Six Indigenous fashion designers flew from Canada to Milan to show their work to the world

During Milan Fashion Week, the city feels electric. Against a backdrop of neoclassical architecture and sparkling canals lined with aperitivo bars, Italy’s fashion capital is abuzz with the pursuit of creativity and commerce, the fullest expressions of personal style and the frisson that comes when people from all over the world connect with a shared purpose.

Off the runways, White Milano brings around 20,000 international buyers face to face with designers and their work in a series of cavernous buildings in the city’s Tortona design district; it’s the kind of fashion show whose wares actually end up in boutiques and department stores. It’s here, in February, that six Indigenous designers from Canada were invited to show their collections in a dedicated airy, industrial space.

“It’s overwhelming and exhilarating, and I feel so excited and happy for the designers,” says Sage Paul on the first morning of the show. Paul, an urban Denesuliné tskwe (woman) and a member of English River First Nation, is the co-founder and artistic and executive director of Indigenous Fashion Arts (IFA), best known for its runway shows that take place every two years.

Milan is the first of many IFA trade show delegations — another is planned for Mexico later this year — and has been 18 months in the planning. The seed was planted in discussions with the Canadian embassy in Italy, then Paul invited White Milano organizers to come to Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto in June 2022. “I’m used to visiting fashion weeks all over the world, but this was really thrilling,” says White Milano co-founder Simona Severini. “Having the possibility to talk to the designers, listen to their story, it was really special.”

The designers who have travelled to Milan represent a range of Indigenous nations and communities, from Toronto to Winnipeg to Yukon. “To have my work and our work collectively as this cohort of Indigenous designers be platformed in this way, it’s incredible. But it’s also appropriate,” says designer Evan Ducharme. “Our work has an inherent quality, both materially and conceptually, and it’s only appropriate that it is seen at this level.”

Milan is an especially suitable place to showcase these designers, this work. “There’s a history here, of the trade and of the craftsmanship and creativity with textiles and clothing. I think that appreciation is really important for our communities,” says Paul. “For too long, our work has been undervalued. We come from a history of colonization and tokenism and commodification of our own artworks, and we are having to change that understanding of the value of our work. Here in Milan, there is a deep care and value for that kind of work.”

Paul made sure there would be a panel discussion during the show to further the level of understanding. “People don’t really know about Indigenous culture here,” says Paul. “We need to tell the market here what is appropriate, what’s not appropriate, how our designers are working, the import of the materials like flora and fauna.”

Participating required a level of trust. “Anytime Sage asks me to do anything, I’m going to say yes,” says designer Niio Perkins. “Things like this can be scary — I’m really scared that somebody’s going to come in and take pictures, and then we’re going to see our work in another booth next year. But she’s a huge advocate for us, and we just need to be a part of that.”

Paul also organized an industry dinner so the designers could chat properly with selected top buyers. “The goal is that they make long-term relationships, because that could mean returning sales, entry points into collaborations with other designers, new markets around the world,” she explains. Ultimately, the goal is to build a future of opportunity. “I want to see a stable space in the industry for Indigenous people,” says Paul. “If IFA had existed when I finished fashion school, I think things would have been really different. I want to make sure that that is there for young people, for my nieces and nephews, if they’re interested in fashion.”

Evan Ducharme

Evan Ducharme’s work belongs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute. Literally: a sweeping cream cotton canvas skirt was selected to be featured in the Met’s exhibition “In America, a Lexicon of Fashion.” And no wonder: seen up close, with its built-in underpinnings and impressive volume, it’s art.

A rich yellow empire-waist dress with spaghetti straps is part of a collection informed by the childhood inclinations that propelled the Winnipeg-based Métis designer into a fashion career. “I needed to connect to that younger self who had the nerve to leave St. Ambrose, Manitoba, Treaty 1 territory, with two hockey bags and a dream,” says Ducharme. One such reference: the 1998 Drew Barrymore classic Ever After. “I’d never looked at that film for inspiration before. Once I got into this collection and I was speaking about how the concept of dominion was used worldwide to justify the indoctrination of Indigenous people, I wanted to pick and choose those pieces of European costume history that have always been generative to me — much in the same way that the colonizer would pick and choose the things that they liked about Indigenous culture.”

Another series of pieces are made of honeycomb mesh embroidered with cotton yarn, an homage to Métis weaving born of a “light bulb” moment in Ducharme’s studio when a skein of yarn was sitting next to a roll of mesh. Silhouettes include simple T-shirts and a longer version that morphs into a gown, like when you’re a child and you wear your parent or elder’s oversized T-shirt. “When I was young, that was a very gender euphoric moment, to wear a big T-shirt and have it feel like an evening gown.” And that’s how Ducharme wants people to feel in these clothes: “Wholly themselves.”

Lesley Hampton

Lesley Hampton thinks of everything. “I wanted to include a more accessible design where you can celebrate an Indigenous brand, but it’s a more versatile item in your wardrobe,” says the Toronto-based Anishinaabe designer, pointing to a series of luxurious burgundy knit pieces. “All our knits are antimicrobial as well, so you get the sustainability aspect where you don’t have to wash them after every wear.”

Of course, Hampton can still turn out a show-stopping gown. One, featuring dramatic cape-like sleeves in her signature pleats, is made of lightweight dark denim. “It’s our version of the Canadian tuxedo,” she says dryly. Another is turquoise, sheer and embellished with delicate flowers that are actually made of feathers; Hampton wore a magenta version as a guest judge on Canada’s Drag Race.

In fact, TV was the first spark of Hampton’s career. “Like many other designers, I fell in love with fashion watching Jeanne Beker on Fashion Television,” she says. “But being an Indigenous person and a curvier individual, even when I was a kid, I didn’t really see myself represented, so I never thought that it was an accessible career path.” Creative by nature, Hampton focused on art throughout high school, exploring the “societal aspects you can comment on through what you put on a body.”

She started her brand at 22 years old, while still a student at George Brown College, and was invited to show her first collection at Fashion Art Toronto and Vancouver Fashion Week, which was featured in Vogue. She took the attention and ran with it, building a business that celebrates diversity and representation in many forms. For one thing, her current collection’s size offering spans XS to 3XL. For another, “my work is very contemporary, but it is still Indigenous fashion.”

Justin Louis, Section 35

“I’ve always loved clothes,” says Justin Louis, the Chilliwack, B.C.- based founder and creative director of Section 35. His first designs were T-shirts printed with old hockey logos from his reserve back home; while working in the corporate world in Vancouver, his creative spark was kindled by collaborating with a graphic designer colleague. Seven years in, Section 35 offers the kind of utilitarian yet polished streetwear you see on street style stars at international men’s fashion weeks, but with thoughtful, artful twists, like a custom leopard print that incorporates Cree syllabics, early visual representations of language.

The new bomber jackets reflect Louis’s college baseball days and were produced in collaboration with gold-standard maker Golden Bear in San Francisco. They’re hefty and perfectly finished; they’re also adorned with twinkling stars that represent ancestors who have passed on, a leaping horse that also features on Louis’s powwow regalia, and lettering that reads “Made on stolen land.”

Lately, Louis has been inspired by the colours and changing seasons of home; he’s a member of Samson Cree Nation and grew up on his parents’ property along the Battle River in Nipisihkopahk, an hour south of Edmonton. “Berries grow along the river and there’s wild sage that grows. I grew up with horses. It’s just this beautiful nostalgic feeling.” It’s a long way from Milan, and the journey is just beginning. “I think it’s important that my kids see what is possible,” says Louis. “If you do something you love and are passionate about it, you can go really cool places.”

Robyn McLeod

“The more I learn about Dene clothing, the more I realize there’s so much more that I need to learn. And that’s the fun part,” says Robyn McLeod, who has travelled from her home in Ross River in the Yukon, though she’s from a community in the Northwest Territories called Fort Providence. Take fringe: “You could use moose hide or caribou hide, and you can put particular materials on it, like thread, quills or beads,” she says. “The fringe that I’m really attracted to, I don’t see anymore. When I think about my culture and the different processes that are lost, I like to talk to people and ask, ‘How are these things made?’ They always say, ‘Ask elders.’”

One of McLeod’s collections is named Dene Futurisms, which refers to a melding of traditional techniques with technology to create a vision of a future present. “It’s important to be able to imagine Dene still here despite facing misrepresentation and erasure within many different aspects but especially through art,” McLeod explains on her website. In practice, this looks like an intricately constructed hanky dress in vibrant fuchsia floral print — when worn, it begs to be twirled — worn with a co-ordinating mirrored visor trimmed with beadwork.

“I think it’s important to be able to represent my family, my community, my culture and who I am as a person, and show that people in the north, especially in small communities, are making interesting work; they are valuable,” says McLeod. “And it’s not just crafty; it’s luxurious.”

Erica Donovan, She Was a Free Spirit

“Being Inuvialuit, and coming from where I come from, at a very young age we’re taught to create things for survival — parkas, warm mitts — because where we live, the climate is so harsh,” says Erica Donovan, whose home community is Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., on the Arctic Ocean. “So probably since grade 5, I’ve been creating.”

Now, she mostly creates jewelry, brilliantly hued hand-beaded earrings in the electric blues of Arctic skies and rich reds of wild berries picked in the fall, each with a black and white section in a nod to the designs on Inuvialuit drum dance parkas. Some are embellished with long strips of harp seal fur, sourced from providers in her community. “None of it is wasted,” says Donovan. “We eat the meat, the stomach is used for bags, the oil is used for lamps. And this is my way of using the fur.”

When Donovan founded her brand in 2016, she named it to honour where she comes from, and her family. “She Was a Free Spirit pays tribute to my mother, who is a residential school survivor, and at a young age, had her childhood taken from her.” For Donovan, who sits beading throughout White Milano as buyers and media buzz about, making things is a form of meditation. “There’s a healing component to it. I sit there and I reflect on my upbringing, the things I’ve been through, and I also think of things like forgiveness, how to be in this life in a healthy manner,” she says. “And to put something out into this world is a positive.”

Niio Perkins

Niio Perkins’s marquee piece is a leather body harness with detachable circular mini bag, decorated with three-dimensional raised beadwork, a Haudenosaunee art form. It’s a typically innovative choice from the artist turned fashion and accessory designer. “I thought it was a unique way to feature some beadwork; I’m not necessarily an earring or jewelry wearer,” she says.

Perkins lives in Akwesasne, a Mohawk territory that spans Ontario, Quebec and New York, where she was raised with a seamstress mother who sewed ceremonial clothing. “Sometimes when Indigenous beadwork artists create things, they’re very traditional, and it’s really hard to wear those outside of communities,” Perkins says. “I was raised in a traditional home, going to ceremony, and when I would wear my ceremony wear into a grocery store to grab something, I felt super out of place. I got stared at. I was uncomfortable. This is why I got into fashion — I wanted to create work that could celebrate who I was and still be relevant today.”

Recently, Perkins has been spending a lot of time in designer boutiques, examining couture and high-fashion pieces as research. “I want to know why things are so expensive. I want to see the quality. I want to see how things are made,” she says. “My brand has always been about quality first; these are heirlooms that get passed down. So I’m just wondering how other designers do that. What makes that special? And how can I bring that home with me?”

Model, Marika Sila. Hair by Mélanie Guille. Makeup by Moreno Salerno for M.A.C Cosmetics.

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