Native American designers have long influenced the broader fashion landscape—especially their cultural beadwork, textile weavings, and intricate patterns, all of which have been heavily referenced (often without credit). It’s surprising, then, that authentic Indigenous talent has been overlooked within mainstream fashion for as long as it has. Native designers have rarely been given the opportunity or platform to showcase in the big fashion capitals like New York, London, Milan, or Paris. But this season, change was clearly afoot.
During New York Fashion Week, Jamie Okuma became the first Native American designer to show as part of the official CFDA calendar. The Luiseño and Shoshonne Bannock designer hosted a digital presentation this season, where she debuted her new collection of ready-to-wear featuring pieces designed with her original print work. Her elegant dresses and caftans featured imagery of dentalium shells, flowers, elk teeth, and butterflies. “A lot of the flowers were taken from my own images,” Okuma told Vogue during a preview. “They were taken at my studio, or places that I’ve travelled. Flowers are like a diary for me—representing certain times in my life.”
Throughout the week, the first-ever Indigenous NYFW—a program hosted by Relative Arts—also took place at the Grace Exhibition Space in the East Village, bringing three full days of shows featuring various Indigenous talents. Highlights included a jewelry-centered presentation, featuring Copper Canoe Woman’s ovoid-shaped body jewelry, and Joe Big Mountain’s colorful porcupine quillwork. The runway presentations also featured graphic streetwear by Original Landlords, hand-woven pieces from brother-sister duo Tyler and Naiomi Glasses, and Justin Jacob Louis’s sleek suiting. The assortment of styles and mixture of tribes was refreshing—and showcased the vast diversity found within the pillars of Indigenous design.
The presence of Indigenous talent in New York even permeated outside of the spaces dedicated to them. At the Parsons MFA show, which featured 15 different graduating designers, Plains Cree talent Jontay Kahm showcased his collection of sculptural, avant-garde creations—a highlight of the show. “The inspiration was our traditional ribbon skirts, and to engineer the ribbon in new ways,” Kahm, who often reworks elements of powwow regalia, told Vogue. Better yet, his lineup featured an all-Native cast of models as well, including Quannah Chasinghorse, Heather Diamond Strongarm, Phillip Bread, Robert Doka, and Ala suinu Barnaby.
The week’s bustling party scene, meanwhile, also made way for plenty of Indigenous creatives to mix and mingle—be it models, hair and makeup artists, performers, or entrepreneurs. At an Assembly store event downtown, the dance troupe Indigenous Enterprise—clad in their colorful regalia—performed out on the Lower East Side streets for passersby. On a SoHo rooftop, set against the Manhattan skyline, the Decolonizing Wealth Project-hosted party also saw some of the week’s participating designers and models gather to celebrate what felt like the beginning of a new chapter in fashion—one where representation was finally not just a concept, but actually tangible.
