Indigenous Haute Couture Fashion Residency - Design & Pattern Development

Overview

This three-week Indigenous Haute Couture Fashion Residency will offer Indigenous textile-based artists with traditional and contemporary practices the opportunity to develop their design and pattern development skills, traditional, and digital embellishments all at haute couture level.

Indigenous fashion makers and designers will explore experimental elements or accomplish finished productions of their work with an haute couture aesthetic to the best of their capacity in a fully supported environment.

What does the program offer?

This residency will have a repurpose and reuse component to the design process, exploring fashion's responsibility to address its part in the climate crisis. Throughout the program,  participants will design a couture garment inspired by their Indigeneity and based on the traditional silhouettes, lines and/or materials of their culture. Once the design illustration is finished, working drawings will be drafted and the pattern making process will begin using pattern blocks provided by the instructor and supported by Banff Centre’s costume production room.

Presented discussions with invited speakers will focus on Indigenous identity in the garment business and how culture plays a role, be it recycling, repurposing materials and/or related conversations.

This program will be delivered on campus, led by faculty lead D’Arcy Moses with the support of co-faculty member Christine Gerke, and guest faculty, Suzan Marie and Lucy Anne Yakelaya, expert traditional beadwork and moose hair tufters. Program faculty will support the participant’s exploration and research into Indigenous Haute Couture through their Indigenous lens. 

Who should apply?

• Participants must have a background in fashion or garment design in womenswear.
• Participants must have a basic knowledge of pattern making in the garment business.
• Participants must have some experience in garment construction, sewing, and working with a sewing machine.
• The residency invites both youth 18+ and Elders to apply. 
• This program is open to regional, national and global Indigenous fashion makers, designers and design companies, Indigenous jewelry makers, Indigenous beaders, Indigenous traditional artists including hide tanners and porcupine quillers, provocateurs, disrupters, advocates pushing the boundaries of their artistic practice, Indigenous artists that serve their community, Artistic leaders in Fashion Arts and collaborators of all performing arts disciplines.

For full details on vaccination requirements, masking, safety protocols, and COVID related policies please visit: www.banffcentre.ca/covid-19-measures