El Chapo: Fashion Guru
By 
OMG, I HAVE TO OWN THIS EL CHAPO COAT!
I’m a little disappointed that the U.S. and Mexico haven’t started a new era of relations with a trade. You extradite El Chapo to us. We extradite Sean Penn to you. It’s brilliant. The problem may be that Mexico does not want to bring such a horrible writer into its nation and really, who could blame it. It’s like when Americans say they wish we could give Texas back to Mexico. What did Mexico do to us that it deserves Texas? Talk about a new era of neo-imperialism. We shouldn’t be using Mexico to dump our national sewage. And thus we have to keep Texas and we have to keep Sean Penn.
In any case, Americans may have a new Che to inspire some Latin American fashions:
“We noticed on Saturday night,” he said, when friends and customers started calling. The brothers discovered that two Rolling Stone photos showed Guzmán in shirts of their design. The Esteghbals wasted no time. They advertised.
“MOST WANTED SHIRT” quickly appeared on the website of their store, Barabas, below the famous photo of Penn and Guzmán shaking hands, the drug lord in a shirt striped silver and light and coated with a black cobweb design. The fabric – silk, according to Penn – gleams with a metallic sheen. Esteghbal explained, unprompted: “He’s a most-wanted man!”
In a video for the magazine, Guzmán appears in a shirt with a similar paisley print, but in two shades of neon blue. He could be incognito only hiding in a forest of glowsticks and discoteca strobe lights, or at the scene of a particularly hideous detergent accident at the laundromat.
Esteghbal said he did not know why Guzmán would have been drawn to the shirt – “probably the design”.
The brothers’ website describes their “philosophy of fashion” with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, the former first lady and civil rights activist, that reads: “One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.”
“Good words, good thoughts, good deeds” is the brothers’ mantra.
Asked about the risks of his advertising – that people might associate Barabas clothing with the brutal murders, cartel wars and legacy of corruption and addiction that Guzmán’s name suggests – Esteghbal paused to think. “No no, we’re just making clothes.
“I cannot say anything right now on that. They can think however they want to think, but reality is reality.”
For now, he said he’s content to sell the shirt, $128 a pop. “And sales are skyrocketing.”
If there’s anything that Eleanor Roosevelt cared more about than fashion, I just don’t know what it could be. Certainly she has a lot in common with El Chapo. And I’m sure Esteghbal will totally donate all that cash he’s making on El Chapo shirts to the victims of Sinaloa Cartel violence….