A percussive drum circle reverberates through the venue as hair-raising anticipation grips the packed crowd. Then, CFDA-listed designer Jamie Okuma’s vision takes the stage: a model in an hourglass-shaped dentalium dress glides down the runway. The crowd erupts in thunderous ovation, witnessing this marriage of traditional design and contemporary vision. 

The SWAIA Native Fashion Show serves as the Santa Fe Indian Market’s powerful finale, transforming the nation’s second-largest art market in the United States into a launching pad for Indigenous designers reshaping fashion from within. Here, just 120 miles from the Navajo Nation—whose landmark 2016 victory against Urban Outfitters sent shockwaves through an industry built on appropriation—this runway represents the zenith of Native fashion’s response to that troubled history. The incendiary growth of Native fashion has outpaced any single platform, leading to Native Fashion Week Santa Fe in May, Indigenous NYFW in September, and The Indigenous Fashion Collective Gala in Los Angeles in October. 

The irony wasn’t lost on anyone: a community that has long rejected fashion industry validation exploded in celebration when Jamie Okuma became a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist this year. The moment crystallized a complex tension for designers to navigate in Indian Country: the need for cultural sovereignty and economic necessity. The choice between traditional artistry and values and accessing the platforms necessary to make a living as a designer presents an almost impossible dilemma. But the Luiseño and Shoshone Bannock designer’s work proves this is a false binary, achieving an elegant middle ground.

Back on the Santa Fe runway, Okuma’s vision commanded a different kind of attention. Models moved with purposeful slowness, lending an intimacy and authenticity to the presentation. The collection featured a myriad of flowy sateen silhouettes with distinctive graphic abstractions of cultural symbols—artistic renderings of roses, transposed photographs of beaded blossoms, and elk teeth. One male model embodied this fusion perfectly: black and grey geometric printed pants fastened with a gold beaded fox motif belt, paired with a black suede leather jacket adorned with dozens of large silver safety pins and studded beads that traced the fringed shoulders. The intentionality extended beyond the garments themselves: co-producer Peshawn Bread ensured that models and support staff were acknowledged at the end of the runway, a gesture that speaks to the community-centered values distinguishing Native fashion from industry norms.

Jontay Kahm (Plains Cree) also gestures to community values, working exclusively with Native models while contemporizing the ribbon skirt and avian regalia. For model Gavi Kya Stroemer (Nakota), Kahm created a kinetic stacked ribbon skirt divided along its meridian: a yellow feathered bodice with fanned feathers pinioning the shoulders, paired with hundreds of lemon, sky blue, pink, and magenta ribbons layered and sewn together at umbrella spine distance to create a cascading skirt. The ribbon skirt, invented by 18th-century Native women trading with settlers, originally represented aesthetic sovereignty reclaimed. Kahm’s modern interpretation transforms from tribe-specific to pan-Indian unity. Rising model Phillip Bread appeared in stark contrast: all black raiment featuring a Spartan-like plumed hat and a leather pantsuit with silver stud-lined slings and profuse fringe cascading from the pant legs.

Lauren Good Day (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) displayed ready-to-wear pieces decorated with characteristic, structured Plains abstraction that adds architecture to straightforward silhouettes. One model sported a beige blazer printed with asymmetrical symbols of Plains sun and flora typically seen in historical quillwork, while another wore a black jacket and pants with a repeating auburn buffalo motif. Most striking was Naiomi Glasses, the renowned young weaver and designer, wearing a simple cobalt, red, and white floral top styled with an earthy skirt emblazoned with vertical Plains quillwork abstraction in tan, blue, red, and black. The look was anchored by her signature Diné silver and red coral belt and accessorized with a red coral and turquoise stranded lavallière necklace.

While earlier in the weekend, Taos Pueblo designer Patricia Michaels––who famously debuted as the first Native American on Project Runway in its fourth season––showed at the market’s Gala, she accoutred former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and actress Tantoo Cardinal in a butterfly ornamented asymmetrical champagne sequin gown and a Pueblo-cardinal-colored weighted tent dress. A tentpole designer at the market, Michaels maintains her integrity from reality TV days, perpetuating her core principles––delicate natural material and dye processes and historical styles––and continues to effectively translate them into avant-garde stylings one can envision in the Southwest, on a Hollywood Red Carpet, or at the Met Gala.

This is the new paradigm: Native designers no longer choosing between authenticity and recognition, but redefining what both mean on their own terms.