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Hindustan Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Indigenous fashion week in Santa Fe, New Mexico, explores heritage in silk and hides
SANTA FE, N.M. — Fashion designers from across North America are bringing inspiration from their Indigenous heritage, culture and everyday lives to three days of runway modeling starting Friday in a leading creative hub and marketplace for Indigenous art. A fashion show affiliated with the century-old Santa Fe Indian Market is collaborating this year with a counterpart from Vancouver, Canada, in a spirit of Indigenous solidarity and artistic freedom. A second, independent runway show at a rail yard district in the city has nearly doubled the bustle of models, makeup and final fittings. Three days of runway shows set to music will have models that include professionals and family, dancers and Indigenous celebrities from TV and the political sphere. Clothing and accessories rely on materials ranging from of silk to animal hides, featuring traditional beadwork, ribbons and jewelry with some contemporary twists that include digitally rendered designs and urban Native American streetwear from Phoenix. 'Native fashion, it's telling a story about our understanding of who we are individually and then within our communities,' said Taos Pueblo fashion designer Patricia Michaels, of 'Project Runway' reality TV fame. 'You're getting designers from North America that are here to express a lot of what inspires them from their own heritage and culture.' The stand-alone spring fashion week for Indigenous design is a recent outgrowth of haute couture at the summer Santa Fe Indian Market, where teeming crowds flock to outdoor displays by individual sculptors, potters, jewelers and painters. Designer Sage Mountainflower remembers playing in the streets at Indian Market as a child in the 1980s while her artist parents sold paintings and beadwork. She forged a different career in environmental administration, but the world of high fashion called to her as she sewed tribal regalia for her children at home and, eventually, brought international recognition. At age 50, Mountainflower on Friday is presenting her 'Taandi' collection — the Tewa word for 'Spring' — grounded in satin and chiffon fabric that includes embroidery patterns that invoke her personal and family heritage at the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo in the Upper Rio Grande Valley. 'I pay attention to trends, but a lot of it's just what I like,' said Mountainflower, who also traces her heritage to Taos Pueblo and the Navajo Nation. 'This year it's actually just looking at springtime and how it's evolving. … It's going to be a colorful collection." More than 20 designers are presenting at the invitation of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts. Fashion plays a prominent part in Santa Fe's renowned arts ecosystem, with Native American vendors each day selling jewelry in the central plaza, while the Institute for American Indian Arts delivers fashion-related college degrees in May. This week, a gala at the New Mexico governor's mansion welcomed fashion designers to town, along with social mixers at local galleries and bookstores and plans for pop-up fashion stores to sell clothes fresh off the fashion runway. A full-scale collaboration with Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week is bringing a northern, First Nations flair to the gathering this year with many designers crossing into the U.S. from Canada. Secwépemc artist and fashion designer Randi Nelson traveled to Santa Fe from the city of Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon to present collections forged from fur and traditionally cured hides — she uses primarily elk and caribou. The leather is tanned by hand without chemicals using inherited techniques and tools. 'We're all so different,' said Nelson, a member of the Bonaparte/St'uxwtéws First Nation who started her career in jewelry assembled from quills, shells and beads. 'There's not one pan-Indigenous theme or pan-Indigenous look. We're all taking from our individual nations, our individual teachings, the things from our family, but then also recreating them in a new and modern way.' Phoenix-based jeweler and designer Jeremy Donavan Arviso said the runway shows in Santa Fe are attempting to break out of the strictly Southwest fashion mold and become a global venue for Native design and collaboration. A panel discussion Thursday dwelled on the threat of new tariffs and prices for fashion supplies — and tensions between disposable fast fashion and Indigenous ideals. Arviso is bringing a street-smart aesthetic to two shows at the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts runway and a warehouse venue organized by Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, from the Siksika Nation. 'My work is definitely contemporary, I don't choose a whole lot of ceremonial or ancestral practices in my work,' said Arviso, who is Diné, Hopi, Akimel O'odham and Tohono O'odham, and grew up in Phoenix. 'I didn't grow up like that. … I grew up on the streets.' Arviso said his approach to fashion resembles music sampling by early rap musicians as he draws on themes from major fashion brands and elements of his own tribal cultures. He invited Toronto-based ballet dancer Madison Noon for a 'beautiful and biting' performance to introduce his collection titled Vision Quest. Santa Fe runway models will include former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland of Laguna Pueblo, adorned with clothing from Michaels and jewelry by Zuni Pueblo silversmith Veronica Poblano.
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Local Cherokee artist Rebecca Lee Kunz wins Caldecott Medal for 'Chooch Helped'
Feb. 16—Santa Fe-based artist Rebecca Lee Kunz has won the Caldecott Medal, widely considered the highest award a children's book illustrator can receive. "Chooch Helped," written by Andrea L. Rogers, was the first book Kunz ever illustrated, so she was especially stunned to learn of her win. "I am overjoyed," Kunz said. "It has been a surreal and magical past few weeks." "Chooch Helped" is a humorous and tender story about siblings that has found wide appeal. Its universal themes are filtered through the cultural particularities of contemporary Cherokee life. Kunz and Rogers are both members of the Cherokee Nation, and the characters in "Chooch Helped" are Cherokee, too. "By using the Cherokee language and (showing) traditional activities like crawdad gigging, Andrea and I are taking an active role in keeping our culture alive," Kunz said. Kunz is only the second Indigenous artist to win the Caldecott. The first was Michaela Goade in 2021 for "We Are Water Protectors." "It was crucial to Andrea that the book be about contemporary Cherokees," Kunz said. "She and I both believe that stories of today need to reflect real people doing real things. Cherokee people are not stuck in the past." Rogers' author's note in the back of "Chooch Helped" provides parents and teachers with a wealth of cultural and historical context, including information about the forced displacement of Cherokees from their homeland in the notorious Trail of Tears, as well as the Remember the Removal annual bike ride, which commemorates that displacement. "To tell an honest story with honest characters is almost an act of resistance, among so many stereotypes that still persist today," Kunz said. Kunz and Rogers, who received a Master of Fine Arts from the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, met for the first time in 2022, but they were already fans of each other's work. "Andrea was signing books at a gallery where I show my work in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, during the Cherokee National Holiday weekend," Kunz said. "When I realized who she was, I told her I had several copies of her book 'Mary and the Trail of Tears' at home. And then she realized who I was and said she was about to buy some of my artwork before I had walked up. We hit it off right away." "Most people that attend Cherokee National Holiday weekend are Cherokee, and because of that everyone there felt like kin, including Andrea," she continued. "It is like going home to be around so many other Cherokee Nation citizens. I see so much of myself in them, and I feel at peace when we're together." The illustrations in "Chooch Helped" include many small Easter eggs that families familiar with Cherokee culture will notice and appreciate. For others, those details may provide a springboard for further exploration. Kunz used the Cherokee "Four Winds" cross as a motif on the older sister's clothing, for instance, and she put bird motifs from the Moundville archaeological site into the mural that the children's grandmother is painting in the book. Beyond their rich symbolism, Kunz's illustrations have won praise for their sheer beauty. A review in Kirkus praised her "powerful images, which make stunning use of collage." "I used a combination of handmade watercolor and sketching with digital painting and collage," Kunz said. "Before this book project, I had never worked digitally and I wasn't sure I ever wanted to. But after much trial and error, I developed some techniques that matched my handmade art style, a style I developed over 30 years. It was absolutely essential that my illustration work keep the same handmade, textural, organic feel." Although born in Oklahoma, Kunz has lived in Santa Fe for her entire adult life and says the environment has had a profound effect on her art. She attended the College of Santa Fe and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. "The color palette of New Mexico, from the colors of our clay and wild grasses to the jewel-tone colors of our sunsets, has been working its way into my psyche for 30 years," Kunz said. "I feel like New Mexico gets me, and I get New Mexico." "Chooch Helped" is recommended for young readers aged 4 to 8, but older readers, including parents, have fallen in love with Kunz's dreamlike watercolor collages. "The surprise and joy about my atypical book art has been fun to witness," she said. "I think what I love most are the positive reactions from librarians. They might be my biggest allies. What better company to be in?" Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the Albuquerque Journal. He covers music, visual arts, books, and more. You can reach him at lbeitmen@
