Designs by Lloyd Kiva New, blue sleeveless shirt, ca. Cotton Batik and glossy suede-cloth dress by CPascual Design. Spiral armband by Consuelo Pascual.
Jessica Rose Dombro wearing the white and black Chilkat tunic. Her listing on a website for booking fashion models brought her to the attention of the producers of the influential cable TV competition Project Runway. In its recently completed 11th season, the show invited Michaels to be its first contestant of American Indian descent.
She follows the trail of the major figures Lloyd Kiva New and Wendy Ponca, and her current generation is blossoming with new talents. She visited the art galleries there while attending parochial school and became inspired by the paintings. She struggled in her studies because of dyslexia but excelled in her creativity and artistic abilities.
She changed it every month. She studied design at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, which then had a flourishing program in fashion design. The label combines her initials and her native name Waterlily.
Our trade routes went down into Mexico all the way to Canada. People would come to our village to trade. No medicine man or woman is around to know how it was used. Behind the scenes at Project Runway, the comments and choice words that were directed towards me, at times were extremely hurtful. I tried my best to use the Project Runway platform to get my vision across through my work. I also felt it was a wonderful opportunity to give a voice not only to myself but the many other Native artists in the world.
I took advantage of using the critique time on the show to let the judges and guest judges give me advice and to listen and to ask questions. I knew that in reality, I wouldn't have the time to converse with them at this level of attention on my work. It was a part of my mission to utilize every bit of their knowledge to take home to my studio after the show to better myself so I could add to my journey and build upon their constructive critiques of my work.
I never could have afforded the audience that Project Runway provided me. I used it to better myself on so many levels. I prayed every morning and night to be humble and bring back the industry for the future of Native Americans in fashion design. I had to pray so that I could keep my vision straight and did not take on the noise that was irrelevant to getting my name and the understanding of my own vision and stories to share too. I said this to myself every time I was on stage and and in my interviews.
So I did what I do best and transported myself in these challenges to times when my Pueblo had ceremonies. Ceremonies are about a theme and you have a group of dancers to impress and relate to I am so fortunate to come from this family of mine. I was buying ceremonial fabric in New York, we all participate at home. All of this goes into having this opportunity as a Native artist.
Without our culture, we are really nothing. We worked on these garments one day and with all these issues we were having, we just let go and we all became peaceful. This work is so labor intensive, that we had no choice but to come together, our meditative strength, this whole upbringing, it really does heal. Designer Returns to 'Project Runway'. We have to wake up the senses of people. These days everything is so immediate for the young generation.
Do they really feel life and all its choices? Only an artist knows what's inside their heads. You have to work to get it out. It was fun seeing everybody, but I felt, we all felt, that the art and the designs were not challenging enough, nobody was challenging their own designs, no innovation.
Helen Castillo impressed me the most of all the current designers. This is going to be good, even relaxing, the high-end retailers, clients and celebrities will come to us, with none of the Project Runway media hype.
My ready-to-wear collection is about seeds, desert seeds, layers of sheer fabric with seeds in every layer. I have an appointment interview to do an article in Interview magazine. Margeaux Abeyta, 15, left, sits next to her mother, fashion designer Patricia Michaels, as they watch the finale of Project Runway on Thursday.
Michaels came in second in the show. The judges called her collection spectacular, different, cool and unique. Michaels came in second. And Michaels — the first Native American to appear on the show and a season-long favorite of host Klum — has already begun to parlay the exposure into a number of lucrative and creative projects. Posen has asked Michaels to collaborate with him on a textile project.
Her work will also be the subject of a retrospective curated by the Smithsonian. But what was I gonna do, be safe and go home sad?
Michaels said she feels honored to have come as far as she did on the highly competitive program, which began with 16 contestants, and to represent her native culture on the runway.
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