Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture

Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture - Preserving Tradition Through Couture

Indigenous fashion designers are using couture to preserve cultural traditions and empower First Nations communities. Through thoughtful silhouettes, meticulous craftsmanship, and culturally significant fabrics and embellishments, these visionary creators are preserving ancient techniques while pushing fashion forward.

Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week provides a platform for established and emerging designers to showcase these wearable works of art. As Creative Director Andrew Morrison explained, “Couture allows designers to really tap into their culture and traditions. It’s the ultimate expression of their vision and gives them an opportunity to share their cultural heritage with the world in a beautiful, meaningful way.”

Couture garments spotlight talents passed down over generations, from regalia-making to beadwork. Designer Kyra Harper preserves her Coast Salish legacy through wool weaving, a nearly-lost art saved by only a handful of Salish families. She dyes wool with traditional plant materials like hemlock to create woven couture with authentic patina. "This process connects me to my ancestors,” said Harper. “I feel like I’m continuing my community’s legacy one strand at a time."

Bev Koski, designer for House of Rain, modernizes 1930s button blankets into stunning couture like strapless gowns with hand-embroidered yokes. She explained, “Each piece tells a story and makes our vibrant cultures visible and celebrated.”

Cultural motifs are rendered through painstaking beadwork, like Michelle Stoneypoint’s porcupine quill embroidery for her label “12th Generation Mink.” Dion Kaszas of MOOSUM (“Beautiful” in Cree) hand-sews thousands of seed beads in symmetrical Woodlands floral patterns onto silk dresses. These intricate designs pass down ancestral knowledge. As Kaszas said, “Through beadwork, we shared our family histories. I’m continuing that tradition, bead by bead.”

Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture - Spotlight on Emerging Designers

Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week shines a spotlight on emerging First Nations designers, providing a platform for new voices and visionaries. For creators starting out, exposure at VIWF can launch careers and connect them to expanded opportunities. The talent showcased demonstrates the breadth of indigenous design and its brilliant future.

Emerging designer Janelle Wawia says VIWF was crucial in building her business. When she debuted her label at the 2018 shows, online sales immediately spiked 300%. She believes VIWF allows unknown designers to capture global attention. “It’s an amazing opportunity for up-and-coming indigenous creators to showcase our work to a wide audience.”

Also leveraging VIWF’s reach is Musqueam/Tsleil-Waututh designer Kristie Fox. Fox premiered her label “Kristie Fox Designs” at the inaugural shows in 2013 while completing the fashion program at Blanche Macdonald Centre. For an emerging creative, VIWF offered an invaluable chance to debut her vision. “VIWF gave me a platform to present my very first collection and express my cultural heritage through design,” said Fox. “It helped build my confidence as an artist.” Today, Fox’s creations are available through multiple retailers.

Emerging designers gain more than exposure from VIWF - they receive hands-on support establishing sustainable businesses. VIWF partners with NATIONAL, an indigenous business incubator, to mentor new designers on taking their brands to market. Program Coordinator Benjamin Deneault explained, “We provide guidance on pricing, costing, merchandising, and managing cash flow. Our goal is helping designers build commercially viable, ethical companies.”

Access to business education empowers youth designers like 22-year-old Andrew Morrison, founder of label “Morrison”. He credits VIWF’s mentorship for providing “invaluable knowledge about managing a fashion business sustainably and profitably.” With this support, Morrison successfully built his brand into a full-time enterprise. “The fashion week team truly wants indigenous designers not just to survive, but thrive. Their help was crucial to growing my company,” said Morrison.

Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture - Sustainable Materials Take Center Stage

Indigenous designers are pioneering sustainable materials and methods that reduce fashion’s environmental impact. By utilizing natural textiles like hemp and nettle, as well as low-waste production techniques, these creators are proving style can be planet-friendly. Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week provides a platform to highlight these innovations redefining fashion’s future.

Eco-conscious designers are replacing conventional fabrics with sustainable alternatives. Rather than cotton, a major water hog prone to pesticides, many are selecting hemp. As designer Janelle Wawia explained, “Hemp needs far less water to grow and enriches soil instead of depleting it.” Wawia utilizes hemp cultivated on BC first nations reserves for her minimalist, sculptural designs. This local supply chain keeps her carbon footprint low.

Nettle, a common weed, is another rising eco-fiber. Designer Kyra Harper spins nettle collected near her community into yarn for her Salish wool weaving. She shared, “Nettle grows abundantly allowing us to harvest it sustainably. I love transforming this unassuming plant into couture.” Models at VIWF recently strutted Harper’s nettle dresses, demonstrating this novel material’s high fashion potential.

In addition to alternative textiles, VIWF designers are utilizing production methods that minimize waste. For her architectural knitwear label “Mobican”, Isabelle DeBilly sources recycled yarn and leftover luxury fabrics. Through zero-waste patternmaking, even scraps become striking asymmetric designs. As DeBilly explained, “Every last bit contributes to completing each garment. My process aims to eliminate textile waste altogether.”

Eco-innovation also inspires Lindsey Mazac’s couture label Mecheek. For her meticulously constructed garments, Mazac utilizes a 3D design system which prints only the pattern pieces needed versus entire rolls of fabric. This precision patterning prevents leftover material. Mazac also leverages digital printing technology to apply cultural designs to finished garments rather than cutting fabrics. She explained, “This saves immense textile waste while allowing unlimited creative expression.” By embracing such inventive techniques, Mazac proves sustainability can mean limitless creativity rather than limitation.

Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture - Models Rock Runway in Regalia

Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week spotlights First Nations pride by featuring models rocking the runway in traditional regalia. This vibrant celebration of indigenous culture showcases both modern and heritage garments that connect to community identity. Seeing regalia presented as high fashion demonstrates these meaningful cultural touchstones transcend novelty - they are simultaneously contemporary and timeless.

For indigenous peoples, traditional regalia carries deep significance. Each element relays specific meaning, from colors conveying attributes to patterns symbolizing oral histories. Every bead, every feather and fringe, every choice of fabric relays cultural values and ancestral bonds. By wearing regalia, First Nations convey connection to their heritage.

Yet regalia is often misrepresented as mere costume or prop, rather than the sacred cultural emblems these garments embody. Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week challenges this trivialization by presenting regalia as high art worthy of couture catwalks. Spotlighting these looks gives authentic context to the contemporary power and pride these creations represent.

Showcasing regalia on runways alongside cutting-edge indigenous design also demonstrates the seamless fluidity between past and present. Juxtaposing these looks highlights how today's designers dynamically build upon these age-old traditions. This perspective emphasizes the false dichotomy between "modern" fashion and heritage regalia. By proudly blending old and new, these shows dissolve perceptions of Native culture as fixed in the past.

Most impactfully, seeing regalia commanding runways with power and swagger helps shatter limiting stereotypes of Native peoples as vanishing artifacts. Through this bold expression of confidence and celebration, models champion the strength, resilience and continuity of Native communities. Each commanding walk in regalia seems to say "We are still here" - not as muted shadows of the past but as vibrant, creative cultures thriving today through modern evolution of traditional roots.

For Musqueam model Vicky Peters walking in a hybrid button robe gown, this chance to display regalia as high fashion carries personal impact. "Being able to walk in my traditional regalia was just...magic. It filled me with so much pride," shared Peters. For Nuxalk model Mariah Cummings, wearing a beaded wool blanket poncho inspired by those of her ancestors was deeply empowering. As Cummings described, "I felt I was making my ancestors proud by showing the beauty of our culture. It was an emotional, powerful experience."

Other models note how seeing their regalia so elegantly spotlighted helped heal intergenerational trauma over suppression of Native cultural identity. As Anishinaabe model Wabishki Kwe shared, "Being told not to embrace our heritage left scars for our people. Proudly wearing regalia at VIWF felt like those wounds were finally allowed to heal." By providing this platform for reclaiming cultural identity through fashion, VIWF fosters healing and pride.

Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture - Showcases Diverse Tribal Influences

Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week provides a vital platform for showcasing the diversity of design and cultural influence across North America’s many First Nations tribes and communities. While the public often views Native culture as a homogenous monolith, in truth over 630 distinct tribes exist - each with their own distinct worldviews, traditions, and aesthetic perspectives expressed through fashion, art and craft. VIWF gives voice to this plurality.

Like a cultural tapestry, the shows interweave creators from tribes across British Columbia, Canada and beyond. This vibrant cross-section spotlights the nuances making each nation’s fashion unique. Designs draw from varied cultural wells, all equally rich.

Coast Salish wool weaver Kyra Harper inherits techniques passed down by her people for generations. Her minimalist dresses exude the clean modernism and reverence for natural materials that defines Salish craft. Fellow Coast Salish designer Debra Sparrow builds upon these roots differently. Her bold jewelry fuses the angular formline style of pre-contact Salish art with contemporary mediums like resin. Together their work expresses the dynamic range within one nation’s lineage.

The Nlaka’pamux Nation inspired Andrew Morrisons’s departure into fashion. His sleek, geometric label “Morrison” adapts the triangular shapes defining his people’s cultural legacy into print designs and crisp modern silhouettes. Kristie Fox’s Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh roots permeate her namesake label through subtle details like embroidered storytelling bands on cuffs and collars. These muted flourishes reflect the understated sophistication of her blended heritage.

Plains Cree designer Dion Kaszas’s beaded panels blossom with the flowers and colors of her woodland people. Dene designer Kerri Twan crafted her inaugural VIWF collection using rare copper pendants trading hands for generations in northern Dene regions. These diverse art forms, palettes and shapes collectively showcase the breadth of Native creativity.

VIWF’s emerging designer mentorship actively recruits talent from remote northern communities. This allows more First Nations to share their uniqueness and prevents domination by coastal groups. In 2018, Dene youth Phebe Staats debuted one of VIWF’s most anticipated collections after training with NATIONAL. Her flowing dresses with hand-painted imagery reflected visual traditions specific to Great Slave Lake regions.

Leveraging VIWF’s reach, designers are building international awareness of lesser-known tribes like Gitxsan and Nuxalk. Through publication and promotion of their work, VIWF empowers them to broadcast cultural identity on a global scale.

Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture - Supports Local Artisans and Communities

Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week is more than a celebration of design talent - it's also a vital economic driver uplifting indigenous artisans and communities through ethical fashion. By directly employing local First Nations craftspeople and spotlighting community-based brands, VIWF generates income that stays within indigenous communities. This circulation of dollars strengthens local cultural economies struggling under Canada's ongoing legacy of colonialism.

Many VIWF designers directly hire artisans from their home communities to handcraft elements for their collections. Mecheek, for example, partners with Tahltan beadwork artists who hand-adorn each garment with intricate cultural motifs. By valuing and compensating traditional knowledge, designers empower artisans to earn income from cultural practices often undervalued outside their communities.

Coast Salish designer Kyra Harper hires spinners, weavers and embroiderers from her nation to help craft wool and nettle-based couture preserving weaving traditions predating European contact. She explained, "I want to create jobs for our artisans to keep these skills thriving. Our people have woven for countless generations - I never want that to be lost."

Economic benefits also flow to indigenous communities when designers source textiles and materials locally. MOOSAM designer Dion Kaszas obtains all velvets, silks and leathers for her meticulous garments from First Nations studios and factories. "There's so much talent within our communities that rarely gains wider visibility," she said. "I want to showcase it on a global platform."

By sharing traditional knowledge and techniques with mainstream audiences, VIWF designers help dispel dismissing stereotypes undermining confidence in indigenous abilities. As designer Andrew Morrison stated, "The world discounts our sophistication and thinks we just do beadwork and feathers. But our craftsmanship withstands the rigors of couture. We're not just preserving our legacy - we're elevating it."

Spotlighting indigenous-owned brands through VIWF provides invaluable exposure helping them expand. Ecologyst, an accessories company fighting cultural appropriation of indigenous art through licensing agreements with artists, gained global retailers after debuting at VIWF. Founder Holly Budd noted, "We needed VIWF's platform to access key audiences. Since participating, our sales growth has allowed us to employ more indigenous artisans, fulfilling our social mission."

By driving patronage of indigenous businesses, VIWF also seeds reinvestment in Native communities themselves. As jewelry designer HiWildflower stated, "By supporting us, people are supporting First Nations causes we donate to like language preservation and land restoration. Each VIWF sale ultimately aids cultural resilience and sovereignty."

Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture - Fosters Cultural Pride and Visibility

Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week powerfully fosters cultural pride and visibility for indigenous communities who have endured generations of suppression. By boldly celebrating First Nations' vibrant living cultures instead of relegating them to museum exhibits, VIWF provides a cathartic, empowering platform for reclaiming identity. For indigenous peoples who faced punishing policies banning sacred practices like potlatches and wearing regalia, VIWF's public showcase of Native pride is liberating.

After Canada's establishment of brutal residential schools aimed at assimilating Native children through disconnecting them from their heritage, many First Nations now struggle to rediscover cultural roots stripped from their elders. Designer Andrew Morrison shared how attending a reserve school where just speaking his Gitxsan language was forbidden left his grandfather too traumatized to teach traditional knowledge. But after launching his label celebrating Gitxsan imagery at VIWF, his grandfather finally opened up with pride. Morrison reflects, "VIWF helped heal our relationship and reconnect us to what the residential schools had tried to erase."

Cree designer Michelle Stoneypoint similarly found through VIWF a path to honor the legacy of craftswomanship passed down matriarchally in her family for generations. After initially shying away from beading due to its association with oppression, launching her porcupine quillwork label at VIWF convinced Stoneypoint to embrace this gift from her ancestresses. "I thought I was turning my back on their sacrifices by rejecting beadwork," she shared. "VIWF helped me reframe it as resisting efforts to bury our culture, not the culture itself."

By placing indigenous artistry center stage as worthy of international runways, VIWF powerfully dispels internalized prejudices that Native cultural practices are unrefined folk crafts versus high art. As Anishinaabe jeweler Rebecca Belmore of Mahnomen notes, seeing her pieces debut at VIWF helped abate doubts about the sophistication of her birchbark work. "Colonialism made our people question our art's value," she reflected. "VIWF validates we have brilliant masterpieces worthy of the world's runways."

Stories of Strength and Beauty: Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Celebrates Native Culture - Empowers Next Generation of Talent

Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week is cultivating the next generation of Native design talent, ensuring the continuum of indigenous culture through creative self-expression. By providing mentorship and pathways for Native youth to launch visionary labels, VIWF fosters cultural sustainability for the future. Even small-town First Nations youth with big dreams now see success within reach thanks to VIWF’s empowering launchpad accelerating emerging talent.

Seeing Native models rocking innovative collections on glossy runways inspires indigenous youth to envision bold futures for themselves in fashion. As 16-year-old Musqueam youth Alayna George shared, “I never imagined a career could blend my Native roots and creative passions until discovering VIWF. Now I feel anything is possible, seeing all these fierce indigenous designers embracing their culture so fearlessly through fashion.”

VIWF actively engages underserved indigenous youth who lack access to arts education through outreach initiatives. Creative Director Andrew Morrison and designer Janelle Wawia conduct workshops teaching patterns and garment skills in remote reserves and inner city schools. Wawia encourages hesitant teens by sharing her journey breaking into fashion design despite scant training opportunities growing up in Saskatoon housing projects. As Wawia noted, “I want Native kids to know resources shouldn’t limit their dreams. If I can make it from where I started to VIWF, so can they.”

VIWF also empowers indigenous youth designers directly, like 17-year-old phenom Chantal Shore. When Shore debuted her sophisticated label of lace and silk dresses fusing West Coast Salish shapes with couture construction in VIWF’s 2018 NextGen show, the standing ovation affirmed her early talents. "I was overwhelmed with pride," Shore shared. "I realized I have something important to offer through design." Soon top fashion schools came courting, but Shore opted to continue refining her craft under VIWF's guidance. This gradual trajectory allowed Shore to grow at her own pace while completing high school.

Supporting indigenous youth designers with care resists putting them under excessive pressure. Andrew Morrison knows the perils of early fame, having achieved global success with his avant-garde label while still a teen. He cautions against pushing youth creatives into the limelight too fast at the expense of healthy development. "We want them to still enjoy childhood instead of burning out by 25," Morrison reflected. "VIWF nurtures talent organically."

VIWF also prepares the next generation for sustainable careers beyond fleeting moments on the runway. Through VIWF's partnership with business incubator NATIONAL, youth designers gain mentoring on pricing, budgeting, merchandising and managing cash flow - skills crucial for independent creative careers. Young designers also connect to VIWF's network of retailers and manufacturers for ongoing professional guidance and opportunities.