Letter from the Editors

Fashion Studies—the academic field, not this journal—has had a tenuous relationship with Indigenous clothing practices for centuries. It was once the object of study, stolen to furnish museum collections and relegated to notions of “traditional dress” or “craft.” Now Indigenous fashion is a world of its own, a flourishing movement with Indigenous peoples occupying many facets of the mainstream fashion industry while rebuilding Indigenous fashion systems. 

Gatherings like the Sante Fe Indian Market of SWAIA (the Southwestern Association of American Indian Art) and the Indigenous Fashion Arts Festival in Toronto have become premier events in the fashion calendar; Indigenous journalists like Christian Allaire at Vogue Magazine are reaching new audiences; and Indigeous creatives are (finally) getting mainstream recognition. Indigenous models are at the Met Gala and the 2022 Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards (CAFA) saw a record number of Indigenous honourees, including the streetwear brand Section 35, Inuk model and activist Willow Allen, and Changemaker award winner Sage Paul.

The School of Fashion at Toronto Metropolitan University first started seriously thinking about Indigenous fashion in 2015, in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s “Calls to Action” for the education sector. In partnership with TMU’s Aboriginal Education Council, a 2016 panel on cultural appropriation in fashion and design was then followed by the inaugural Fashioning Reconciliation lecture and discussion in 2017. It was our humble attempt to “indigenize” the School, by first acknowledging some hard truths about colonization and then exploring Indigenous responses and resilience with invited guests Sage Paul and Angela DeMontigny. 

A grainy iPhone 6 photo of the very first “Fashioning Reconciliation” panel at (the then-named) Ryerson University. February 1, 2017.

The rest was history. Reconciliation became Resurgence, to better reflect the goals of Indigenous political movements towards revival and reclamation of cultural practices and ways of being. The lectures and panels grew in depth and breadth, and Fashioning Resurgence received its first Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connection Grant in 2018 to bring together Indigenous fashion leaders for a symposium in partnership and collaboration with the Indigenous Fashion Arts Festival.

One of the main goals of Fashioning Resurgence and the impetus for creating this Special Issue was to help cultivate academic literature on Indigenous fashion and, in particular, Indigenous fashion on Turtle Island. Like changes in the fashion industry, Indigenous fashion is being incorporated into courses in Indigenous Studies, the arts and creative industries, and in Fashion Studies courses on history, theory, and creative practice. Already there are stand-alone courses at Toronto Metropolitan University and Parsons School of Design. 

It is our hope that this Special Issue will offer a starting point to support teaching and learning in these courses, as well as serve as a foundation of citations that future generations of scholars can draw upon and grow as they develop their own research in this area. Hosting this Special Issue in an open access journal like Fashion Studies was important to us: we wanted the articles to be available to educators, students, and community members irrespective of the resources or politics of their local library and, just as important, regardless of whether they had an academic affiliation at all.

In editing this Special Issue, another goal for us was to model collaborative forms of knowledge generation that centers the wisdom of communities. The Special Issue features transcripts of panel discussions that bring together Indigenous artists, makers, and designers. By valuing community as knowledge holders and by doing so within the space of an academic journal, our panels offer citable examples that conversations with community are forms of generating knowledge as well as methods for theorizing knowledge in fashion studies. Our panels demonstrate—in real time—how the process of sharing our stories, experiences and perspectives, listening to those of others, and collectively building upon them is a critical way to develop and theorize knowledge—a way that has existed long before “the university.” 

In this Special Issue, you will find two single-authored articles as well as edited transcripts of four panels alongside reflections of each panel by a discussant. In the first article—“I Love You as Much as all the Beads in the Universe”—Justine Woods shares how her garment construction and beadwork practice is grounded in decolonial love and mobilizes cross-Indigenous solidarity, resistance, and liberation. The second article “Material Kwe” by Celeste Pedri-Spade narrates five wearable art pieces—which were showcased at Indigenous Fashion Arts 2020—within Anishinabe epistemologies and explores how these pieces center Indigenous life and matriarchy. The four panels explore the openings and challenges of honouring connections to ancestral knowledge in digital textile exhibitions; the role of beadwork circles as a decolonial practice and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on them; the experiences of collaborating with fashion brands when drawing upon traditional methods for the design Indigenous clothing and accessories; and a discussion of the values and practices that underpin land-based fashion. 

Taken together, the articles and panels offer examples of the contemporary reclamation and resurgence of Indigenous fashion in Turtle Island. Designers, artists, and makers share the many ways in which Indigenous fashion is story-telling, relationship-making, community-mobilizing, land-protecting, body-affirming, sovereignty-seeking, and ultimately world-rebuilding.

Our journey does not end here. We are already working on Issue 2 with the support of a second SSHRC Connection Grant, and look forward to releasing another call for papers and discussants to review the 2022 edition of the Indigenous Fashion Arts Festival.

We’d like to express our gratitude for the contributions of TMU’s Aboriginal Education Council, the School of Fashion and the Creative School, SSHRC, Sage Paul and Kerry Swanson of Indigenous Fashion Arts, Special Issue assistants Shawkay Ottman and Sarah Tamashiro, Fashion Studies team members Jaclyn Marcus, Mia Yaguchi-Chow, Deanna Armenti, and Presley Mills who designed the logo and brand identity for Fashioning Resurgence. 

Riley Kucheran and Ben Barry

Special Issue Co-Editors