#fashion news

[kitsunetsuki]

Kishin Shinoyama - Dress by Jean Paul Gaultier (Fashion News 1985)

[reasonsforhope]

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"Minnetonka first started selling its “Thunderbird” moccasins in 1965. Now, for the first time, they’ve been redesigned by a Native American designer.

It’s one step in the company’s larger work to deal with its history of cultural appropriation. The Minneapolis-based company launched in the 1940s as a small business making souvenirs for roadside gift shops in the region—including Native American-inspired moccasins, though the business wasn’t started or run by Native Americans. The moccasins soon became its biggest seller.

[Photo: Minnetonka]

Adrienne Benjamin, an Anishanaabe artist and community activist who became the company’s “reconciliation advisor,” was initially reluctant when a tribal elder approached her about meeting with the company. Other activists had dismissed the idea that the company would do the work to truly transform. But Benjamin agreed to the meeting, and the conversation convinced her to move forward.

“I sensed a genuine commitment to positive change,” she says. “They had really done their homework as far as understanding and acknowledging the wrong and the appropriation. I think they knew for a long time that things needed to get better, and they just weren’t sure what a first step was.”

Pictured: Lucie Skjefte and son Animikii [Photo: Minnetonka]

In 2020, Minnetonka publicly apologized “for having benefited from selling Native-inspired designs without directly honoring Native culture or communities.” It also said that it was actively recruiting Native Americans to work at the company, reexamining its branding, looking for Native-owned businesses to partner with, continuing to support Native American nonprofits, and that it planned to collaborate with Native American artists and designers.

Benjamin partnered with the company on the first collaboration, a collection of hand-beaded hats, and then recruited the Minneapolis-based designer Lucie Skjefte, a citizen of the Red Lake Nation, who designed the beadwork for another moccasin style and a pair of slippers for the brand. Skjefte says that she felt comfortable working with the company knowing that it had already done work with Benjamin on reconciliation. And she wasn’t a stranger to the brand. “Our grandmothers and our mothers would always look for moccasins in a clutch kind of situation where they didn’t have a pair ready and available to make on their own—then they would buy Minnetonka mocs and walk into a traditional pow wow and wear them,” she says. Her mother, she says, who passed away in 2019, would have been “immensely proud” that Skjefte’s design work was part of the moccasins—and on the new version of the Thunderbird moccasin, one of the company’s top-selling styles.

[Photo: Minnetonka]

“I started thinking about all of those stories, and what resonated with me visually,” Skjefte says. The redesign, she says, is much more detailed and authentic than the previous version. “Through the redesign and beading process, we are actively reclaiming and reconnecting our Animikii or Thunderbird motif with its Indigenous roots,” she says. Skjefte will earn royalties for the design, and Minnetonka will also separately donate a portion of the sale of each shoe to Mni Sota Fund, a nonprofit that helps Native Americans in Minnesota get training and capital for home ownership and entrepreneurship.

Some companies go a step farther—Manitobah Mukluks, based in Canada, has an Indigenous founder and more than half Indigenous staff. (While Minnetonka is actively recruiting more Native American workers, the company says that employees self-report race and it can’t share any data about its current number of Indigenous employees.) Beyond its own line of products, Manitobah also has an online Indigenous Market that features artists who earn 100% of the profit for their work.

White Bear Moccasins, a Native-owned-and-made brand in Montana, makes moccasins from bison hide. Each custom pair can take six to eight hours to make; the shoes cost hundreds of dollars, though they can also be repaired and last as long as a lifetime, says owner Shauna White Bear. In interviews, White Bear has said that she wants “to take our craft back,” from companies like Minnetonka. But she also told Fast Company that she doesn’t think that Minnetonka, as a family-owned business, should have to lose its livelihood now and stop making moccasins.

The situation is arguably different for other fashion brands that might use a Native American symbol—or rip off a Native American design completely—on a single product that could easily be taken off the market. Benjamin says that she has also worked with other companies that have discontinued products.

She sees five steps in the process of reconciliation. First, the person or company who did wrong has to acknowledge the wrong. Then they need to publicly apologize, begin to change behavior, start to rebuild trust, and then, eventually, the wronged party might take the step of forgiveness. Right now, she says, Minnetonka is in the third phase of behavior change. The brand plans to continue to collaborate with Native American designers.

The company can be an example to others on how to listen and build true relationships, Benjamin says. “I think that’s the only way that these relationships are going to get any better—people have to sit down and talk about it,” she says. “People have to be real. People have to apologize. They have to want to reconcile with people.”

The leadership at Minnetonka can also be allies in pushing other companies to do better. “My voice is important at the table as an Indigenous woman,” Benjamin says. “Lucie’s voice is important. But at tables where there’s a majority of people that aren’t Indigenous, sometimes those allies’ voices are more powerful in those spaces, because that means that they’ve signed on to what we’re saying. The power has signed on to moving forward and we agree with ‘Yes, this was wrong.’ That’s the stuff that’s going to change [things] right there.”"

-via FastCompany, February 7, 2024

[taboogentlemen]

Kit Connor Models A.P.C. x JW Anderson Interaction #20 Collection

Discover A.P.C. x JW Anderson interaction #20 collection presented with a campaign featuring Heartstopper star Kit Connor and Bianca Blanc-francard lensed by fashion photographer Drew Vickers.

[venusimleder]

Fashion News, 1981.

Ph. Kohei Onishi

[kieraoonadiy]

The link to the article is below:

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/shein-rico-charge-racketeering-lawsuit-b2375174.html

[disease]

🥲🥲🗿

[zegalba]

[sseditorialnews]

Pierpaolo Piccioli has just shared his thoughts on his departure from Maison Valentino, and it is heartbreaking. Piccioli joined Maria Grazia Chiuri (Creative Director of Dior) as joint Creative Director in 2008 and has solely taken the brand forward since 2016.

In his statement on Instagram, the icon mentioned his 25-year career with Valentino, wonderful colleagues, people he has met along his journey to Director, acceptance by global fashion communities and how much he appreciates his loyalists.

In a lasting statement, Piccioli said, "Stay with me, you who know who you are because it is to you that I am writing, to you who I owe this legacy of love which is stainless and perpetual".

The Director thanked Mr. Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti, two instrumental beings in his success at Maison Valentino. Pierpaolo said he feels "Young and free and full of dreams".

Where will PP go next?

[an-onyx-void]

Disclaimer: I am not the original owner or creator of this content. The source is listed below.

[superselected]

Hanifa Launches Bridal Line

[junoinfashion]

France legislations to cut down on fast fashion! This is going to have some intriguing impacts in the business element of fashion but it should hopefully be a step in the right direction for global fashion.

[kitsunetsuki]

Kishin Shinoyama - Dress by Tinker Bell (Fashion News 1985)

[hauteaddict]

Ynésuelves Spain spring 2024

[taboogentlemen]

Carlos Alcaraz is the Face of Louis Vuitton Formal Collection

Luxury house Louis Vuitton unveiled its Fall Winter 2023 Formal Collection with a campaign starring the brand’s ambassador and tennis superstar Carlos Alcaraz.

[fashionfoodcocktails]

Fashion News| Death of an icon, Roberto Cavalli

[attaritraders]

The most recent industry annoyed with the utilization of artificial intelligence AI: Fashion

It maintains that guideline should safeguard models so brands and offices don't utilize artificial intelligence to make advanced imitations without their assent.

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