Filé

Filé begins with the net. Communities around the Mundaú and Manguaba lagoons knot the base mesh by hand, then embroider it with darning stitches that build motifs of fish, flowers and water.

The technique's origins sit with fishing families, and the vocabulary of the designs still comes from the lagoon.

Commercially, filé sits between craft and textile: it can be produced as panels for garment application, which makes it far easier to integrate into a collection than fully-formed pieces.

Cooperatives in Pontal da Barra handle most external orders and have become adept at translating a designer's flat sketch into stitch counts.