You can now catch the final showing of the first large-scale traveling exhibition of contemporary Native American fashion Native Fashion Now during New York Fashion Week.
Native Fashion Now, originally organized by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., explores the exciting and complex realms where fashion meets art, cultural identity, politics and commerce, and features the work of 67 Native American designers from the 1950s to today.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center in New York will host the final showing of Native Fashion Now, which opens Friday, February 17 during New York Fashion Week in the museum’s East Gallery and runs through September 4. A press preview is scheduled for Tuesday, February 14, from 10 am to noon.
Through nearly 70 works, “Native Fashion Now” explores the vitality of Native fashion designers and artists—from pioneering Native style-makers of the mid-20th century like Charles Loloma (Hopi Pueblo) to maverick designers of today such as Patricia Michaels (Taos Pueblo). The exhibition immerses visitors in all aspects of contemporary Native fashion—its concerns, modes of expression and efforts to create meaning through fashion. “Native Fashion Now” is the first show to emphasize the long-standing, evolving and an increasingly prominent relationship between fashion and creativity in Native culture.
The exhibition’s four themes—Pathbreakers, Revisitors, Activators, and Provocateurs—reflect how designers respond to ideas and trends in the world of Native fashion. All of the designers express their artistic agency, cultural identity and their unique personal perspective. “Native Fashion Now” is a dynamic, contemporary fashion scene that showcases both roots and cutting-edge, new paths. Runway footage, artist interviews, and fashion photography communicate its immediacy throughout the exhibition.
