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By Kate Munro, NITV News
11 March 2019
In a collective sense, Australian Indigenous Fashion is bursting with intense palates of bold colours; earth tones to splashes of intense colour — contemporary flair with designs and symbols of tribal and traditional significance. It showcases our connection to Country.
First Nations Australian-owned labels are cropping up left, right and centre on a national scale.
These vary from 100 per cent Aboriginal owned and operated labels like Lore by Gurang Gurang designer Shannon Brett and Aarli based in Western Australia, to high-end international labels such as Jimmy Choo working with Indigenous Australian designers and visual artists.
In 2017, the Malaysian-born fashion icon worked with Noongar artist Peter Farmer to apply one of the artists’ paintings to his world-renowned shoes. And in the same year, a domestic partnership saw the family of the late Minnie Pwerle of Utopia, one of the most sought-after Aboriginal female artists of all time, collaborate with Australian label Aje.
Generally, well-known or high-end brands who work with Aboriginal Australian artists are put through the correct protocols and permissions when using these designs, although it continues to remain a convoluted area. As we know, Aboriginal artworks which hold sacred stories and tribe-specific information have a number of cultural sensitives. As well as the lack of consultancy poses cultural appropriation risks.
But it is the raw and real potential for First Nations artists and designers to make their mark within this industry, on both a national and international scale, that inspired Dunghutti/Anaiwan woman and senior communications consultant Yatu Widders-Hunt to develop and curate a ground-breaking Instagram account aptly named Australian Indigenous Fashion – @ausindigenousfashion.
Read the full article at NITV News.
Ad(dressing) Indigeneity 