Last month the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian held their sixth annual Kananesgi Fashion Show, providing a look into the blossoming Indigenous fashion scene.
Kananesgi is a fashion and art show focused on work by Cherokee people. Its namesake, meaning spider, was chosen for the spider’s representation of creativity and dexterity in Cherokee culture.
Moon Mother by Haley Cooper. Photo by Mattilynn Sneed.
Ashley Hyatt wearing a dress featuring a starry cape created Alexandria Lane. Photo by Mattilynn Sneed.
Lilly Wright modeling a white gown designed by Alexandria Lane. Lane says she’s always gravitated toward bridal designs. Photo by Mattilynn Sneed.
Faith Long-Presley waves to the crowd as they applaud her new collection that was inspired by Cherokee basket weaving and 1990s Channel. Photo by Mattilynn Sneed.
Guest designer Lesley Hampton (center) presented pieces from her eveningwear collection. Her work focuses on mental wellness and body neutrality in fashion through the lens of indigeneity. Photo by Mattilynn Sneed.
The show started small, with the first renditions held at Cherokee Central Schools. By 2022, Harrah’s Cherokee Casino reached out about hosting the event, where it has been held each year since.
The show is organized by the volunteer Kananesgi Committee, consisting of Faith Long-Presley, Hope Husky, Tanya Carol and Tierra McCoy.
Long-Presley has been involved in the show in some capacity since its beginning when she was interning with Husky. She branched out from being behind the scenes to joining other designers on the runway.
Her brand, Ganvhida Designs, honors her family name, Long, a name known for its lineage of Cherokee crafts people. She said her grandmothers, Glenda Cunningham and Nancy Long, inspired her to learn how to sew.
“They were really good seamstresses because they had to be, not because they really wanted to. But I could see that they took pride in their work and that really inspired me,” Long-Presley said.
This year, her collection combined elements from Cherokee basketry and a homage to 1990s Chanel collections. It featured pieces printed with traditional Cherokee basket weave designs and tweed fabrics meant to mimic the weave of a basket.
She considers herself a novice seamstress and says she and some of the other designers rely on the more expert sewists in the community to be able to execute their looks. That’s part of what makes the show so important to uplifting the local community.
With grant funding from the Ray Kinsland Leadership Institue and the Sequoyah Fund, Kananesgi provides training and resources for all designers whose applications to the show are accepted.
“The main goal for me is to see our Eastern Band designers uplifted, and to give them a platform that they wouldn’t otherwise have,” Long-Presley said. “Continuing with the community environment, it really makes our show special that you can see faces that you recognize in the show.”
One of the community members to take advantage of the show was Alexandria Lane. In college, she studied consumer journalism and fashion merchandising but was encouraged to opt for a more stable career path than fashion. Lanes involvement with the fashion show was first as a makeup artist, but she decided this year she wanted to be a designer.
Her runway collection was inspired by Cherokee legends regarding stars. In Cherokee culture stars are described as living beings made of luminous balls of feathers. This led her to incorporate white feathers and a shade of blue that harkened to the color of the sky at dawn.
She said most of the sewing she’d done in recent years were small projects for herself or hemming pants for her husband, but her involvement with the show has reawakened her love for the art. Lane hopes to integrate fashion into her career, commenting on the importance of Indigenous representation in the fashion industry.
“Indigenous people were left out of the conversation for so long. Being able to take up space after being forced to assimilate, after being forced to give up our culture and our dress and our language, coming back around to bring our traditional influences to modern fashion is so cool. I think it’s important for us to be part of that conversation, because we have influenced fashion for years but were never credited for it.” Long-Presley said.
There’s no denying that the Indigenous presence in the fashion world is growing. This movement is well demonstrated by Kananesgi, Indigenous Fashion Week in Vancouver, Native Fashion Week in Santa Fe, Native Fashion in the City in Denver, and other Indigenous focused fashion shows.
Though the focus is on Cherokee designers and models, the show also works with guest designers and models from other North American tribes. Peshawn Bread is a Comanche filmmaker, designer and model who launched her brand House of Sutai in 2023. She lends her expertise to Kananesgi by training the models in runway walking and posing as well as modeling in the show herself.
This year’s guest was Lesley Hampton, a Temagami First Nation Anishinaabe designer, who describes her work as contemporary fashion through an Indigenous worldview.
From a bomber jacket embroidered with the words “A LINEAGE OF BADASS MATRIARCHS” to scarlet evening gowns adorned with feathered flowers, her work seamlessly integrates modern style and Indigenous identity. She boasts appearances in VOGUE as the number one Canadian brand to keep an eye on and Forbes 30 under 30 Local: Toronto list.
It isn’t just big names like Hampton, Bethaney Yellowtail of the Northern Chyane Nation and Cree designer Jontay Kahm are taking off. Indigenous people are bringing their culture into the fashion world and creating looks that stitch tribal identity into wearable garments.
Luke Swimmer, an EBCI member from the Snowbird community takes on a more casual angle of Native fashion. While he has been in the fashion show before, he feels his brand is more subtle than that of the show.
Swimmer began Buffalotown Clothing in 2017 with $500 he won from dancing at a powwow. With the prize money, he made 24 T-shirts with his designs on them. He and his wife did a popup sale with the shirts at a gym in Cherokee, where they quickly sold out. His brand only grew from there. He focuses on designing and says the business wouldn’t be possible without his wife and co-owner Tabatha Swimmer.
“I like to think of our brand as a lifestyle, it’s kind of a way to show people who we are, where we’re from and the connection to the community and the culture,” Swimmer said.
Swimmer talked about how, when he was growing up, there weren’t options for everyday wear fashion that identified with Indian identity.
“Nike did the N-7 thing, but it was more general to all native tribes. There wasn’t really clothing that was specific to certain tribes. Now there’s quite a few. Our clothing incorporates a lot of Cherokee culture into it, that’s why we’re popular here in and in Oklahoma,” Swimmer said.
He said he never expected his brand to grow as much as it has. In the beginning it was mostly just friends, family and other community members wearing his brand, now he says he sees his work on people he’s never met. Those 24 T-shirts he made with powwow money grew into a brand that sells in two REI locations, supplies uniform shorts for stickball teams on the Qualla Boundary and Cherokee Nation, and has a design deal in the works with Nantahala Outdoor Center.
Indigenous people continue to contribute their creativity in fashion, shattering stereotypes and overcoming the status quo of fashion. While many are inspired by their cultural roots, Alexandria Lane reminds us that they need not be boxed in by what others may expect of them in terms of what is considered Indigenous.
“Anything that comes from their brain is inherently a Native perspective. Even if it wasn’t a direct reference from the culture, it’s still an indigenous design,” Lane said.
Every year, the fashion show is accompanied by an art show. This year’s theme was “feminine roots.” It celebrated women as life-givers, nurturers, sustainers and connectors of the Cherokee people. Moon Mother by Haley Cooper took first place in the adult painting
