Beyond Charity:  How Fair Trade Reshapes Value in Global Textiles

Have you ever wondered who decides how much a handmade textile is worth? When we buy a sweater or a woven scarf, we usually assume the price reflects the cost of the material, the brand name, and the design. But we rarely stop to think about the people who spin, dye, and weave the fiber. In many supply chains, they are paid the least, even though their work makes the product possible.

This World Day of Social Justice, we’re thinking about what fairness really looks like in practice. In Peru’s Sacred Valley, alpaca fiber moves through many hands before it ever reaches a store. The skills behind each piece are learned over generations. Yet income can still be unpredictable. Prices shift, orders slow down, and planning for the future becomes difficult.

When an alpaca textile or garment leaves the Sacred Valley, it doesn’t go straight from the weaver to your closet. It can pass through photographers, exporters, brands, and retailers before reaching a store. With each step, the price often increases — but that doesn’t always mean the woman who made it earns more. That’s the gap many global supply chains create. At Awamaki, fair trade is about closing that gap and making sure the women who spin and weave each piece are paid fairly from the start.

From Colonial Extraction to Cultural Extractivism in Textiles

In many parts of Latin America, the way trade works today has deep roots. For centuries, raw materials were taken from rural communities and sent to cities and ports to be sold elsewhere. Even now, roads, airports, and shipping routes are designed to move products outward — from small towns to big urban centers, and from there to international markets. Wealth and decision-making tend to stay in those cities, while rural communities remain far from where prices are set and profits are made.

In textiles, this can be seen more directly. Women may spend days weaving a piece, only to sell it to a middleman who travels through communities buying at low prices. That same textile can later appear in a tourist market or boutique at several times the original price. The difference rarely goes back to the weaver.

At the same time, Indigenous designs are sometimes copied or reproduced for tourist markets without the original makers seeing much in return. Visitors come looking for “authentic” culture, but too often the benefits of that demand stay with shops, brands, or tour operators rather than the women who hold the knowledge. What moves outward isn’t only fiber or finished pieces, it’s skill, history, and identity.

What Changes with Fair Trade?

Pricing and Power

At its best, fair trade changes the terms of the relationship. It’s more than a label; it’s both a certification system and a global movement built around the idea that the products we buy are directly connected to someone else’s livelihood. Unlike conventional trade, where farmers and artisans often receive only a small fraction of the final retail price, fair trade prioritizes equitable pricing, transparency, and long-term partnership. It sets minimum prices that act as a safety net when global markets fluctuate and supports collective organization so producers have stronger bargaining power. 

In practice, this means opening conversations about real production costs (time, materials, skill, and care) rather than accepting whatever distant markets dictate. At Awamaki, this begins with pricing. We pay above the local market rate for alpaca fiber and finished textiles, working alongside cooperatives to understand what sustainable compensation requires. If artisans tell us a product cannot be made at the price we need to sell it, we adjust the design or develop something new that ensures fair pay. Pricing is a shared discussion, not a unilateral decision.

Stability and Year-Round Livelihoods

At Awamaki, our team works closely with partner cooperatives to spread orders out among members and avoid concentrating work in just a few hands. We also plan production across the year,  placing larger orders in advance when possible, so artisans can count on more consistent income. In some seasons, this means ensuring steady work; in others, it means coordinating production so women have more flexibility during peak agricultural months, when their labor is needed in the fields.

Climate volatility makes that stability even more critical. As Grimaldina, one of our partner artisans from Patachancha, explained, “when frost hits, crops can burn and nothing grows”. In those moments, agriculture alone cannot sustain a household. Income from textile production and community-based tourism becomes especially important. Craft orders continue regardless of the harvest, and hosting visitors provides earnings that are not tied to the agricultural cycle. Together, these activities help families maintain income even when weather conditions disrupt their crops.

Recognition and Reciprocity

Most importantly, fair trade reshapes what is being paid for. In textiles, that begins with design. Our collections are not created in isolation and then sent to communities to reproduce. Instead, artisans share traditional motifs and techniques that carry specific meanings, and our design team works with them to explore how those elements can be adapted for new products. Artisans return with samples, experimenting with color, scale, and layout. Together, we refine the final piece.

Many designs are rooted in Andean symbolism. The cocha, meaning “lake” in Quechua, appears in several textiles as a reference to the highland lagoons that sustain surrounding communities. Water sources are central to agriculture and herding, and weaving them into cloth reflects that close relationship with the land. When Awamaki incorporates this motif into contemporary products — such as the Woven Bucket Bag — it does so in collaboration with partner artisans, ensuring the design carries forward its connection to place rather than becoming a purely decorative element.

This collaborative process makes authorship visible. Rather than presenting textiles as the anonymous output of a brand, Awamaki names and uplifts the women who create each piece, working alongside them as partners in design and production.

In this way, trade becomes less about extraction and more about partnership, about ensuring that income, authorship, and opportunity remain rooted in the communities who create the work.

So when we ask who decides what a handmade textile is worth, the answer matters. At Awamaki, that decision is not made in a distant market alone. It is shaped in conversation, with the women who spin, dye, weave, and host visitors in their communities. Fair trade, for us, is not charity. It is the ongoing work of making sure value stays closer to where it begins.