SOUTHWEST STYLE
A runway show featuring Native American designers puts fashion on focus at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market’s Best of Show Reception.
PHOENIX, AZ
The Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market Fashion Show returns this March, putting the much-deserved spotlight on talented Native American designers— just in time for spring shopping season. From intricate beadwork to couture gowns, these designs are guaranteed to be haute, haute, haute! This year’s featured designers include Loren Aragon of ACONAV, Maya Stewart, Marilyn Ray, Summer F. Peters and Venancio Aragon.
Showgoers can expect “a fascinating array of contemporary and traditional jewelry, leather work, and unique clothing and accessories,” according to MJ Boster, chair of the fashion show. “Each amazing item is original and designed by artists participating in this year’s Indian Fair & Market. This is a highly anticipated event that helps launch the fair. Each year, the guests eagerly look forward to seeing all the wonderful wearable art.”
Peters takes the idea of wearable art quite literally. “I’m not a mainstream designer so I have the freedom to create what I like, not what will be marketable to the masses,” she says. For this year’s show, she’s taking inspiration from the 1972 musical Cabaret, the namesake of her collection. “I grew up on the musical,” Peters says. “It’s one of my mom’s favorite musicals of all time. I love the theme of the movie being centered around a liberated woman in a time when it was the norm for women to be demure and prudish. I love
the fashion, makeup and hair of Liza Minnelli in this movie. I’m paying homage to my mom with this collection.” Short dresses, long dresses and plenty of cotton, silk satin, velvet, hand embroidery and painted fabric are to be expected from Cabaret.
“With my art, I like to take the undesirable and make it gorgeous,” Peters adds. “I think this is really just reflective of who I am as a person. Quirky, odd, grimy. I’m more of a Petoskey stone type of girl versus the person who loves diamonds and silk.”
Although Loren Aragon is keeping which looks he’ll present at this year’s show a secret for now, he offers a sneak peek of what’s to come. “I plan to have a mix of couture and ready-to-wear designs,” Aragon says. “I feel that presenting a mix of my works showcases my abilities and gives patrons a look at designs across a range of complexity, wearability and affordability.”
In collaboration with The Fife Collection, a design company established by her family in the 1980s, Stewart plans to send pieces designed by her mom, aunts and herself down the runway this year. The clothing and accessories combine The Fife Collection’s blend of ancient patterns and modern lines with Stewart’s international “rock ’n’ roll” aesthetic—emphasizing Indigenous nations as part of contemporary global society, not just now but throughout history and into the future.