"I like to feel light when I move, it's an invitation to let the world fill you up."
— Ainhoa Cortés
A designer who studies how things are made — and Why that matters
Ainhoa Cortés is a textile designer, researcher, and educator who has spent the past decade building a practice around a deceptively simple question: what stories do fabrics hold?
Born in Spain and based between Madrid and Gothenburg since 2019, she trained in Fashion Design (Madrid, 2015), Textile Design (Borås, 2019), and recently completed a Master's in Design at the University of Gothenburg (2025), where she investigated the textile history of cargo containers through a collective publication. She has worked as a designer and design director for commercial brands across clothing, footwear, and product. She is currently studying research pedagogy at the University of Gothenburg — entirely from the road.
We found Ainhoa through her work and the quiet way she moves through the world: with a notebook, a curious eye, and very little else. That felt like something worth talking about.
Somewhere between the city and the slow
There's something clarifying about speaking with someone mid-journey. When we connected with Ainhoa, she was sitting at an open-air café in Đà Lạt — a highland city in southern Vietnam known for its coffee plantations, mild climate, and lingering traces of French colonial architecture.
She and her partner are nine months into a journey with no fixed end, changing destinations almost weekly. She's staying with a local mother and daughter who relocated there just a year ago, drawn by cleaner air and a slower pace. In a few days, the household will be deep in Chinese New Year preparations — the kitchen already restless with anticipation.
Rituals as anchors
Movement, for Ainhoa, is not about distance. It's about rhythm.
"Rituals have always been an important part of my life," she says. "I move a lot, and small gestures remind my body that it's safe." Her mornings follow a reliable sequence: waking early with a clear head, oil pulling, some gentle movement, a good breakfast. "I love mornings. It's like starting a new project."
This relationship between routine and freedom is something we think about often at Sotiyo. The best carry products don't complicate your day — they make your rituals possible, wherever you happen to be. A morning that feels like yours, even when the city around you is entirely unfamiliar.
How cities shape the work
"The energy of big cities recharges me, inspires me, makes me restless — sometimes hyperactive. I want to feel the city's speed, discover everything." She scouts museums, galleries, libraries, art schools, and markets before arriving anywhere. Then she gets deliberately lost.
"Street time is more intuitive and changeable," she explains. "Library or café time slows the rhythm and lets me observe more carefully."
After a week of intensity, she needs to retreat — somewhere quiet, to read, research, and try to make sense of what she's absorbed.
It's a rhythm many of us recognize. The city fills you up; stillness helps you understand what you've taken in. Ainhoa has simply made that oscillation into a practice.
The objects that travel with her
Her daily carry is worth noting: phone, passport, headphones, lip balm, paper, pen, tiger balm, hand sanitizer, money and an empty bag.
That last item says something.
"I like to feel light when I move. It's an invitation — to let the world fill you up. An invitation to the body to walk without weight."
Carrying less is not minimalism as aesthetic. For Ainhoa, it's an active posture toward experience. Arriving somewhere with room to receive.
What makes an object well designed
This is where Ainhoa's background sharpens into something precise.
"I think it's related to the honesty of the material," she says. "How it's been worked, processed, finished — and how it arrives in your hands." On this trip, she's been drawn to imperfection. "Forms created from innocence or naivety, using whatever materials are at hand. What some called Adhocism in the 1970s."
It's a generous way to think about design: not as the imposition of intention, but as a kind of honesty about process. The object tells you something true about how it came to be.
That's something we hold onto when we design at Sotiyo. Every detail should earn its place — not through complexity, but through clarity.
Comfort in motion
When we asked what comfort means to her while traveling, Ainhoa's answer was immediate and sensory: silence, a library, a warm drink, being able to lie down in a public space, clothes made from natural fibers, cushioned footwear.
No hierarchy. No single definition. Comfort, for her, shifts with context — which is precisely how we think about it too.
The sharpest sense
Of all her senses in transit, Ainhoa names gut feeling first.
"Intuition is almost always with me. I think it's the strongest sense I have." After that: sight and hearing. "I pay special attention to color, materials, texture, roughness."
There's something quietly compelling about leading with instinct in a field as methodical as textile research. All that formal training hasn't suppressed her intuitive intelligence — it's refined it.
Staying present in familiar motion
We asked how she avoids autopilot. Her answers were short and worth keeping:
Observe something as if for the first time.
Close your eyes and feel how it feels.
Do things slowly.
Draw what you see.
No apps. No productivity hacks. Just attention, deliberately practiced.
What comes next
In the coming weeks, Ainhoa and her partner will head north to Sapa, where she hopes to work with indigo. After that, through Yunnan province in China, toward Tibet.
"I want to rediscover ancient ways of doing — traditions, techniques, sayings used to work with textile fibers and fabrics." At the same time, she's seeking perspective: on herself, on her vocation, on the systems she's spent years working inside of.
That combination — deep curiosity about craft, and honest questioning of context — feels rare. And necessary.
Moving with something left to discover
What stays with us from this conversation is not any single answer, but the coherence behind all of them. Ainhoa moves through the world with intention but without rigidity. She carries what she needs, keeps her eyes open, and leaves room for what she hasn't yet encountered.
That's the kind of movement Sotiyo was built around. Not speed. Not optimization. Just the quiet intelligence of someone who knows how to be present — in a café in Đà Lạt, in a Bangkok market, in a library, in a studio — and who trusts that presence is enough.
Wherever you're moving through right now, we hope you find a little of that same ease.
You can follow Ainhoa's work at ainocortes.com
Or on Instagram @ainhoa_cor
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