About the Designer…

I am a fashion designer in the traditional sense.  I attended design school and worked in and around the fashion industry in Los Angeles, California.  My design style is more modern.  I use techniques I learned in design school and what I picked up going out to night clubs.  I used fashion as a way of presenting myself to the general public.  Hybrid styles are my specialty.  I mix different cultural costuming motifs to come up with a modern “prêt-à-porter” line.  Geometric shapes found in Navajo rug designs, as well as, elements found in a Japanese kimono—or French undergarments from the 1700’s.  These become components I incorporate in my designs.  Subject matter is for a more “open-minded” individual.  My design skills are not just limited to Navajo blouses and squaw skirts.  For some of the shows I have done, I presented a 2-piece bikini and corseted pieces but I DO NOT believe in nudity as a selling point.  I work in all sorts of fabrics.  Everything from fine silks to polyester.  The techniques depend on the design.  Classic old-world tailoring is used in suit jackets and formal wear.  Pattern grading and “stretch-control” are employed for knitwear garments.  My goals are to take my label, Nizhoni Way Apparel, to a boarder audience.  I don’t just want to design for Native America but America as a whole.  I want to change people’s perceptions of what it means to be a Fashion Designer who happens to be a Native American.

It’s really hard to say when I started designing because I have always made clothes.  Like most, I started out making little clothes for my niece’s doll.  I don’t know what it was about sewing that provided me a sense of discipline and joy.  I started designing clothes for myself because I wanted all the latest styles that I saw on MTV.  Having come from a large family, money was tight.  I resorted to some unconventional means to stay in step with fashion.  When I first started sewing, it was mostly to hem up the legs of my jeans or to taper them in.  I never used the right color thread because I never knew how to thread the machine.  I would tell people it was intentional because only followers of the crowd matched their thread to their garments.  It use to take me hours to sew and I broke a lot of needles. As my sewing progressed, I began to alter a lot of the clothes my mom would buy for me.  My mom would spend a great deal of money on my clothes and I would take a pair of scissors to them and make them completely different from the way she bought them.  It got to a point that my mom refused to buy me anymore clothes because she knew I was going to “cut them up,” as she put it.After many years of deciding what I wanted to do with my life, I attended American Intercontinental University (formerly, The American College for the Applied Arts).  From day one, I had known that I had found my calling.  While I lived in Los Angeles, I use to work as a dresser behind the scenes with design labels.  I also worked with a couple of well-known design houses prepping gowns for the 1999 Oscars—I prepped the gown Tyra Banks wore to the ceremony that year.I worked for a very brief time for a (very well-known) southwestern designer as a head pattern-maker and co-designer.  In the time I worked for her, I designed outfits for Miss Indian World 2003–Onawa Lacy, The Navajo Nation’s First Lady and the Navajo Nation’s Vice-president’s wife, several tribal officials.

I currently work to promote Nizhoni Way Apparel. What Nizhoni Way Apparel strives for is to create original designs that are in step with modern fashion while paying homage to the traditional ceremonial clothing of the Navajo.  Nizhoni Way Apparel is a label that not only Grandma will love but the grand-daughter as well.  Nizhoni Way Apparel is also working on a men’s line-everything from sport coats to pants.  To “buy Navajo” with Nizhoni Way Apparel is to experience designer quality apparel at the fraction of the price.