OFF THE FRINGE
‘Native Fashion Now’ is so much more than beads and feathers
FRANKIE Welch launched the White House’s first fashion show (for Lady Bird Johnson), outfitted First Lady Betty Ford in green brocade for President Gerald Ford’s inauguration, and designed patterned scarves that dominated the DC social set from the late 1960s through the ’80s.
She is also Native American. And while her designs drew heavily from Cherokee symbolism and craft, they never crossed the line into cliché or costume.
Welch is one of nearly 70 designers featured in “Native Fashion Now,” running through Sept. 4 at the National Museum of the American Indian in the Financial District. Organized by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., the exhibit is the first large-scale traveling exhibition devoted to contemporary Native design.
“We wanted to shake up the preconceived notions of Native American art and creative expression,” says curator Karen Kramer, who conceived the show. “It’s not buckskin and beads and feather headdresses.”
“Native Fashion Now” demonstrates that astonishing breadth, from Lloyd “Kiva” New’s 1960s shirt dresses straight out of “I Love Lucy” to Douglas Miles’ political skater-tees and skateboards, and Wendy Ponca’s avant-garde space-age couture gowns made from silver Mylar, eagle feathers, crystals and space-shuttle glass.
It’s a corrective of sorts: Similar to the Fashion Institute of Technology’s current focus on black fashion designers, “Native Fashion Now” showcases a group that has been underrepresented on the runways, in trendy boutiques or on the red carpet — and asks why.
The show opens with a stunning red-and-black silk-and-organza gown festooned with beads and feathers that wouldn’t look out of place on a Galliano runway, by the Navajo designer Orlando Dugi. It then leads to an installation of parasols and a modern shift dress from “Project Runway” contestant Patricia Michaels. One of the main themes of the exhibit is the way that Native artists mix their heritage and tradition with other cultures and technology. Bethany Yellowtail — a Los Angeles-based designer with experience at corporate brands such as BCBGMAXAZRIA — embellishes her short, figurehugging leather-and-lace party dresses with elk teeth, a common motif in Northern Cheyenne art, while Jamie Okuma takes a pair of Christian Louboutin boots and covers them with a tableau of birds and patterns, using glass beads. “It’s so cool to look around and see the diversity of the way Native people think,” Yellowtail tells The Post during an exhibition preview. “I hope visitors come in here and know that the stereotypes [of us] in media and film and fashion are not true. That is not truth; what they see in this building is truth.”
Through Sept. 4. Free. National Museum of the American Indian, 1 Bowling Green; 212-514-3700