Promotional videos vanished from Instagram within days. Comments piled up calling it theft. By mid-August 2025, what Carhartt WIP and Mexico City’s Headquarter store had promoted as a celebration of Mexican culture became the second major appropriation scandal to hit the fashion industry that month.
The headquarter carhartt collab, named “Diablos y Tecuanes,” borrowed directly from sacred indigenous dances in Oaxaca and Puebla. Communities whose traditions appeared in the collection say they were never asked.
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The Collection That Sparked Outrage
Carhartt WIP partnered with Headquarter to create a capsule collection inspired by ritual dances from Mexico’s mountainous regions. The pieces featured hand embroidery from women in the Otomí-Tepehua community of Hidalgo state, blending Carhartt’s workwear designs with Mexican textile techniques.
Six Mexican artists contributed to an exhibition at Headquarter’s Roma Norte location: Mauro Garfias, Pálida Studios, Esteban Tamayo, El BromaX, Arkatha, and Machina.
The promotional campaign filmed at Centro Ceremonial Otomí showed models wearing traditional masks and leather chaparreras, the distinctive fringed pants used in La Diablada from Santiago Juxtlahuaca. The dance represents a centuries-old battle between Moors and Christians in Mixtec tradition, performed during major religious festivals.
Indigenous Communities Respond
Within 48 hours of the announcement, Mexican news outlets La Silla Rota and NVI Noticias published reports documenting the similarities between the collection and specific ceremonial garments from Juxtlahuaca and the Tecuanes dance from Acatlán de Osorio, Puebla.
The timing compounded the problem. Just weeks earlier, Adidas had faced widespread criticism for copying huarache designs from artisans in Villa Hidalgo Yalalag without permission or compensation. The Carhartt collaboration became the second high-profile case in the same month.
Damaris Castañeda, a cultural rights activist from coastal Oaxaca who advocates for women’s inclusion in traditional dances, explained the harm to local media. “The use of traditional Danza de Los Diablos attire for commercial purposes without community consent constitutes a form of cultural appropriation that violates their rights, erases their history, and strips meaning from a deeply symbolic tradition,” she said in an interview with EDUCA.
For residents of Santiago Juxtlahuaca, the dances carry meaning beyond aesthetics. Families pass down the right to perform specific roles. The elaborate costumes take months to create. Diaspora communities in the United States maintain the tradition as a link to home.
The collection marketed these elements as design inspiration. Community members called it theft.
Who Runs Headquarter
Ricardo Campa founded Headquarter in 2004 after spending years selling t-shirts at tianguis, the sprawling open-air markets that fill Mexico City streets. The store at Colima 224 in Roma Norte carries Japanese and European streetwear brands including COMME des GARÇONS, NEIGHBORHOOD, and UNDERCOVER.
Headquarter positions itself as a curator of international fashion for Mexican customers. The boutique includes a barber shop and regularly displays work from Mexican contemporary artists.
Campa’s store had built credibility over two decades in Mexico City’s streetwear scene before this collaboration.
A Pattern Across Fashion
The Diablos y Tecuanes controversy fits a broader pattern. In the same month, Chinese fast fashion retailer Shein faced accusations of copying Zapotec embroidery designs from Oaxaca’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Artisan María Ruiz told Istmo Press that a corset featuring traditional designs she creates by hand sold for roughly 300 pesos on Shein, compared to the 4,000 pesos she charges for work that takes two to three weeks.
Mexico passed the Federal Law for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples and Communities in 2022. The law aims to prevent commercial use of indigenous cultural elements without consent. Enforcement remains difficult, particularly when international brands are involved.
Similar disputes have affected A.P.C., Isabel Marant, and Carolina Herrera in previous years. Each case follows a similar pattern: a fashion brand draws inspiration from indigenous Mexican designs, communities object, media coverage follows, and brands either apologize or stay silent.
Where the Collaboration Stands Now
Headquarter and Carhartt WIP removed the promotional videos from their social media accounts in August 2025. Neither company has issued a public statement addressing the appropriation claims or explaining whether they consulted with communities in Oaxaca and Puebla before designing the collection.
Some retailers continued selling pieces from the collection months after the initial backlash, describing them as inspired by Mexican festivities.
Six months later, the affected communities in Santiago Juxtlahuaca and Acatlán de Osorio have received no acknowledgment from either brand. The dances continue as they have for generations, performed by people whose families created and maintain traditions that briefly appeared in a streetwear campaign, then disappeared from the internet just as quickly.
