Panama is a nation full of colorful imagery. But perhaps the most symbolic example of its liveliness is a traditional dress known as a mola.
For centuries, the Guna, a native group living in Panama and parts of neighboring Colombia, have been creating the colorful clothing. A mola, which translates to "shirt" in the Guna language, is a piece of traditional dress typically worn by women and known for its bright colors and complicated designs.
While there's no exact record of when the first mola was made, many historians believe that the colorful custom came from a different form of art that was common within the Guna community: body painting. "At one time, the Guna people used body painting to keep away bad spirits, "says Yanelis Ledezma, a tour guide at the Museo de la Mola (MUMO) in Panama City. "Ladies would draw symbols and signs on the bodies of their family members. Eventually, these same patterns were applied to molas. "
Ledezma estimates that creating a mola can take anywhere from 60 to 80 hours of labor to sew(缝). To create each dress, women and girls use a technique called reverse appliqué, which involves mixing two or more fabrics(织物) of different colors and sewing them together. The more fabrics used, the more complex the final piece. Often, the base fabric of a piece is black to help emphasize the other colors and make them stand out on the finished dress.
The art of creating a mola is something that's handed down from one generation of Guna women to the next. "It takes a lot of time to make a mola," Ledezma says. "Ladies will visualize the finished mola in their mind and create everything by hand without using any sort of patterns. They visually know where to put each piece of fabric, and the result is a beautiful piece of art. To this day, the mola is more than a piece of clothing; it's an important part of being part of the Guna community. "
