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Colorful tote bags by Colombian designer Mercedes Salazar bear a striking visual resemblance to woven market baskets that have long been used across Anatolia, particularly by older shoppers carrying goods home from neighborhood markets.
The two bag types line up in several important ways. Both are built up from wide strips woven horizontally and vertically, creating a firm, rectangular body with a broad opening.
Their checkerboard patterns, rounded double handles, and box-like proportions also bring out a close similarity.
However, the images alone do not establish that Mercedes Salazar drew directly from Türkiye's traditional market bag. No statement or document presented alongside the designs identifies the Anatolian bag as a source of inspiration.
In Türkiye, the bag is commonly known as a pazar cantasi, meaning a market bag. Although it is sometimes described as a hasir, or straw, bag, the modern examples shown here are woven from colored plastic or synthetic strips rather than natural straw.
These practical bags come in combinations including blue and red, black and white, purple, yellow, and multicolored checkerboard patterns. Their handles are generally made from the same material and wrapped or reinforced to make them easier to carry.
The Mercedes Salazar models follow much of the same construction. Red-and-white, pink, turquoise, and green-and-white strips are woven together to create large, open-top totes with similar proportions and rounded handles.
The clearest resemblance comes through in the weaving technique. Wide strips cross over and under one another at right angles, producing repeating squares across the front, back and sides of each bag.
The color arrangements also match up visually. Traditional market bags often break up a dominant background with contrasting horizontal bands or checkerboard sections, while the Salazar designs use the same structure to set off combinations of pink, orange, white, red, turquoise and green.
The similarity carries over to the overall silhouette. Both designs have upright sides, visible woven corners and handles attached directly to the upper edge of the bag.
The shared checkerboard weave, rectangular construction, broad opening and rounded handles make the resemblance difficult to overlook. The Mercedes Salazar designs appear to turn a form closely associated in Türkiye with everyday market shopping into a brightly decorated fashion accessory.
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