‘I’m bringing my heritage out onto the runway’

Alaska has a coastline of 6,640 miles, and many Native communities are located along coasts and near lakes and rivers. Water is all around in the rain, waves, frost, snow and ice.

“The color of the Kenai [River]…and the glaciers, I love that teal water color,” said Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer, an Iñupiaq artist and fashion designer who was featured in the show. Her work is based on the elements of nature using the traditional Native value of not wasting anything. “We utilize all aspects of animals and plants, and so I decided to do a vintage upcycle or redesign to honor past designers, as well as Indigenized fashion from the past, and reflect that,” said Schaeffer.

The show’s coordinator, Trina Landlord, Yup’ik, said this was the sixth Far North Fashion Show. It took place in July as part of the Arctic Encounter Symposium, an annual business and policy event that features cultural productions and brings together people from around the world to focus on Arctic issues. “We invited designers to invent, innovate and get some inspiration from the element of water because a lot of our rural Alaskan communities are based on oceans, seas, rivers and sloughs,” said Landlord.Mary Kelsay, owner of MEKA, is an Unangax̂ fashion designer whose people come from the Bering Sea. “I’m bringing my heritage out onto the runway in a contemporary manner,” said Kelsay. It is important, she said, to create designs based on her Indigenous culture, which helps “tell a story” about her people. Kelsay points to one of her designs, a garment inspired from a traditional gut parka, which was traditionally used for hunting.

Other garments seen in the fashion show were parkas made by Merna Lomack Wharton. The Yup’ik parka maker is well-known for incorporating squirrels in her designs. “Our Yup’ik people were nomads. Based on resources, they go fishing, go berry picking, go moose hunting, and the people who are closest to where the Arctic brown squirrels go, well, they travel miles and miles to get to where they are,” said Wharton. Squirrels may not be waterproof, but Wharton said they are light and warm materials ideal for parkas. Jeremiah James, Tlingit, featured his seal vests, hats and bow ties. “I started making these flat caps out of seal because nobody else was doing them,” he said. “I started making vests, mostly because I wanted to see more seal vests and wanted to see things made out of seal that nobody has done before.”

Shows like this, and other platforms across the country and around the world are elevating Indigenous designers. “For a lot of Indigenous fashion,” said Kelsay, “it’s important to tell the story of where we come from, because a lot of it has been erased and dismissed and it’s oftentimes just overlooked.”

Landlord said featuring Alaska Native designers is a way to help introduce them to a wider audience. “For many of them, they may see themselves as artists, but in this light we’re giving them a new language and a platform for calling themselves designers,” Landlord said, adding that it’s also a platform for the symposium’s international participants to come “see and celebrate Alaska Native art.”