The indigenous iconography is one of the most powerful cultural icons from our country. Its relevance becomes more and more evident within a globalized and ephemeral world, which searchs in local traditions symbolic references and original aesthetics. In the design field we notice the increasing presence of works based on regional motives and local traditional handicrafts. This dissertation proposes a reflexion about the relation between design and the indigenous iconography in our country, broaching the differents forms that the hegemonic aesthetic system encounter the popular ones, as the indigenous. In other words, the differents forms that each of them appropriates the aesthetics elements of the other. In the design s field we are interested in investigate the design s appropriation of the indigenous iconography as well as, the designer s intervention into indigenous communities. This dissertation brings as case study, the body ornamentation of Kayapó Indians. Among the different relatively isolated Indians, who inhabit the region of the Legal Amazon nowadays, the kayapó Indians detach themselves for their meaningful aesthetic expression, beauty and refinment. Their ornamentation reflects in a formal and very synthetic way the understanding of their cosmology, social structure, relationship with nature and the construction of identity.