Everything is now starting to make sense to him. At least to a degree that he couldn’t find before. Ivan was born among wool, but it took him a long time to understand that this was his destiny. He discovered it when he didn’t have much more to lose, after years of disappointments and frustrations, of feeling lost because he couldn’t find his call. He tried his luck in veterinary medicine and industrial engineering, paths that led nowhere but showed him how lost he was. After his journey, he decided to launch himself into what he truly enjoyed: fashion design. To do so, he moved to Bogota. There, things began to smooth out: he finally felt comfortable with his glasses, his long hair and the rockstar looks he loved to wear. Although he had the idea of painting figurines and learning about fashion trends, as well as of being in fashion shows, he had to roll up his sleeves and learn everything about sewing and mastering the flatbed machine. Those were good years.

However, getting a job in the field and, worse, coming up with a brand, was very difficult. Because of this, he returned to Paipa, the land that welcomed his parents when they decided to settle down after spending a few years in Tunja, the city where he was born. The thought that he was wasting his talent by selling imported clothes from sunrise to sunset kept him unhappy. Until Doña María Concepción Gamba, his mother, who was a weaver and embroiderer, who had helped him through all his ups and downs despite not having a comfortable home, saw him in the state that he was and offered him to work together with her.

And so, light returned when he began to imagine a different ruana. He could finally practice his career and combine it with the tradition he had always had in his blood. He gathered the scraps of fabrics that had piled up in the family workshop and came up with a design that people liked. He was happy to feel that what he was starting to do was finally being valued. “Good stuff came from scraps, from those things that sometimes people throw away. Now I see that, in some way, my life project was born from scraps, and I understand how beautiful it is to rescue what gets discarded. I think that’s how life is.” With the firmness of at last having spun the fragments of his life that were loose, he understood his roots and was able to truly begin.

Together with his mother, he has continued with Tierra de Mantos, the weaving store that they established with his father as soon as they moved to Paipa in 1981. There they honor the Muisca origin of the department of Boyacá, Boiaca, which means land of cloaks and blankets. They mix products of the purest tradition of Boyacá weaving with others that have touches of innovation especially crafted for the most experienced. Always, of course, with the perfectionist’s eye that makes his wares have their characteristic impeccable finishes. Ivan, already in his element and accomplished, is clear that the legacy of the Mendez Gamba family continues.