The noonday sun beats down on agave and sansevieria fields as Nate Berkus accompanied a group of design aficionados on a tour of a working henequen farm in Yucatán. I was frantically waving a straw hand fan, desperate for relief from the 90-something-degree heat. But Berkus, in his white T-shirt and chinos, kept his cool as he peppered the hacienda’s owners, designer Angela Damman and her husband Scott, with questions about how they revived henequen production on this historic farm. “Do animals eat the plants?” he wondered. “How do you harvest it?”

The Dammans’ working henequen farm

Courtesy of Capital One

Nate Berkus and Andrea Damman

Courtesy of Capital One

One of Damman’s maximalist shaggy chandeliers

Courtesy of Capital One

Scott led us into a courtyard framed by the crumbling walls of a roofless ruin. Inside, piles of white fiber extracted from the plants’ leaves awaited combing, destined for everything from handbags to the shaggy chandeliers that have made Damman a rising design star.…