Indigenizing the bespoke suit

Fall/Winter 2018 Collection

This collection is framed within the means of decolonizing fashion. Each garment visually articulates a gesture of identity reclamation and cultural resurgence through the defacement of Western tailored garments with floral beadwork. The beadwork found on each garment shares cultural narratives that go beyond the beads and the surface of the material. Beadwork opens up storytelling opportunities, with the narratives captured through the placement, colour, composition and pattern of the beads. This collection explores how the physical implication of beadwork on a garment that in colonial history reflects a status of power, privilege, capitalism, and settler authority, can become a visual representation of decolonial aesthetics and Indigenous resurgence.