‘Promoting the remote': fashion meets art to bring Indigenous stories to life

The Guardian

3 days ago

The lights go down on the catwalk, as the voice of Witiyana Marika of Yothu Yindi calls out over the sound system, singing bush wallaby manikay (traditional song) in Yolŋu matha. Then Marika's first-born grandchild, Yolŋu model and Vogue cover star Magnolia Maymuru, dances on to the runway's red carpet, wallaby-style. The lights go up, revealing Cassie Leatham's Matriarchs Circles of Life gown, a New Look-style silhouette the Taungurung and Dja Dja Wurrung artist of the Kulin nation created using scrap fabrics and a traditional coil weaving technique.
As Maymuru walks slowly, proudly, down the runway, the song shifts to Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly's This Land is Mine, a ballad of intertwined perspectives – a settler-colonial one, in which Country can be bought and owned, and an Aboriginal one in which Country and self are inextricably connected.
We're on Larrakia country, Garramilla/Darwin, for Country to Couture, the annual showcase of First Nations fashion and textiles. The show's powerful opening encapsulates everything that makes Country to Couture unlike any other fashion event in Australia. It's the sense of cross-generational relationships; the sense of community and kinship; the celebration of culture and connection to Country; the focus on caring for the environment.
Over the evening, 20 collections by First Nations designers and artists – ranging from debuts to more established labels such as Magpie Goose and Delvene Cockatoo-Collins – are showcased by First Nations models, to an entirely First Nations soundtrack. When Malyangapa Barkindji rapper Barkaa hits the runway mid-show and sings 'this is my fuckin house' (as her mother, award-winning jewellery designer Cleonie Quayle, watches on from the front row), you really feel it.
The next morning Maymuru tells me she was in tears just moments before the show opened. Waiting to walk, she'd peeped a retrospective slideshow on the big screens either side of the runway, and seen photos of herself at the very first Country to Couture in 2016. It was her first time on the runway, aged 19. 'It all came flooding back,' says the model. 'The tears just started flowing.'
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Maymuru wasn't only thinking of her own journey. 'There's been such a big shift [in the fashion industry] since I started out back in 2016; a huge wave of First Nations fashion and models,' she says. 'To be a part of a generation where we made a huge movement that changed the nation – [and] to be a part of it from the beginning right up until now – it was just an incredible feeling.'
Country to Couture, now in its 10th year, has been a vital part of that movement: the first and largest showcase of First Nations fashion.
But Country to Couture has always been as much about art as apparel. Started by Darwin Aboriginal art fair (DAAF) in response to the demands of participating arts centres – most of them in remote communities – it has consistently foregrounded collaborations between artists and fashion designers.
At the heart of it all is Country and culture, says the DAAF artistic director, Simon Carmichael, a Ngugi man from Quandamooka Country in south-east Queensland. 'Across all of the different art forms, whether it's performance or fashion or design … these stories are brought to life in really impactful and vibrant ways that enable people to connect with the stories and learn more.'
Michelle Maynard, a Tasmanian Aboriginal designer and manager of Indigenous Fashion Projects, which runs Country to Couture, says the event is 'not trying to replicate the mainstream fashion industry'.
'That's there for people if their aspirations lie in the commercial landscape,' she says. 'But I think the greater percentage of our participants' aspirations aren't.'
'We're kind of carving out our own shape of how we want to participate in fashion.'
Maymuru, who has walked runways across Australia, says Country to Couture is unlike any other. 'It's promoting the remote,' she says. 'You get to see people's identities; you see who they are in their designs. You hear their stories. Each and every single one of us have our own totems, our own songlines, our own Country. And we tell these stories through art and through fashion – and DAAF allows us to show it to the world. I just think that's amazing.'
She closed this year's first runway show in a cape featuring hand-painted designs by artists from Bula'Bula Arts in the remote Yolŋu community of Ramingining in north-east Arnhem Land.
'That cape actually represented the art centre, the people, the land,' says Maymuru. 'I was very honoured to wear it.' Before the show, she met two of the artists backstage, and discovered a connection with one of them through the Yolŋu kinship system. 'Turns out I call the designer grandad! It was just such a special moment,' she says.
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It was Bula'Bula's third Country to Couture and second year collaborating with Darwin fashion designer Marcia Russell, AKA Black Cat Couture. Usually the artists work in traditional forms of weaving and painting using natural materials, and Angela Banyawarra, whose paintings of Gumang (magpie geese) – one of her totems – featured in the collection, says there is a 'freedom' in painting traditional designs in a new medium.
The main goal, however, is sharing ancient stories: 'The way we paint comes from where we come from and where we belong.' Painting garments is a way to 'show everyone what it's all about', Banyawarra says.
For people in Ramingining, meanwhile, wearing clothes featuring their traditional designs and totems, is empowering. 'It's good for the Indigenous young ladies to wear it … we feel proud,' Banyawarra says.
Eunice Yu, a Yawuru and Bunuba woman and manager of Nagula Jarndu, a women's arts and resource centre in Broome that was part of Country to Couture's first year, talks about 'mabu liyan', a Yawuru concept that 'embodies this whole sense of feeling good about everything that you do'. The women working with Nagula Jarndu want to see their art on clothes because 'it's something you can wear and it makes you feel good', she says. 'Some things are out of your control, but we want to be able to feel good all of the time.'
This year, Nagula Jarndu partnered with Saheli Women, a like-minded social enterprise based in Rajasthan, India, bringing together Yawuru designs with Indian block-printing, embroidery and natural dyeing techniques to produce a collection of loose, flowing dresses and casual pants and tops.
As with all Nagula Jarndu's collections, the artists will earn commission from selling their clothes. The centre, meanwhile, used the partnership with Saheli, an established atelier, to expand their thinking around financially and environmentally sustainable models within fashion.
'We don't want to contribute to the big waste management issues [in fashion],' Yu says. 'We're going to look at sustainable ways of producing and manufacturing.'
Magpie Goose, a fashion label and social enterprise based in Magandjin/Meanjin/Brisbane, is also driven by the cultural and economic empowerment of the artists it works with. For every collection, the label partners with a different arts centre or collective for its prints, and so far it has raised more than $700,000 in royalties for these artists.
'Artists and stories are the focus,' says co-owner Amanda Hayman, a Wakka Wakka and Kalkadoon woman and artist. 'Fashion is just a platform.'
For this year's Country to Couture – their second – they debuted a collaboration with a collective of Quandamooka artists including 2025 Natsiaa finalist Elisa Jane Carmichael.
Hayman says fashion is a tough business and 'definitely not a money maker'. Although Magpie Goose is more of 'a love project', she says 'it does create impact for the remote communities that we work with'.
'It's also beautiful to see the artworks transformed into this other thing – and for the artists, to see other people wearing their story is really special.'
Dee Jefferson travelled to Darwin courtesy of Tourism NT