Image Courtesy: The Guardian/Anna Kucera
The Australian fashion industry embraced a powerfully beautiful part of its cultural heritage last week, through the inaugural Australian Indigenous Fashion Week (AIFW).
The event ushers in a monumental shift of awareness towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, and AIFW's national mentoring platform looks set to provide fertile opportunities for indigenous artists to create and communicate through the medium of fashion and textile design.
AIFW aims to harness the story-telling roots and traditional skills of the indigenous communities for a new kind of apparel supply chain; showcasing and celebrating the artists' work in a modern, commercial forum.
“There’s this sort of translation there between telling a story and using very old traditional methodology, such as land and sea management, to make garments which are sustainable. Communities have taken their skills and used them for fashion. It’s a nice ecosystem.”
Read more on this story via The Business of Fashion