\n<\/p>\n
Since January 20, 2025\u2014though really, since the morning of November 6, 2024\u2014I\u2019ve felt a heavy weight on my heart as someone of Latino heritage. I\u2019ve always felt like an American. I was born in Florida and with the exception of about a year and a half where my family lived in Puerto Rico when I was a toddler, the United States has been my home. My parents have lived in the States since the early 1980s, and my maternal great-grandmother and great-grandfather lived in South Florida since my mother was a teenager. While being of Puerto Rican descent grants you automatic citizenship whether you\u2019re born on the island or on the mainland, people and systems in this country are quick to \u201cother\u201d you regardless.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After seeing the onslaught of illegal immigrants being coraled and booted (most of which were Latino, by the way, as if there aren\u2019t other illegal immigrants in the US), I just felt sad. Children being taken from schools, especially, just feels sacrilegious. I\u2019m not saying that anyone from anywhere can take up camp in America illegally, but seeing people that look like my father, my brother, myself being hauled away and memes about the chains of the detainees being used as \u201cASMR\u201d coming out of the WHITE HOUSE Instagram account just felt so gross.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sitting in my feels, I texted Jess with a post idea. \u201cWhat if I write a love letter to Latin American designers and artisans?\u201d \u201cYES!\u201d She replied nearly instantly. My idea was a narrative change of all the negativity of the news; deportation this<\/em>, ICE that<\/em>. Knowing that my own parents, American citizens since birth, didn\u2019t feel comfortable leaving their house without their passports\u2014just in case\u2014is A LOT. One whisper of a Spanish accent is all it takes in some places to feel unsafe these days.\u00a0<\/p>\n For anyone reading with an uncomfortable feeling forming in their stomachs and \u201cWhy are we getting political on a design blog\u201d materializing in their heads\/mouths\/fingers, let me be clear: I\u2019m not making a political statement here by leaning into my ethnicity to explore design. But for the record, and I\u2019ll say it loud for the people in the back (who have their noise-canceling headphones on), BEING BROWN HAS ALWAYS BEEN POLITICAL. We can\u2019t help but be politicized constantly, so I won\u2019t apologize for existing OR writing about being brown in design even if you perceive it as a political statement. So, let\u2019s keep moving forward.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Once I got my green light from Jess on the topic, I got to work. I sat. I pondered. Who were my favorite Latin designers, architects, creatives? Surely I could dig around all my bookmarks and identify the work of some? But my brain was foggy, and my feeds empty. How could it be that I\u2026didn\u2019t know any? Surely I knew someone<\/em> considering I\u2019ve written a few articles on the very topic during Hispanic Heritage Month in recent years\u2014the only time any publication bothers to cover us with gusto. Checking their box. \u201cLook! We wrote about brown people. Good for us.\u201d I can rattle off the names of at least<\/strong> 30 designers and makers, none of which are Latin American. A few names finally emerged for me after a deep dive in my Pinterest boards and social bookmarks (yes, people like Orlando Soria or even Marco Zamora), but I gotta be honest, I was pretty disappointed in myself. Do I not know my people at all? Or is something else going on here? (Both, I think.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Out of curiosity, I did a search on Google (which, btw, has recently removed all ethnicity- and race-based holidays from our calendars) to see if I could find some demographics for designers and architects. According to the IIDA (International Interior Design Association), \u201c73% of designers across all disciplines in the US identify as white (non-Hispanic), despite comprising only 60.1% of the population at large, per Census Bureau stats. Black people account for 13.4% of the general population but only 5% of designers and 18.4% of U.S. residents who identify as Hispanic represent only 3% of designers.\u201d<\/p>\n Three. Percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Three\u2026.<\/p>\n Percent.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not using this as an excuse for not being aware of Latino representation in the field I have known and loved for nearly 15 years. But three percent is a shockingly low number. I could write a dissertation on why I think this is. I wouldn\u2019t be the first. That\u2019s not my focus today, though.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been in the design world for a decent chunk of the four decades I\u2019ve graced this Earth. And throughout all that time, I\u2019ve so often been the outsider. At trade shows. At industry events and intimate dinners. And I\u2019m not just talking about in the US. I\u2019ve traveled to numerous countries and continents in the name of design, and nearly every time, without fail, I\u2019m the only Latin person in the room (the closest I got to some semblance of \u201csameness\u201d was when I was in Spain, but Spaniards are not considered Latino as the term is specific to those from Central and South America as well as Spanish-speaking islands in the Caribbean, BTW). <\/p>\n And clearly, maybe I\u2019m part of the problem. It\u2019s not like I couldn\u2019t name artists and creatives of my same background that inspired me. In my family alone, there are five designers of varying disciplines: My uncle is a fairly renowned shoe designer, my cousin is a jewelry designer, my other cousin is a painter, and yet another cousin is a landscape architect. My aunt was at one point in time an interior designer. And then there\u2019s me.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is part of why I didn\u2019t change my name when I got married. Arlyn Shaw could be anyone. Any ethnicity. But Arlyn Hernandez is clear. I\u2019m a Latina. And I prefer for people to know that outright. Maybe to inspire, or maybe to stand out in a sea of non-Latin names and faces. But I wear my last name like a badge of honor these days, and no one, not even my husband, can take that away from me (he would never, for the record).\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, there are plenty of Spanish, Hispanic, and Latin designers and architects in this world. There are entire editions of Architectural Digest that come out of Spain as well as Mexico and Latin America. They exist, and man are they good. If you\u2019ve ever perused the projects from these parts of the world, both in residential design and hospitality or commercial, you can feel the heart. But for the sake of today\u2019s post, on creating a \u201clove letter\u201d to Latin American designers, creatives, and creators, I\u2019m focused on people from this country<\/em> specifically. And at first mental dive, I came up short.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s a chance that I\u2019m unclear on the background of people, and perhaps I\u2019d have a longer love list if I were aware. After all, no one is obligated to write out I\u2019M MEXICAN or MY PARENTS IMMIGRATED FROM CUBA on their professional bio for their design firms. I\u2019ve been asked to write many bios for myself, and I can recall maybe a single time where I included anything about my Puerto Rican heritage. White American people don\u2019t have to confirm their nationality on their websites, so in theory, why do we? It\u2019s our right to include; it\u2019s our right to exclude.\u00a0<\/p>\n All of that said, I spent the last week digging up some of that 3% to share with you here today. To celebrate, rather. Some are artists. Some are interior designers and architects. Some are product designers or heads of brands. And if this exercise taught me anything, it\u2019s that I need to do my part as a design writer and editor to be more aware of Latin American creatives in my field; to dive deeper and find them, cheerlead them, share them in my work. Which I\u2019ll start doing\u2026right now.<\/p>\n