Make It Work

The elevator doors slide open to reveal curator, educator, art historian and fashionista Amber-Dawn Bear Robe (Siksika Nation). She’s dripping impossible style in a lime green frock and two-tone glasses in a similar shade of green with deep browns running along the upper part of the frames. Beside her, as always, Bear Robe’s small dog Vegas projects a similar confidence in a turquoise-encrusted collar more fashionable than most humans can muster on a good day. Together, they’ve descended from the third floor offices of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, the nonprofit that executes Indian Market each year. Inside, workers flit about in hurried anticipation of the upcoming 101st year of the annual event on Saturday, Aug. 19 and Sunday, Aug. 20. Bear Robe, however, is eerily calm.

In her office, she has assembled a number of photographic grids on the wall perpendicular to her desk. The photos in each grid feature models who will walk at the Indigenous Fashion Show during the market. All told, roughly 200 models will travel to Santa Fe for the event this year, all on their own dime, according to Bear Robe, and all excited to be part of something that has grown exponentially, year after year. Today’s show is a far cry from its early days in Cathedral Park—back when Bear Robe had no budget of which to speak and had to rent and drive U-Hauls full of designer pieces herself to make it work. Today, the always sold-out event has proven huge for the market and for the city itself. Still, Bear Robe says, she never saw it coming, at least not at such an accelerated pace. And yet the show has endured. So much so, in fact, that SWAIA recently announced it will kick off the first-ever US Indigenous Fashion Week in Santa Fe next May under Bear Robe’s stewardship. It’s a good time to be into Native fashion.

“I will say that the original designers of North America were Indigenous artists,” Bear Robe tells SFR, “and you don’t get more couture. Within fashion history, within art history, Native art and design have been pigeonholed and held under a magnifying glass as objects of curiosity, for study—but the thing is, it’s a matter of art interwoven into daily life.”

Things on the market side have, of course, changed in recent memory. Following years of pandemic shakeups, online offerings, the creation of an entirely virtual market-going experience dubbed NDN World and a year spent as a ticketed event, this year’s upcoming Indian Market is totally free to attend, and it seems like a big one. Yes, last year’s iteration marked the 100th anniversary of the stalwart gathering, though 2023′s already feels more akin to the good old days or, at the very least, the good old in-person days. And amidst the market’s innumerable artist-vendors set to take over the Plaza and surrounding streets, a flurry of offshoot events, parties, panels, screenings and more will flesh out the retail options.

Perhaps most popularly, however, the Indigenous Fashion Show, which Bear Robe created and continues to produce, will host catwalk events during both market nights at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center with a bevy of established and up-and-comer Native designers such as Tracy Toulouse, Rebecca Baker-Grenier, Elias Not Afraid, Clara McConnell, Patricia Michaels, Jamie Okuma, Orlando Dugi, Pam Baker, Dusty LeGrande, Jontay Kham, Lauren Good Day and Jason Baerg. That’s not even counting the models, the support staff and, if previous years are any indication, celebrities, journalists and fashion-lovers who will attend the show.

“We love that it’s under the umbrella of SWAIA,” says SWAIA Executive Director Jaime Schulze (Northern Cheyenne). “I think Amber-Dawn brings such a grounded acumen to the programming, and one of the important pieces for us was to understand the cultural representation and stories behind it—as Indigenous folks move from invisibility to visibility in all these different arenas, our clothing has always been something we’re very creative around; it’s lovely to have those things intersect as design and fashion are truly fine art as well.”

Schulze knows Indigenous Fashion Week won’t be cheap to produce, though. She’s prepared to throw SWAIA’s full weight behind the burgeoning event, both as a show of support for what Bear Robe has achieved, and as a means to showcase contemporary Native artistry.

“I think in the nonprofit world, we’re always fundraising,” Schulze says with a laugh. “We’re earmarked for all kinds of different programs, and one of the things I’m very aware of is that there are many hands out there asking for help. But Amber-Dawn brings a wealth of knowledge about fashion and Native arts. From the beginning, it’s more than a fashion show. You look for invitations to change the narrative, to have deeper conversations—in this time and place, everybody loves fashion.”

As such, Bear Robe’s vision has room for Fashion Week to grow to a size and scope on par with New York or Paris, but she’s hardly getting ahead of herself. These are early days, and though the Indigenous Fashion Show as we know it has grown beyond anything she could have dreamed, she’s pragmatic. Still, 2024 and Indigenous Fashion Week aren’t as far off as they sound, and much work remains before then. It won’t be long before this year’s already established show kicks off, blows minds and then becomes a memory. Bear Robe plans to dive headfirst into Indigenous Fashion Week immediately after. Not one to count her chickens, she’s cautiously optimistic.

“Maybe it can become an international event that people come to annually, just like Indian Market,” Bear Robe says. “This can be the place people come to experience the work, to work with Indigenous designers and models, to collaborate. This can be the hub for that.”