The Eyeopener sat down with award-winning Indigenous fashion designer Angela DeMontigny, to talk about the progression and challenges facing Indigenous fashion and artists today.

Q: How would you say your Indigenous background influences your work as a designer?

A: It’s a source of inspiration and a way to talk to people and educate them about our culture, history, legends, cosmology and whatever I feel inspired to create around a specific theme.

Q: How do you incorporate traditional cultural elements into your work?

A: I usually do it as a design element. Either traditional beadwork, embroidery or a textile print design.

Q: How does Indigenous fashion reframe our understanding of fashion more broadly?

A: I would say that the western fashion industry has been completely influenced by Indigenous fashion. Anything that has fringe on it comes from Indigenous fashion, even though many American designers would probably not acknowledge that.

It’s about the whole process of copying and taking on appropriating cultural elements from a culture that they tried to eradicate. It’s a bizarre thing in a sense, you love our art and our fashion and our culture, but you don’t love us as people.

Now, it’s important for us to take back our cultural identities and use Indigenous fashion as a way to say, ‘this is who we are, we are still here.’ Doing it in our own way as a means of expressing ourselves and our art.

Q: Today, how do you feel about how Indigenous fashion is represented in mainstream media?

A: I think we have come a very long way in the sense that when I first started self-identifying as an Indigenous designer, Indigenous fashion was pretty much unknown. Nobody knew what it was, what it meant, what it looked like. People had preconceived ideas and it was very difficult to get any traction or respect from the mainstream fashion industry in that regard. Now, because we’ve been doing it for so many decades there’s definitely more media attention around it and more Indigenous media.

Q: What challenges do you think Indigenous designers face today?

A: Well, the same challenges we’ve always had. Specifically in Canada, it is more about the ability to have a fashion business because of the lack of industry support that there is now, and the ability to scale up your business and have production and those kinds of things. So, I think Indigenous fashion has really moved into the area of art and more one-of-a-kind types of pieces. The designers in the States have more opportunity to have production capacity as far as manufacturing goes and having lines and collections that they can sell to people.

Q: What advice do you have for Indigenous designers or artists looking to get into fashion?

A: [What] I always say [to] any young people that I mentor is to go work with someone who’s already doing it and learn from them. Especially since COVID, everything has changed and shifted as far as markets, production, resourcing, materials and having things made. It’s a very complicated and costly business. So, learning from someone else who’s already done or been doing it, I always suggest that you do that first before you dive in.

Q: For Indigenous fashion itself, how have you seen it evolve over time, both in your work and other work that you’ve seen?

A: I’ve seen it evolve in huge ways [and] my hope when I first started is that there would be an actual Indigenous fashion industry. I don’t know if I would call it an industry, but I would say that there are definitely more designers now than there ever were. They’re definitely getting far more media attention than was ever available. 

We have an Indigenous fashion journalist who works at Vogue in New York. Those kinds of things we didn’t have before. So, I’ve seen that evolution where there is now a presence that people can’t ignore.

Q: What are some misconceptions about what Indigenous fashion looks like or what it actually is?

A: It depends on the designer, of course. Everyone is designing for a specific reason, person, market or just making a statement. I think Indigenous fashion has been really relegated in the past. Even with me, people have stereotypical assumptions that it’s cheaply made [and has] feathers and beads…But we’ve definitely moved into the realm of high fashion, for sure.

People are always surprised by us. They don’t know enough about us, our culture or ourselves as contemporary people. So, seeing that evolution and that visibility that we didn’t have before, it’s really cool to see that shift in people and them embracing it. Especially with accessories that non-Indigenous people now feel comfortable being able to purchase [directly] from an Indigenous artist and wear them. You see that out in the world and it’s really amazing.

Q: What would you like to see for the future of Indigenous fashion?

A: I would like to see more of a focus on the [holistic] materials that we work with and use. I’ve always been focused on sustainable and natural fabrics, whether it’s leather, silk, cotton, linen, those kinds of things, from a holistic perspective. 

Accessibility and being able to do this is more expensive, and sourcing fabrics is not easy in Canada. Not going the route of having the sort of drop shipped polyester fashion that’s being done right now and really focus on the entirety of the clothing that you’re making.