Our story

Exchanging all our wealth for education

It was the early 20th century, on a small rural hacienda in Cusco, in a village with no school, only a church and a police station. There was, however, a train station, the only sign of modernity. The landowners, Felipe Vidal Dolmos and Ana María Unda Dávila, had eight children. Born in 1917, Delia was the fifth sibling. The couple worked hard to raise their family. Their greatest concern was their children’s education: they hired a tutor who taught the girls reading, writing and basic arithmetic, so they could help in the family business. Humberto, the eldest son, was taken to Cusco by his father. He entered Cusco’s Science College and later attended university, where he studied philosophy, eventually becoming acknowledged as one of the major Peruvian thinkers of the 20th century. It was Humberto Vidal who created the celebration of Inti Raymi in 1944, and defined its social and symbolic significance.

After Don Felipe’s death, the family’s fortunes gradually dwindled. Humberto advised them to move to Cusco, where Delia and her sisters would have the opportunity to study. Doña Ana María did just that, but life in Cusco was not easy. For the first few years, they lived in rented properties, and she sought ways to generate income through all the skills she possessed. Delia excelled both as a student and a leader. Using her knowledge of geography, she taught younger students, and in this way, she began to contribute to the family income.

Beyond the University

Her brother Humberto’s mentorship was key in encouraging her to apply to Cusco’s San Antonio Abad National University, where she became part of a small elite of young people who readily connected with the leaders of Peru’s Indigenism movement. Delia studied education, and also literature. In 1938, she returned to Cusco’s rural areas, driven this time by a particular concern: she saw how traditional textiles were disappearing, and how widespread poverty in the Andes was preventing people from dedicating themselves to weaving.

The focus of her research was “Indigenous Textile Art”, and Delia decided to go in search of the source, which lay in the mountains. At first, her goal was academic: to demonstrate that, in the remote Andes, in spite of adverse conditions, a “resistance” existed that sustained ancestral textile art among the contemporary descendants of Peru’s ancient weavers. Her research yielded three conclusions:

1. That the backstrap loom technique employing warp and weft threads remained alive in the first half of the 20th century.
2. That the people —mainly women— who practiced the craft did so in a state of “meditation”.
3. That the iconography, in addition to possessing its own aesthetic, incorporated individual and contemporary creations; each design expressed something, each had a meaning.

In 1942, she was appointed as a professor at the university, where she taught home economics and childcare in the Faculty of Education. She is believed to have been the first woman to hold a professorship at the now three-hundred-year-old university.

The Struggle for Women’s Independence

Without abandoning her university professorship, in 1947 Delia applied for and won a Ministry of Education process to appoint the head of a new “Industrial Institute”. This was an opportunity to renew her ideas, convictions and commitment to the textile arts. She believed that the only way for a woman to cease being dependent was through her ability to generate income. She focused on introducing weaving, pattern making and sewing, cooking, baking and other skills into the curriculum. She also foresaw that the burgeoning tourism industry could constitute a market for handcrafts and textiles. And so it was that the first designs for alpaca sweaters with llama motifs were created.

The Cusco Line

Her next project was the “Cusco Line”, which consisted of employing aesthetic elements from Pre-Columbian cultures in contemporary fashion designs. Her fashion shows began to gain popularity, and she coined the slogan “the art of dressing”. Her project achieved widespread visibility when, in 1967, a Peruvian woman won the Miss World pageant wearing garments from the Cusco Line.

At the age of 80, Delia resolved to leave a record of her work and published a book, sponsored by the Municipality of Cusco, in which she shared aspects of her life, her research and her work. All the Casa San Blas décor is inspired by and based on my mother’s work in semiology.

Carlos Milla Vidal