AS PART OF WARDROBE CRISIS SHARE THE PODCAST MIC, YOUR GUEST HOST THIS WEEK IS GRACE LILLIAN LEE. SHE IS IN CONVERSATION WITH MODEL CHARLEE FRASER. THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY BENDIGO ART GALLERY.
Charlee Fraser shot for Country Road.
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ABOUT YOUR HOST: GRACE LILLIAN LEE is a multicultural Australian artist known for drawing inspiration from her Indigenous heritage. Through collaborations with Australian indigenous communities and their art centres, she has created a platform for cultural expression and celebration by way of fashion performances. These are instrumental in engaging young people from remote communities and providing an opportunity for them to represent and be proud of their culture and country through fashion and performance. In 2020, Grace co-founded First Nations Fashion & Design. Find her website here.
Grace Lillian Lee with her work.
EPISODE 132 FEATURES CHARLEE FRASER
In March 2020, Grace Lillian Lee and Teagan Cowlishaw announced Australia's first ever Indigenous fashion council - First Nations Fashion & Design. In December, they held their first fashion show - Walking in Two Worlds. But don't expect just any old runway.
Grace is this week's #sharethepodcastmic guest host and she's in conversation with First Nations Fashion + Design ambassador - model Charlee Fraser.
This is a beautiful story about reframing the fashion discourse, connecting to country, and mentoring emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fashion talent.
Charlee is a New York-based Australian model and a proud Awabakal woman from the mid-north coast of New South Wales. In 2016, she made her international debut on Alexander Wang’s runway, after Guido Paolo had chopped her long hair into a chic bob. That season, Charlee walked 40 shows including Prada, Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Lanvin, Givenchy and Céline. Find her on Instagram here.
ABOUT THIS WEEK’S PRESENTING PARTNER: BENDIGO ART GALLERY is a leading Australian regional gallery in Bendigo, Victoria. Upcoming? Mary Quant: Fashion Revolutionary - a retrospective exhibition on the iconic British fashion designer Dame Mary Quant, opening March 2021.
Bendigo is the exclusive Australian venue for this exhibition from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The exhibition explores the years between 1955 and 1975, when Mary Quant revolutionised the high street, harnessing the youthful spirit of the sixties and new mass production techniques to create a new look for women. Drawing on the V&A’s extensive fashion holdings, Dame Mary Quant’s Archive and private collections, the exhibition brings together over 110 garments as well as accessories, cosmetics, sketches and photographs. Book your tickets here.
Listen to Episode 132 on the gallery’s recent Piinpi: Contemporary Indigenous Fashion exhibition here. Piinpi was first major survey of current Indigenous fashion in this country, shining a light on Australia’s leading First Nations fashion creatives. Featuring the work of Indigenous artists and designers from the inner city to remote desert art centres, the exhibition highlights the strength and diversity of the rapidly expanding Indigenous fashion and textile industry.
Grace Lillian Lee’s work with artists from Darnely, as seen in the Piinpi Exhibition, Bendigo Art Gallery.
NOTES
YARRABAH About 60 kilometres south of Cairns CBD on Cape Grafton, Yarrabah is Queensland’s largest Indigenous community. It was established on the traditional lands of the Gunggandji people at Mission Bay in 1892 by an Anglican Mission. The township has a harrowing history, stemming from early state administrations which forcibly relocated Aboriginal and some South Sea Islanders from many different groups here. Read the colonial history here. Although a few years old, travel blog post is an enlightening read.
ON COUNTRY “Land is of great significance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples - but the connection we feel to country can be a difficult concept for non-Indigenous people to grasp. The living environment goes beyond physical elements, and is fundamental to our identity. For First Nations people, ‘country’ encompasses an interdependent relationship between an individual and their ancestral lands and seas. This reciprocal relationship between the land and people is sustained by the environment and cultural knowledge. When people talk about country it is spoken of like a person: we speak to country, we sing to country, we worry about country, and we long for country.” Via Common Ground - read the rest.
DAAF is the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair. See Episode 132 notes for more.
Charlee mentions an INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN FASHION WEEK - this happened in 2014. Founder Krystal Perkins told Business of Fashion, of her hopes to develop an ‘Indigenous-made’ garment supply chain, leveraging the traditional skills of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders in remote communities, including block printing, silk weaving and using echidna quills and kelp for adornments: “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.” Sounds familiar. However by 2015, it was no more.
WALKING IN TWO WORLDS The designers who participated are: Lynelle Flinders, Elverina Johnson, Emily Doolah, Nickeema Williams and Waringarri Arts Centre.
Watch the showcase here.
CHARLEE’S RISE
In May 2018, she was ranked as one of the "Top 50" models in the fashion industry by models.com. She was the most booked model of NYFW spring 2018. In 2019, she was co-named Model of the Year at the Australian Fashion Laureate awards (along with Duckie Thot, Robyn Lawley and Julia Nobis).
Inprint Issue 10
Bazaar Germany, April 2020
Stella McCartney Autumn 2016
Vogue Australia, April 2018, with Fernanda Ly, Akiima and Andreja Pejić
ABORIGINAL MODELS By 2010, Samantha Harris had made it internationally, and graced the cover of Australian Vogue. The first Aboriginal model on Vogue’s cover, however, was Elaine George in 1993.
In 2000, Naomi Campbell commented on the absence of Indigenous models on Australian catwalks, noting that not even designers who showcased Aboriginal-inspired designs seemed to use Aboriginal models.
Are things improving? Yes, and no. Nathan Macguire is in-demand from Melbourne - meet him here. Recently, he wrote an insightful op-ed for The Guardian about fashion’s diversity problem and a failed attempt to fix it.
Certainly BLM and fashion’s ongoing diversity reckoning has shifted the goal posts. There is more demand for BIPOC faces, including Australian Indigenous models. Ones to watch? Grace mentions current faces Perry Mooney, Nancy Nona and Magnolia Maymuru.
Magnolia, who is also an actor, photographed for InStyle Australia by by Hugh Stewart.
“SOME PEOPLE ARE VERY CULTURALLY GROUNDED, AND MORE CULTURALLY PRIVILEGED IN THE SENSE THAT THEY’VE HAD THEIR SHARINGS PASSED ON, BUT I THINK WITH OUR HISTORY AS A NATION, OUR THERE IS A LOT OF HEALING TO BE DONE.” - GRACE LILLIAN LEE
GRACE’S WEAVING In 2010, Grace took her grandmother back to the Torres Straits, where she hadn’t been for 57 years. “It made me question everything about who I am, and where I come from and the best way I knew how to react to that was through creating… I started exploring my lineage through the act of fashion, through weaving.”
Among these communities is Mornington Island. As a result of an ongoing collaboration with Grace, their art centre has been able to start a small fashion business titled MiArt Designs, known for its hand-painted one of a kind bags.
Woven body piece by Grace Lillian Lee
UNCLE KEN THAIDAY “Over the last three decades, the ingenious sculptural telling of stories from the island of Erub has propelled Ken Thaiday Snr from being a maker of Torres Strait dance objects to an internationally acclaimed artist…Dance was integral to Uncle Ken’s upbringing on Erub. His deep knowledge of the sea, his experience and understanding of Islanders’ connections with the animal world and their cultural practices have shaped his artistic trajectory.” Read the rest on The Conversation here.
CLIMATE CLOCK Charlee mentions a clock in Union Square, NYC that’s counting down how much time we have left to act on the climate crisis. Metronome is a massive digital clock that was erected in 1999 to count the hours, minutes and seconds in a day. In September 2020, two artists Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd, repurposed it into a “climate clock” to co-incide with UN Climate Week. Details here.
MUSIC is by Montaigne, who sang this special acoustic version of “Because I love You” from her album Glorious Heights, just for us.
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Clare & the Wardrobe Crisis team x