Model year
Model Charlee Fraser has a formidable career, but a life-changing pandemic that sparked a desire to connect to her roots has seen her give her energy over to the next generation forging paths like her own.
Model Charlee Fraser has a formidable career, walking international runways and covering
Vogue. But a life-changing pandemic that sparked a desire to connect to her roots has seen her give her energy over to the next generation forging paths like her own. By Annie Brown.
For Charlee Fraser, an Awabakal woman, born and raised in Newcastle and living in New York, becoming ‘stuck’ in Australia due to the pandemic turned out to be a great blessing. Fraser has spent the past 18 months on a journey to connect with her Indigenous roots. Becoming a mentor for First Nations Fashion + Design (FNFD), a not-for-profit organisation established to foster Indigenous talent in the fashion industry, has played a big role in this exploration.
Fraser was part of the FNFD-run Walking in Two Worlds fashion show held in Cairns last December and the FNFD show at Afterpay Australian Fashion Week in May. Alongside fellow models Perry Mooney and Nathan McGuire, she’s been mentoring 23 up-and-coming models aged between 18 and 28. This year Fraser also launched her own sustainable fashion initiative and resource, Not Just Trending. All of it is connected. Below, she shares with Vogue Australia what she’s taken from this journey of self-discovery so far.
MENTORING WASN’T SOMETHING I was searching for, I fell into it. Very much like my career. And it’s been amazing.
It started back in lockdown. I can remember always wanting to be involved with not-forprofit organisations. Giving back has always been something I’ve wanted to do.
I had met with First Nations Fashion + Design a year prior at the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair. We jumped on a Zoom call and spoke for a really long time, maybe a couple of hours. It was a great conversation. Our values aligned, what they had planned for the future was [something] I was really looking for. I had been searching for a space where my culture and career crossover. It felt right and it was right.
The kind of mentoring we do is not just models coming in and learning how to walk and us rehearsing 24/7. It is really about connecting with each other, connecting with ourselves and connecting with our culture. So, we really love to start and end our days with a check-in. We will all sit in a yarning circle. Everyone will be introduced to everyone and we talk about where we’re from and how we’re feeling. And then it’s about getting to know each other and becoming a community.
A lot of the programs are run on Country in different communities around Australia. We have our fashion mentoring programs, but it’s also about connecting with the community and youth. It’s not just us going in and mentoring – we’re learning while we’re there. I love meeting all the rising models and getting to know them and understanding what their goals are. For me, it’s about really creating a safe space for the models to ask questions and approach me about anything so they feel educated enough to take their career further and know how to navigate the fashion industry. One of the reasons I decided not to walk for [Afterpay] Australian Fashion Week, apart from the FNFD show, was to give that space to new Indigenous models and other models.
I’ve had a bit of an empty space in me – something that I know I am, but I didn’t know anything about it. When I first started this journey, I was really nervous I wasn’t going to feel accepted by my community. I think a lot of people struggle with identity, because they’re not fully one thing or another; a lot of us [who] are mixed race [understand]. I think identity struggle is very common. There’s a feeling there of: ‘Oh, are these people going to see me as one of them?’ I don’t have this knowledge, but it is something that’s in my blood and that I care about. And it’s really been the opposite. You are so welcomed and so loved in these spaces if you’re there willing to learn and just be part of the community. It has been a very compassionate place. I’m so thankful for that.
This year I launched Not Just Trending [Fraser’s campaign to spotlight sustainable fashion, launched during this year’s Afterpay Australian Fashion Week]. The drive for looking into sustainable fashion is that it directly aligns with my culture and this really strong connection to the land.
Since I’ve come home to Australia and dived into my culture, I’ve really grounded myself. I’ve always had a really strong connection to the land. And I feel as though I have realisations about how strong that connection is. I feel very changed. But it’s something that I’m always, always going to be learning about.