzotzils. Clothes for ceremonial or daily use are made out of wool and any visitor to the villages or to the local markets will find men in their heavy black coats or their sleeveless white jackets. Women wear their black woollen skirts and their richly embroidered brown blouses, and they cover themselves with black shawls. Children's clothes, blankets and bedspreads are woven to blend fleeces of different colours, to create an infinite number of grey and brown shades. These woollen clothes are quite heavy and a hairy finish is highly regarded; they are also waterproof and last a very long time.
The traditional textile process is quite complex, and includes spinning the wool with a wooden spindle into threads of specific characteristics of tension and thickness to form both the weft and the warp for the loom. Also, the time-consuming process of weaving the threads with a back-strap loom is accompanied by a series of additional steps for washing, carding and felting.
Sheep husbandry among the Tzotzils also has an important economic role. Adequate amounts of high quality fleeces represent the possibility to weave clothes for every member of the family. Fleeces of such quality have a high value at the local markets, which makes them a valuable asset in case of urgent cash needs. Additional income is generated through the sales of surplus rams, old sheep, woollen garments and handicrafts, and surplus manure not used on the family land for crops.
For the women in the mountains of Chiapas, the best fleeces have long and loose staples formed by a considerable amount of long-coarse fibres with little or no kemp. Fleece colour is also very important, in order for the weavers to make all the variety of garments required by their families. All black, all white, or cinnamon brown fleeces reach the highest prices, because they are woven directly into clothes without requiring a complex dyeing process. There are 100% natural! NO dye!
Credit to the shepherdess
There are no shepherds. Only Shepaherdess. In other words, this is a business completely controlled by women ONLY. This is very important to me, because one of the strong points of dutzi design is supporting women all over the world.
By contrast, those humble shepherdesses that were considered ‘backward' for opposing progress and technology have not only been able to preserve their local sheep breeds , to improve their productive traits and to sustain their own livelihoods. Today, at least 150,000 wool sheep are kept in small flocks (of about 10 sheep) all over the mountains of Chiapas. The traditional sheep management system designed by the Tzotzil shepherdesses is efficient in terms of lamb and fleece production, it requires very little or no external inputs, and it keeps inbreeding at negligible levels.
Tzotzil shepherdesses must be credited for maintaining their sheep breeds that would be extinct by now if they had not systematically opposed official interventions aimed to dilute the genes of their ‘true sheep'. These local wool sheep of Chiapas should not only be seen as a pool of valuable genes, nor just the subject of genetic improvement research. On a wider perspective, Chiapas sheep represent the ability of human groups to design their own survival strategies and continue with their ancient culture. dutzi design is very proud to work with these women and this way be able to combine the ancient techniques with a modern design for the bags.
Dutzi design just opened its new store!
In early January, dutzi design opened its new brand store in Valladolid, Yucatan. The opening night was a hit. And Ariane introduced the new collection soon available online. 
The new store is even more classy, and elegant, located in the calzada de los frailes, an ancient street of Valladolid which leads to the Sisal Park and Covent.
The magazine mid woman published an article about us. You can check it out, as well as some photos of the event.
http://midwoman.com/y4/index.php/eventos/293-presentacion-de-dutzi-bags-de-yucatan-para-el-mundo
We wait for you to visit us at our new location!
See you soon
A visit to Dutzi in Valladolid, Mexico
I confess, I fell in love with the Yucatan after spending two months in Mexico last summer. This affection began in Valladolid doing pro bono graphic design and photography for Ariane Dutzi. A year later now, I've come back for a visit. From Playa del Carmen I took the ADO bus to Valladolid which I can't recommend enough! Clean, air conditioned with movies, it only costs $30RT, 2.5 hours each way. Valladolid is charming colonial town great to spend either an afternoon or few days. Starting off in the Zocolo you can grab a delicious cappuccino at Arte Cafe to get you energized for your walk around town. You'll also need to grab a bottled water to say hydrated in the heat!
Stroll around the Zocolo and meet locals selling their hand crafts and take in the beauty of San Gervasio Cathedral. Walk 10 minutes down Calle 42 and you arrive at Dutzi which is well worth the visit in itself here. From vintage burlap handbags to fringe suede clutches to laptop covers you can find what you heart desires for every budget. In addition you can see the Mayan women at work constructing the handbags in the onsite workshop. Although as a traveler I don't care to buy a lot of souvenirs simply because I believe my photos are my treasures to take home, I do like to splurge on a hand crafted piece of art such as a Dutzi bag hand made by Mayan women. This is a unique gift to either yourself or friends and family.
Next stop, a refreshing fresh fruit popsicle at Paleteria y Neveria! Dutzi bear and I love coconut.
The handbag you purchased at Dutzi will come in good use when walking down Calle 44 to purchase some fresh fruit or vegetables. My favorite is the freshly cut pineapple and mango for 10 pesos each. Add chili powder if you want an extra kick!
Hungry for dinner? Why not treat yourself to an authentic Mexican dinner at El Mason del Marques. This time around I'm staying at La Auroa hotel which is a great option for those wanting to spend a few nights here. Note, Valladolid is a great place to stay as well if you want to visit Chichen Itza, just an hour away by ADO bus. A visit to Valladolid is true authentic Mexican experience!