Native Fashion Week’s Standout Designers Bring Indigenous Tradition to Contemporary Fashion

Photo: Tira Howard/Courtesy of NFWSF

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Get these brands on your radar if they aren’t already.

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Over the weekend, more than 30 Indigenous designers convened in New Mexico for the second (and biggest) edition of Native Fashion Fashion Week Santa Fe (NFWSF).

It’s the brainchild of Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, an Indigenous fashion expert and local celebrity who previously produced the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) fashion weeks since 2014, before leaving that organization to start NFWSF in 2024. (The two Indigenous fashion events now take place simultaneously.)

With the 2025 edition of NFWSF, Bear Robe sought to solidify its place on the global fashion calendar, bringing together an impressive roster of both established and emerging Indigenous fashion talent from throughout North America, and placing them on a global stage: Attendees included a mix of fashion press, industry figures (like CFDA President Steven Kolb) and celebrities (including Norman Reedus and several stars of AMC’s “Dark Winds,” which shoots locally), alongside prominent members of the Indigenous fashion and art communities, and locals, who were able to purchase tickets. The shows were also livestreamed online.

Outside of Indigenous communities, Indigenous fashion is often placed in an historical context, with traditional garments displayed in museums and history books. NFWSF puts a much-deserved spotlight on contemporary designers of Indigenous descent, many of whom incorporate their tribes’ ancestral motifs and techniques, like beading and quillwork, into contemporary ready-to-wear designs, or reinterpret traditional native garments with modern materials and cuts.

The roster of designers, who had to apply to participate, ranged from OGs like Dorothy Grant, who’s celebrating 40 years in business; to rising stars like Lauren Good Day, who’s won numerous awards and collaborated with Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton menswear; to up-and-comers like Alex Manitopyes of Scrd Thndr, who made quite the statement with their collection of vibrant “Fuck Trump” apparel and accessories.

Below, see 10 standout collections from NFWSF, and learn a bit more about the talented designers behind them, who should absolutely be on your radar if they aren’t already.

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Lauren Good Day

Photos: Tira Howard/Courtesy of NFWSF

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Lauren Good Day is an award-winning Arikara, Hidatsa, Blackfeet and Plains Cree artist and fashion designer from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. She’s known for her wearable art, which has been showcased in the National Museum of the American Indian and other museums.

She holds a B.A. in Indigenous Studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts, but learned her craft from her “family of creators:” her moccasin-maker grandmother, her warrior grandfather who made war bonnets and her regalia-maker mother. Good Day was making powow outfits for herself and her friends as early as 13. Today, she draws all of her prints by hand, incorporating culturally significant insignia and colors, which are featured on natural and organic fabrics in her latest collection.

“It’s important that we’re here to represent and to network within our own communities,” she told me ahead of her runway show, “but also, on a bigger level, that we’re represented and that people know that [Indigenous people] are still alive.”

Dorothy Grant

Photos: Tira Howard/Courtesy of NFWSF

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Dorothy Grant is an established, award-winning designer and traditional Haida artist of the Kaigani Haida of the Raven Clan from Brown Bear House of Howkan. Raised in Ketchikan, Alaska, she began putting Haida artwork on clothing in 1983 in response to Haida culture being appropriated by non-Indigenous designers. She later attended and graduated from Helen LeFeaux School of Fashion Design in Vancouver, B.C., where she opened her own boutique in 1994. (It’s since closed.)

Original Landlords

Photos: Tira Howard/Courtesy of NFWSF

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Original Landlords is a streetwear brand by Jeremy Donavan Arviso, who is of Diné, Hopi, Akimel O’odham, and Tohono O’odham heritage. He started doing illegal graffiti in high school, which evolved into putting his designs on T-shirts and then learning to sew and make clothes. Today, his designs feature themes relating to the Native American experience and the brand prioritizes eco-friendly practices like recycling and upcycling.

Original Landlords’ latest collection, titled “Indigitek,” incorporates his bestselling graphic, a sample of the Ralph Lauren Polo horse reimagined with a warrior with a Tomahawk and headdress. “Probably 70% of the people that buy [the graphic] are not native. And that’s what the first question they ask is: ‘Is it okay if I wear this?’ I’m like, ‘Of course it is. You’re part of it. You’re down with us,'” he shared during a panel discussion at NFWSF.

Darcy Big Horse

Darcy Big Horse is based in London and is of mixed Heévâhetané’e/Cheyenne and Arapaho heritage. She studied fashion textiles and costume design and is known for her beaded jewelry, which has been worn by actor Lily Gladstone. For NFWSF, she debuted her first full-fledged handmade collection of what she calls “Indigenous couture.”

Nonamey

Photos: Tira Howard/Courtesy of NFWSF

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Nonamey is a trans, Two-Spirit Indigenous multidisciplinary artist and designer from the Ojibwe Nation, Bad River Tribe and Lac du Flambeau Tribe, currently based in Portland, Oregon. His designs are rooted in anti-colonial aesthetics and storytelling around trans and native survival.

Nonamey’s latest collection, entitled “Threaded Lineage,” features his artwork on upcycled garments and materials, with each piece “connected in some capacity to me, my family, my people’s story,” he shared during a panel discussion at NFWSF. One jacket is for his grandmother, a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman (MMIW); another, emblazoned with “Hands up, don’t shoot,” is for his cousin, who was shot by police this year.

“What I’ve learned as an Indigenous person, is that loss is a very common thing. And I talk a lot about loss in my pieces,” he said. “That’s not to say that people that just have a certain experience can wear these clothes. That’s certainly not the case. But it’s interesting what comes out of people when they learn that the clothing that they’re wearing has a story. And I see that they start to make it their own.”

Emme Studio

Photos: Tira Howard/Courtesy of NFWSF

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Korina Emmerich, who is from Oregon and of Puyallup heritage, launched her slow fashion brand Emme Studio in 2015 and was quickly picked up by Lord & Taylor. She’s lived in New York City for 16 years and recently took a break from launching new collections in order to focus on opening and running Relative Arts NYC, a shop in the East Village featuring more than 50 different Indigenous artists and designers.

For Emme Studios’ return to the runway at NFWSF, Emmerich highlighted the brand’s focus on sustainability, using natural, biodegradable materials like wool. Moving forward, she hopes to focus more on creating textile art.

“When I was young, I didn’t necessarily want to be an Indigenous designer. I wanted to be a fashion designer who was Indigenous,” she told me after her show. “So I’m excited to see a branch out into the industry accepting us as an important part of fashion rather than a marginalized group.”

Running Horse Studio

Photos: Tira Howard/Courtesy of NFWSF

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For Santa Fe-bassed Chickasaw artist Jimmy Dean Horn, NFWSF 2025 marked the debut of his first full collection under Running Horse Studio, which is made up entirely of upcycled, hand-printed garments. Outside of fashion, he works in printmaking, stained glass and painting, using Chickasaw and Native American symbolism to explore his ancestry.

Ocean Kiana

Ocean Cherneski is a young Nishinaabe designer and artist from the Pic River First Nation community in Northwestern Ontario. She moved to Toronto and launched Ocean Kiana in 2020, beginning with T-shirts featuring her signature Ojibway floral designs, which took off via Instagram, before studying fashion design at George Brown College.

Her latest collection expands these signature motifs into feminine denim jackets, cargo ribbon skirts and cowboy boots (which had nearly sold out just four days after launching).

“Right now I’m focusing on the business aspects of my brand, which is putting products out there that native women and native people are adding to their wardrobes. It’s a piece of their identity,” she told me ahead of her runway show. She clarified that her designs are also for non-natives, who she was excited to see engage with NFWSF: “[I want to see] you [non-natives] being able to immerse yourself with us. A lot of people like to go to powwows, non-natives like to see that, but we have modern events, too.”

Sacrd Thndr

Photos: Tira Howard/Courtesy of NFWSF

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Alex Manitopyes is a Two-Spirit, non-binary/trans masc fashion designer from Muskowekwan and Peepeekisis First Nation, raised in Mohkinstsis (the Blackfoot name for Calgary, Alberta). They started their career in graphic design and photography, and launched Sacrd Thndr in 2023. Known for its acrylic jewelry, the brand creates collections that highlight Indigenous identity and make bold statements — as exemplified by the “Fuck Trump” pieces shown at NFWSF Sunday.

It all started with a heart-shaped “Fuck Trump” graphic they made and posted to Instagram as a way to channel their rage around the current U.S. president’s harmful, anti-trans rhetoric. The response inspired them to turn the design into earrings (with 20% of proceeds going to the Trevor Project). Sacrd Thndr’s latest collection features the phrase on brightly lit-up handbags and jumpsuits, which closed out NFWSF with quite the bang.

Manitopyes told me after the enthralling show that they felt supported by NFWSF organizers to execute their full creative vision. “I went full-force, I told them I’m gonna do ‘fuck Trump’ and they’re like, ‘That’s exactly what we want you to do, this is what this platform, this stage is for.'” As for what the designer wants viewers to take away from this show? “I want people to speak up or use their voice, because rage is sacred and we need to use that medicine to flip this fucking narrative around.”

Apache Skateboards

Douglas Miles Sr., an established Apache designer, photographer and muralist, launched Apache Skateboards more than 20 years ago and now runs the brand alongside his son, Doug Miles Jr. At NFWSF, they showed their streetwear-leaning apparel and actual skateboards on both men and women, several of whom skateboarded right down the runway.

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