‘This is a story of transformation.’ Indigenous fashion weaves with healing and hope in an unmissable film

“This is not a regular fashion show, there is magic here,” said Mitton. “This is a story of transformation.”

This particular fashion week is centred in Indigenous world views. It's “very different from your Eurocentric idealized fashion shows,” said Mitton, who is Plains Cree and Dane-zaa. “I think people are very tired of that kind of fashion, or bored of that kind of fashion, because there is no meaning behind it.”

Mitton should know. This is her 24th year in the fashion industry; she travelled the world as a model, working for brands such as Kenzo and Vivienne Westwood.

The docu-short is directed by Sean Stiller, who is Secwépemc, and whom Mitton has known for a long time. “There is a comfortability there,” she said. The film is part of the Citizen Minutes series at Hot Docs, which focuses on Canadians doing extraordinary things within their communities. Other subjects include the first all-female Muslim softball league and a rapper speaking about mental health issues. “Ancestral Threads” will screen for free at Hot Docs in Toronto on October 25.

“It does paint a beautiful picture of what is happening [at VIFW],” said Mitton. “There is such a mentorship component, and obviously a fashion component, with elders, youth, this whole gamut of really great people involved.”

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• Dec 31, 1969
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Mitton launched VIFW in 2017; its fourth iteration is set to take place in Vancouver November 20 to 25. She also founded Supernaturals Modelling, an all-Indigenous model agency, and recently returned from working with talent at New York Fashion Week. She is a basketball player; the team she plays on and runs, named All My Relations, won the All Native Basketball Tournament last year. And she works with the Vancouver-based program Urban Butterflies to help Indigenous youth in foster care connect with their culture. All of these threads tie together; many of Mitton’s athletic teammates and youth clients have participated in VIFW.

“Seeing the elders in the front row cry when they see the youth walk in their power—I think that is very transformative,” she said. “They never got to do that, and to see their future on the runway, I think that is very healing.”

It’s personal for Mitton. In the film, we see images of Mitton as a child; she grew up in East Vancouver with her mother, a survivor of the Sixties Scoop.

The multigenerational participation in VIFW has many added benefits. There are opportunities for youth to work in apprenticeship both on stage and behind the scenes, for instance. Mitton describes it as “being able to be ahead of the curve for young people who might be going down a dark path and who don’t see themselves in the city that they live in.”

In fact, Mitton feels the positive effects extend beyond the community. “It has changed the cultural landscape of Vancouver, I believe, just because we are so much more visible,” she said. “People have preconceived notions of what an Indigenous person is. That we are not here anymore. But we are contemporary people as well; we are artists.”

VIFW is not about the fashion of the season or the next trend, rather it is about telling the stories of the people who make the garments, and the people who wear them. “We have motifs and clans, and in Indigenous fashion we tell a story, the story of the wolf or the moon or maybe you are part of killer whale clan. All these stories are woven into the fabric of a lot of our designers,” Mitton said. “I think that is very moving and very telling because it means we are very attached to our culture and our ceremonies.”

The designers are not trying to produce a new collection every season; often they will show one year and skip the next. This is part of making sure everything is produced intentionally, such as a designer who sources vintage jingle cones and incorporates them into contemporary pieces. Mitton said this makes the garments so much more powerful “than something you just buy off Amazon.”

“We are not really into fast fashion,” said Mitton. “We have some ready-to-wear, but we are mainly trying to focus on people who actually sew things. That is the beauty of this kind of fashion.”