Dahlia Rodriguez

I am a passionate about crafts and textiles. After prolonged and intensive professional training, I launched a brand as a maker in 2017, offering dressmaking and quilting services.

In 2020, with Svetlana Petrova from Empty Your Wardrobe and Marta Sieteiglesias from Warm and Wild, we developed the project MUB COLLECTION thanks to a grant awarded by the Worth Partnership Project. We jointly created a capsule collection designed and manufactured based on the principles of circular economy, zero waste and using artisan techniques. In 2023, I started a new collaboration project between a sustainable fashion brand, 7Rooms and artisans from Portugal and Spain, Isabel Colher and Gloria Rodriguez. The project was called ATLANTICA and funded also by the Worth Partnership Project.

My collections are inspired by cultural heritage and crafts knowledge. My commitment to sustainability, makes me to use repurposed fabrics, naturally dye vintage textiles or organics natural fibres.

Nowadays, I am finalising a Ph.D. research on Craftsdesign, Entrepreneurship, Social Innovation for Sustainability at UNIDCOM/IADE in Lisbon. Within this research, I analyse initiatives bringing crafts and design to foster social change. The aim is to promote co-creation and collaboration between artisans and designers by linking local communities, cultural heritage, and sustainability.

My favourite technique is patchwork, or almazuela as we say in Spain. Working with different textiles to make colour compositions using traditional or new patterns is what I love from this craft that I started to learn longtime ago in Lisbon (Portugal) when I was living there. In the last times, I investing efforts in learning about natural dyeing and creating my own textiles using the natural resources that my surroundings offer to me.