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Tones of blue and gray flowing fabric will take center stage at this year's Native Nations Fashion Night. The theme is titled, "I am Water" or "Nibi Indow" in Ojibwe and "Mni Wauᶇ" in Dakota.  

Delina White is the creator of the fashion show, and she is the owner of IamAnishinaabe, a fashion house on the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe’s reservation. This marks the fifth year she has been producing Native Nations Fashion Night, an event that has evolved to include Indigenous designers from across the United States and Canada.  

The theme of the show will showcase designers’ relationships with water and the significance of water in their lives and communities.  

“The designers are all doing their individual themes, or their individual expressing and communicating through their clothing,” White said. She shares that one designer will explore the scarcity of water in southwestern United States. Another theme will explore the responsibility Indigenous people have to care for water.   

Sage Davis is an Ojibwe designer whose work will be featured on the runway.  She recently earned her doctorate from the University of Minnesota College of Design, where she focused on apparel studies. 

“It's not just fashion,” Davis said. “What's happening right now in our clothes, that's reflective of what's happening in society.”

Davis says her collection is meant to represent change, just as water changes and flows.

“It's about the cycle of life that shows how different parts of our life repeat in different ways until we learn the lesson,” she said. Her collection for this year’s event includes seven skirts and dresses in total. Davis describes her designs as ‘flowy’ and ‘stretchy.’  

White says the event is not just about clothing, it’s also about the people wearing the clothing and those who helped with the show’s production behind the scenes. 

“I always tell my models that my apparel and my skirts and everything that I make is just fabric, until they put it on, then it becomes part of them, and it takes on its own persona and its own spirit,” White said, “That's the beautiful thing about clothing.” 

Alongside the fashion show this year, White says they held an inaugural Creative Economy Summit on Thursday leading up to the big event.  

The all-day summit was designed to give Indigenous creatives and artists, who want to start their own businesses, an opportunity to connect with organizations to provide them with the knowledge and tools to get started.  

Indigenous creativity takes the stage 

“It has been a difficult road for me to get financial support, to get working capital in order to continue with my business,” White said. “We need to have these opportunities. And we need to be able to support ourselves, and to do things that we want to do to help our families in a way of developing an economy for ourselves.”   

White says as a business owner, she can do her part in focusing on creatives and their artistry by providing those opportunities. She emphasized the importance of having the summit this year.  

“We're creating a platform [on] a special day for everybody to show their pride in their heritage,” she said. 

The runway event is taking place Friday evening at the InterContinental Saint Paul Riverfront hotel. General admission is sold out.

Chandra Colvin

Author

Six Indigenous designers will showcase their collections this Friday in downtown St. Paul. “I Am Water” is the evening’s theme — the apparel designs will highlight the designers’ relationships with water and the significance of water in their lives.

‘It’s not just fashion’: Native Nations Fashion Night returns for a fifth year

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