FASHIONS OF THE TIWI FOOTY FIELD
Grand final day on Wurrumiyanga is a feast of colour, tradition and style – and that’s before any of the on-field action kicks off
The Tiwi Islands paradise of Wurrumiyanga (Bathurst island) will come alive next Sunday, March 18 for the annual grand final footy match and art show. If you manage to survive the ferry ride over from Darwin (cue, seasickness), and if you like fashion over footy, you’re in for a treat of textiles and traditional designs and art.
It’s the biggest day on the Tiwi calendar and Tiwi Design, home to carvings, paints on canvas and bark and screen printed fabrics has been in preparation for months, just like the team is each year, preparing for the art fair.
When frontier spoke to Tiwi Design this week, the final runs of screen printed textiles were being created. The art centre expects to sell hundreds and hundreds of metres of the fabric, with its iconic print style, bright colours and traditional designs. The long tables, were the soft cottons and linens come to life through screen printing, are in overdrive year round, but it’s a detailed and delicate process ran on ‘Tiwi time.’ There’s no such thing as mass production here and it’s a refreshing change.
The end product, of original artworks appropriated on to fabrics in turn become treasured wearable art. Territorian fashionistas don skirts, tops and dresses year round for all sorts of events, from office wear to cocktail parties. Many an outfit has been brightened up with a touch of Tiwi too.
Around the corner on the Island is proud Tiwi clothing label Bima Wear. It was established in 1969, the same year, it turns out, that Australian surf wear brands Rip Curl and Quicksilver were founded. Bima Wear has mastered what some fashion labels ‘ down south,’ if not across the world, are still trying to achieve. The Bima Wear Ladies, as they are known, sew, craft and create, and continue to do so, just as they first did in 1969.
The label has stayed true to its Territory roots on Bathurst Island at the same time as it has embraced the online world with a social media presence, e-commerce site, and a bricks and mortar shop front in Melbourne’s cool Sydney Road in Brunswick.
The clothing purchased by stylish shoppers in Melbourne directly benefits locals at Wurrumiyanga because 100 per cent of the profits go back to the label’s Island home.