FASHION REPORT de PERU
Part Tres - Gamarra

Right before we left Peru, we visited the Garment District in Lima (Gamarra) -- a very sketchy and bedraggled area that consisted of a few blocked off streets brimming with clothing stalls and fabric shops.

There were people dragging huge bolts of fabric and old sewing machines up the roads in wooden carts, and shop windows stuffed with sooty manikins lined the streets.


I would have loved to have checked out the fabric stands and some of these other mysterious nooks, but we were in a hurry (we were catching a plane back to the US in a few hours). Our primary mission was to get tee shirts. These tees are incredibly soft, well made, and CHEAP (about $4 American a piece). They're sold to the US to Guess, The Gap, and Banana Republic. My mother-in-law brings them when she visits so I decided I needed to see the place where they're sold and buy myself some more.

This brought us to the bottom floor of a shoddy building crammed with clothing stalls. It was hot as a crotch and there were people swarming around the tiny kiosk where the shirts were sold. Guess the secret is out about these cotton treasures.

It was a struggle to get the tee-shirts. The woman behind the counter was digging through piles of shirts that reached the ceiling. A lot had cheesy logos on them and we were after the plain ones. My mother-in-law and a slew of other shoppers barked out orders to the lady. I worked up a sweat just watching her go and felt really bad for making her work so hard for a few lousy tee shirts.

Finally, two other clerks came in to help her and things got a little easier. In the end, we ended up with a pile of sweet, soft tees and were relieved to get out of the stuffy place and back into fresh (sort of) air. I don't know how those people spend all day in that oppressive, dark place. Huge kudos to them for all their hard work so stingy tourists like me can get the tees on the cheap.