A cloud of hairspray filled the air as Tristan Agnauraq Morgan got her hair done backstage at the Far North Fashion Show. Jackie Schaeffer stood behind her, pinning a stray piece of hair into place.
“How many bobby pins are in there?” Morgan asked.
“At least 20, maybe 50,” replied Schaeffer. “Who cares? It’s working, girl.”
Schaeffer teased up a section with a comb and more hairspray and added a few more pins.
“So we're not gonna care about how many bobby pins you take out. You can have them,” she said, laughing. “That's our Alaskan payment. You can have bobby pins.”
Schaeffer said her vision is a ’60s-inspired updo, with what she described as a messy beehive top and a flip bottom. She said she was going for Priscilla Presley, Elvis’s wife, while also reflecting this year’s theme for the fashion show, “The Water Collection.” The whole look consisted of a sparkly blue dress with salmon skin cuffs, a white fox fur scarf, beaded earrings and reflective silver boots.
Every piece was intentional, Schaeffer said.
“It’s really important to me that what I design, the art pieces, share our value system and really promote a healthy planet,” she said. “I wanted to use vintage pieces, because I'm trying to be more conscious of fashion waste, and so I spiced up vintage pieces and Indigenized them.”
Schaeffer, an Iñupiaq artist, was one of the designers at this year’s Far North Fashion Show, part of the Arctic Encounter Summit, an annual gathering in Anchorage of stakeholders from the circumpolar north. The fashion show transformed the Anchorage Museum into a runway, showcasing Alaska Native artists, designers and models.
Having a platform for Indigenous culture and creativity is important to Trina Landlord, who’s Yup’ik and a coordinator for the show. This was her third year in the role, and she said every year it feels like a childhood dream come true.
“My best friend Tiffany and I, when we were 13 years old, we would often talk about what we saw in Vogue magazines, and we saw all these models from across the world in the pages, but we never saw Alaska Native representation,” Landlord said. “And now we're adults, and we're able to sort of, like, bring that to life with traditional garments, but also inventing and creating contemporary work.”
A few minutes before the show, designers were putting finishing touches on their models. Bobbie Meszaros – a Tlingit, Tahltan and Coast Salish artist from Juneau – adjusted a necklace on one of her models. She had five designs in the show, and she said she worked on them for almost a year. While making one piece, a hand-woven Salish skirt, she couldn’t seem to get it right. Meszaros would weave a little more, then put it away again until, after days, she finally noticed a pattern.
“It looked like scales, and it matched our theme for this show, of water,” Meszaros said. “And so I think for me, I felt like my ancestors must have been talking to me throughout this whole process of, yes, this is what you need to do.”
As they lined up to take the runway, the models prepared for their walks.
Beth King wore a long, shimmery dress with a collar made of salmon skin. She said the dress made her feel regal and elegant. Getting to experience that, on the runway, is part of what makes this night special for her.
“We’re all people of color, Indigenous people, like we have tattoos and we look different, and, like, I have armpit hair, you know,” King said. “And just like being able to show up and change the standard of what beauty looks like, of what models should look like, of what clothes that models wear look like, you know. Just to be able to represent myself and my community in a different way is just really cool.”
That representation is important to Jessica Gologergen, too. She said when she walks the runway, everything else falls away and she just feels like herself. In Wednesday’s show, she wanted to highlight her woven shawl and her ermine earrings.
“I want to shimmy a little bit just to get some fringe moving on the collar and play with the earrings,” she said.
Suddenly, it was showtime. The museum atrium filled with music, underlaid with the sound of crashing waves. At the end of the runway, some models struck a pose, and others performed traditional dances. The crowd went wild for each one.
Gologergen said it felt really good to be up on stage.
“Yeah, it was a success,” she said. “I forgot to shimmy, but it was fine.”
To end the show, she and all the models and designers walked the runway together, a parade of parkas, furs, minidresses, beaded earrings and much more.
