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SALT LAKE CITY – Artist and designer Jessica Wierda saw a gap when she saw various fashion weeks being held in Utah.
“It wasn’t an Indigenous-oriented fashion week this year. I was seeing all these other cultures represented, but Indigenous people weren’t there,” said the Hopi/Tewa.
This realization came when Wiarda began wrapping up a one-year artist-in-residence program through the nonprofit Utah Dine Bekeiah and the Leonardo Museum. Instead of a farewell event celebrating just her residency, Wiarda decided to gather other Native artists and models for Utah’s first Native Fashion Week.
This year’s fashion week will include an evening featuring works from artists representing half a dozen tribes — Hopi, Navajo (Dine), Ute, Northern Ute, Apache and Anishinaabe Ojibwe — as well as a section featuring powwow regalia. But Wiarda hopes the show will be the start of an annual tradition.
“It just keeps getting better and better,” she said, adding that the event is entirely led and run by indigenous people.
“There are no stereotypes here; we’re just ourselves – and that’s why it’s such an important event,” she said. “It’s open to everyone and it’s unusual to see something that I think a lot of people are afraid to ask because it’s a marginalized community. We’re still here and we’re reclaiming our culture in fashion.”
Dine artist Michael Haswood, who is organizing the show, said that although the event is a modern fashion show, many of the pieces include traditional designs.
“Every Native American is raised to be proud of their ancestors and what they did, that’s why we do the fashion show because we want to show the old art and old designs,” he said.
Haswood added that although Fashion Week happens on the Navajo reservation, there is nothing like it in Salt Lake City.
“We want to bring energy, energy and wisdom here,” he said. “I think Salt Lake City needs something like this to make Native Americans feel like who they are now. We’re still here; Native Americans are still here. We’re still growing, we’re teachers, astronauts, baseball players, designers and artists.
“One thing I want to say is that we’re here, we’re proud and we’re still thriving in the community.”
Indigenous designer Michelle Brown, who will be modeling during the show, agrees that the event will be beneficial to Salt Lake City.
“I think it’s a really important event for Salt Lake City because we’re so conditioned to look at European designers or New York designers, but there’s not a lot of native representation in Utah where there are so many talented designers from so many ethnicities doing their thing,” she said. “There are so many designers all over Europe and America who are borrowing indigenous designs. So I think it’s really important to see firsthand what First Peoples are producing and the stories they’re still telling.”
Brown encouraged those who attend the event throughout the year to support the artists, many of whom sell their work before and after the show.
The fashion show will take place on Saturday, April 15 from 6pm to 8pm at Leonardo’s. Tickets are $5 and profits go to pay the models and staff and fund the Hopi Education Endowment.
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