It has been suggested by various scholars that Kahlo adopted the Tehuana dress to please her husband, who admired powerful Zapotec women. But I would argue that her use of a hybrid dress was a calculated stylization. Kahlo was able to perceive the semiotic quality of clothing, and the ease with which it could be understood by others. Kahlo used traditional dress to strengthen her identity, while simultaneously reaffirming her political beliefs.

The discovery of the photograph of Kahlo's maternal family encourages us to look anew at other defining moments in Kahlo's life, strengthening the argument that her choice to wear Mexican traditional dresses was not merely to please Rivera, or at the very least, not for that reason alone. Kahlo's choice of style and dress was rooted in an ongoing search for self-affirmation. The quest for apparel that would help her deal with the impact of ill-health was possibly a driving force that would eventually lead her back to her mother and to the familiarity of the stylistically rigid and traditional forms of the Tehuana. Her adoption of this dress was conscious and considered, both distracting and purposeful: a complex combination of her communist ideology, her Mexican-ness, constructed from her personal traditions and as a reaction to her disabilities.

Kahlo was aware of the power of clothes from a very young age. But she was equally aware of her fragmented body after contracting polio at the age of six and suffering a near-fatal accident at the age of 18. These incidents caused her lasting pain and formed the core subject of her art, but they also informed her personal style. As a result of the polio, she was left with a wasted and shorter right leg, which is one of the reasons why she often wore long skirts. From a young age, she would wear three to four socks on her thinner calf and also wore shoes with a built-up heel to mask her asymmetry.

Kahlo would carefully decorate her shoes with bows, pieces of silk embroidered with Chinese dragon motifs, or add little bells. Her footwear has a distinctly contemporary and avant-garde feel; a pair of lilac Converse style shoes demonstrates Kahlo's visionary aesthetic. A series of three identical red boots decorated with green Chinese embroidery match her prosthetic leg—they are arguably the most enigmatic and modern objects in the collection.

Evidence of the trauma Kahlo suffered is also evident in her orthopaedic devices. Kahlo's relationship with the corset was one of support and need—her body was dependent on medical attention—but also one of rebellion. Far from allowing the corset to define her as an invalid, Kahlo decorated and adorned her corsets, making it appear as though she had explicitly chosen to wear them. She included them in the construction of her style as an essential wardrobe item, and they functioned as her second skin. Her self-fashioning was not purely visual; most of her clothes were made of lightweight fabrics such as cotton and silks, which she chose for comfort. The breathability of these fabrics allowed her to wear corsets comfortably beneath beautiful Mexican blouses.

The heavily adorned and fragmented composition of the traditional Tehuana dress enabled Kahlo to manipulate the geometry of her body's proportions. Comprising three key elements; below, a long skirt—the enagua—with a gathered waistband; above, a square-cut geometric blouse—the huipil; and, lastly, a hairstyle composed of braiding and flowers (as in the painting above), Kahlo's stylistic interpretation of the Tehuana attire allowed her to draw attention to her head and torso, shifting the viewer's focus away from her lower body. The huipil, thanks to its geometric construction, helped Kahlo to look taller and, when she was seated, prevented the fabric from bunching up around her waist, thereby avoiding discomfort. Kahlo always worked within this tripartite template, even when combining European pieces with Tehuana dress.

Kahlo's response to her disability illuminates the complex relationship between fashion and dress, functionality and self-expression; she bares all and hides all through her personal styling. According to sociologist Joanne Entwistle:

This tension between clothes as revealing and clothes as concealing of identity has also been addressed by sociologists Richard Sennett and Barbara Finkelstein, who analyzed the ways in which identity is inherent in appearance and yet, can also be hidden behind a disguise. While Kahlo would style herself from head to toe with ethnic dress, allowing her disability to be covered, she was prepared to uncover her disability unflinchingly through her art. For example, in a drawing inscribed Appearances can be Deceiving (below), Kahlo depicts her fractured body hidden beneath a transparent skirt, blouse and rebozo, covering and uncovering perhaps her greatest creation: herself.

Placing disability at the forefront of my interpretation of Kahlo's personal style provokes questions about disability as part of human experience, its relationship to fashion, dress, femininity, and identity. It was through her self-portraits and the adoption of traditional Mexican dress that Kahlo was able to examine her life, her political views, her health struggles, her accident, her turbulent marriage, and her inability to have children. When Kahlo's wardrobe was discovered, I felt I had met her personally for the first time, understanding her through her unique wardrobe, and viewing her through the lenses of disability, ethnicity, fashion, and dress. It has been a long personal journey, from dancing as a child at my great-uncle's birthday celebration, a Tehuantepec vela, to my own Tehuana wedding at which I danced the traditional zandunga, with my skirt swaying and flowers in my hair. My research has been an attempt to rediscover this powerful and fascinating woman, to truly understand her through her unique wardrobe. Through her clothes, the specter of Kahlo's essence is conveyed to us anew. We do not stare or observe—we meet, face-to-face.

In this text, disability is defined according to the World Health organization’s definition. “Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participatory restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participatory restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations.” 

Text by Circe Henestrosa, independent curator and Head of the School of Fashion, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. Excerpted from “Appearances Can Be Deceiving - Frida Kahlo’s Construction of Identity: Disability, Ethnicity and Dress” in Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up (V&A Publishing, London). Available for purchase from the Museum Stores.

Learn more about Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the de Young.

Further Reading

• Gannit Ankori, "Frida Kahlo: The Fabric of her Art," in Frida Kahlo, Emma Dexter and Tanya Barson (eds.), London, Tate Publishing, 2005
• Oriana Baddeley, ‘“Her Dress Hangs There”: De-frocking the Kahlo Cult’, Oxford Art Journal, vol. 14, no.1, 1990
• Alicia Azuela de la Cueva, et al., Tesoros de la casa Azul, Frida y Diego, Mexico City, 2007
• Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge, 2003
• Joanne Finkelstein, The Fashioned Self, Cambridge, 1991
• Hayden Herrera, ‘Why Frida Kahlo Speaks to the 90’s’, New York Times, October 28, 1990
• Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, Cambridge, 1977
• Rosemarie Garland Thompson, ‘Feminist Theory, the Body, and the Disabled Figure’ in Lennard J. Davis (ed.), Disability Studies Reader, New York, 1997
• Marta Turok, ‘Los Ajuares de Frida: Eclecticismos y Etnicidad’ in Denise and Magdalena Rosenzweig (eds.), El Ropero de Frida, Mexico City, 2007