Pippa Holt's eponymous range of kaftans celebrates her love of indigenous textiles, far-flung travel and beautiful, original attire. Kaftan No.151 features a bold red base with monochrome white and black woven motifs. Style with with black accessories for an urban look, or white accessories for the beach. To create the rich red dye for the yarn, weavers look to Cochineal, a parasitic insect that lives on nopal cactus. It is a very laborious process to cultivate and harvest cochineal for use in dyeing. While some weavers have a small amount of the live bugs, it usually is purchased from a professional grower. The insects look like white spots when alive and small grey pellets when dead. Before adding them to boiling water, they are ground to a fine powder on the metate.
