Martha Carolina: Learning to Live After Hearing the Word “Cancer”
The word cancer contains only six letters. And yet, it can alter the entire architecture of a life.
Martha Carolina Hernández Sánchez was 58 when a routine checkup changed the horizon of her future.
In 2022, her gynecologist identified an abnormality during a mammogram and referred her to an oncologist. The diagnosis was ductal carcinoma in situ.
For Martha Carolina, however, the clinical language meant something much more immediate.
Death.
“That diagnosis was synonymous with death,” she recalls.
Fear did not arrive alone. Grief came with it, along with existential questions and an overwhelming accumulation of emotions that, she says, were difficult to contain.
But three years can change many things.
Not necessarily because everything that happened disappears, but because the way we learn to look at it can change.
Martha Carolina began seeking information. She listened to the stories of other women. She found support. And, gradually, she came to understand something that would become central to her own experience: learning to process emotions can also change the way we make decisions.
Today, she speaks about cancer differently.
Not as a definition of who she is, but as an experience that taught her to value time.
Her purpose now, she says, is to live with serenity.
It is within that shift in perspective that Kintsugi: The Art of Being Reborn finds its meaning.
The Haute à Porter collection does not attempt to construct an idealized image of survival. It does not suggest that cancer creates beauty, nor does it turn illness into a convenient metaphor.
Instead, it does something more complex: it creates space for women who have lived through breast cancer to decide how their stories are told.
In collaboration with Una Pincelada por la Vida, a Guadalajara-based organization, the project uses body paint to transform survivors’ bodies into platforms for expression. Since 2017, the initiative has worked to support, strengthen, and empower women and men who have experienced breast cancer through art and community.
The campaign photographs show bodies covered in paint, visible scars, and, in some cases, the absence of a breast.
There is no attempt to conceal.
There is an intention to look.
That gesture matters because breast cancer is far from a marginal experience. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 2.4 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide in 2024, while approximately 694,000 people died from the disease. The WHO also notes that roughly 80 percent of breast cancer cases occur in women without specific identifiable risk factors beyond sex and age.
A body transformed with body paint as part of HAUTE À PORTER’s Kintsugi campaign.
Why Kintsugi Should Not Be Confined to October
For that reason, the message behind Kintsugi should not be limited to October.
Awareness must become part of everyday conversation: access to information, early detection, emotional support, and appropriate medical care.
Haute à Porter enters that conversation through fashion.
Founded and led by Mexican designer Jehsel Lau, the label has built its identity around slow fashion, zero-waste principles, and the creation of one-of-a-kind pieces. With training that also includes costume design and professional experience in Europe, Lau returned to Mexico and developed a creative practice that brings together high fashion, innovation, and responsibility.
Inclusion has been part of that journey.
PRINCE, for example, incorporated Braille into a collection designed to increase visibility for people with visual disabilities and challenge the fashion industry's longstanding lack of representation.
With Kintsugi, the question expands.
Which bodies are allowed to appear in a fashion campaign?
Which stories do we consider worthy of being photographed?
Can a scar become part of an aesthetic identity without ever ceasing to be a scar?
The answers are not found on a runway.
They are found in women like Ana, Martha Elena, and Martha Carolina.
They are also found in the hands that learned to sew.
During the project, Lau taught garment-making techniques to women from Una Pincelada por la Vida, who participated in the creation of the collection's skirts. Sewing became a practical, collective, and creative activity.
For the designer, making something with one's hands can become a form of therapy: a way to remain present, reclaim a sense of autonomy, and transform emotions into something tangible.
The collection also incorporates zero-waste pattern cutting. Current pieces, including the Falda Rosa Soru, are described as using recovered fabric, 100 percent cotton, and zero-waste construction principles.
But the most important material in Kintsugi is not cotton.
It is story.
Martha Carolina expresses the idea simply: every woman should know that she has immense value, and that she is beautiful and unique.
Perhaps that is where the real luxury Haute à Porter is attempting to redefine from Mexico begins.
Not the luxury of having more.
The luxury of seeing more clearly.
Of producing fewer pieces, but making them matter. Of using a textile instead of discarding it. Of designing for bodies that do not always appear in fashion campaigns. Of listening to a woman before dressing her.
And, perhaps most importantly, of understanding that a garment can become far more than a garment when it begins with a human conversation.
Kintsugi began with women who survived.
But its question belongs to everyone:
What do we do with the life we still have?
The Conversation Continues
The stories of Ana, Martha Elena, and Martha Carolina should not be understood as three isolated happy endings. They are three testimonies within a much larger conversation.
Breast cancer continues to affect millions of women around the world. Early detection, access to diagnosis, and appropriate treatment remain essential.
That is why Kintsugi is not an October campaign.
It is an invitation to keep the conversation open.
To ask questions.
To seek information.
To support one another.
To refuse shame around the body.
To ensure that no one has to face a diagnosis alone.
To remember that behind every statistic is a person.
And behind every person, there may be a story that still deserves to be told.
The Kintsugi collection is part of Haute à Porter’s broader commitment to conscious fashion. Its pieces are developed around zero-waste principles, and products such as the Falda Rosa Soru specify the use of recovered fabric and a 100 percent cotton composition.
Before purchasing a piece from the collection, customers are encouraged to consult the size chart provided for the specific product. Haute à Porter recommends reviewing the measurement guide carefully before placing an order due to its specialized sizing system.
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