As Native country descended upon Santa Fe’s historic Plaza Square for the 99th annual Santa Fe Indian Market, across the street at the convention center, Taos Pueblo designer Patricia Michaels, along with a handful of emerging Indigenous designers, debuted collections for the 6th annual Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Haute Couture Fashion Show.
A market favorite, the “Haute Couture Fashion Show” provides a platform for Indigenous designers from across the globe to showcase the latest in contemporary designs, as well as provide aspiring Native models the opportunity to strut their walks down the runway to a packed crowd of their friends, family, and festival attendees.
In a promotion video for the event, fashion show producer Amber-Dawn Bear Robe proclaimed, “Indian Market Haute Couture Fashion Show really is about celebrating contemporary indigenous fashion designers.” She added, “What makes this (event) unique is that the artists are not restricted to what Native fashion or Native textiles should be or what is expected of them. They are given the artistic freedom and vision to create.”
Indigenous fashion trailblazer, Patricia Michaels, is all about creative and artistic expression. Ever since her debut on the 11th season of Project Runway, where she came in second, the multimedia artist has been turning out limited couture collections that draw inspiration “from nature and her Native roots.” This year, however, Michaels took on a socio-political matter. According to the Justice Department, Native American women and girls are being killed or trafficked at far higher rates than the rest of the U.S. population. Moreover, according to the National Crime Information Center, in 2016, 5,712 indigenous women and girls were reported missing, but only 116 were logged by the U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database.
This underreported epidemic inspired the 2017 film Wind River starring Elizabeth Olsen as an FBI agent who enlists the help of a wildlife ranger, played by Jeremy Renner, and a tribal sheriff, played by Graham Greene, to help solve the mysterious murder of a young, Native woman played by Kelsey Chow.
On the runway stage, Michaels presented her politically-driven collection in two acts. In the first act, we saw an assortment of resort-inspired caftan capes, dresses, and ponchos asymmetrically-cut and hand-painted with Michaels’ signature brush strokes and eagle feather motifs in a color palette
of black, white, and gray with hints of green and blue. The screen-printed patterns were reminiscent of the inkblot imagery found in a Rorschach test. Other silhouettes included form-fitting pants paired with fringed tops and cocktail dresses. A standout design included a one-sleeved, light gray and blue, silk-chiffon dress affixed with shattered pottery appliques. Like the music, the collection is somber and ominous, yet peaceful and elegant at the same time.
In the second act, a group of Indigenous female elders, Michaels included, dressed in traditional at- tire, take center stage to sing a song in memory of the missing Indigenous women. Red lights envelop the entire room. On the large screens, a black and white montage video begins to play showcasing pan-Indigenous women of every generation looking defiantly at the camera in solidarity as if to say, “No more.”
Momentarily, models emerge wearing similar designs we saw in the first act, only this time, the color red is introduced to signify pain, murder, and loss. Red serves as a pop of color in the form of fringes, accents, and tulle. One by one, models leave scarf length-sized tulle at the end of the runway to signify blood. Some of the models held parasols hand-painted with abstract eagle feathers as if they were shielding themselves from the overwhelming cries of both the victims and their families. Finally, actress and model, Sivan Alyra Rosé, the first Indigenous actress to star in a lead role for Netflix’s Chambers this past summer, closed out the show by dumping paper moccasins in the pile of red tulle.
The act is both unnerving and poetic. Michaels, with tears streaming down her cheeks, is met with a thunderous standing ovation. In a way, Michaels symbolic collection allowed Indigenous women everywhere, on and off the runway, to finally let out a much-needed sigh of relief; to join the rest of the country in finally saying those two liberating words: Me Too.
