Puno

Puno is the Peruvian side of the lake. Copacabana faces it from Bolivia across the water. The town climbs a hillside above a bay full of totora reed, and out on that reed live the Uros, on islands they build and rebuild from the reed itself. Our Puno cap is cut from a lakeside stripe in the blues of that water, and it belongs to the lake family, Qucha.

The lake

At 3,800 metres, Titicaca is the highest lake in the world that big ships can sail, and Puno is its main port. The bay in front of the town is shallow and thick with totora, the reed the Uros people have used for centuries to build boats, houses and the floating islands they live on. A few dozen islands are still inhabited, anchored to the lake bed, a layer of fresh reed laid on top every few weeks as the old rots below.

The folk capital

Puno calls itself the folkloric capital of Peru and earns it every February, when the festival of the Virgen de la Candelaria fills the streets with dance groups in embroidered costumes for two weeks. The textile tradition on this shore is Aymara as much as Quechua, and the stripe weaves here lean into the blues and greens of the water. Sillustani, the tower tombs on a peninsula outside town, are older than the Inca.

The cap named Puno

The Puno is a curved-brim ball cap in a full lakeside stripe weave with red chakana embroidery, one of the two full-weave ball caps in the lake family. Its neighbour across the water is the Copacabana, the palest denim we make.

Other cities

All twenty on the cities. Cusco · Písac · Urubamba · Maras · Huaraz · Arequipa · Nazca · Paracas · Callao · Iquitos · Cajamarca · Tacna · La Paz · El Alto · Copacabana · Oruro · Potosí · Sucre · Cochabamba. See all the pieces named for Andean towns on headwear and bags, and the cloth families on the weaves.