In recovering this voice and bringing it to the modern fashion world, Michaels is taking a course that might have startled her television viewers. We have to embrace what’s in our hearts and ‘own it’ in order for all of us to move forward as a people.” An authentic voice has to be the standard. “Misrepresentation by non-Natives in itself, has to change.
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On the other hand, everyone else is ready to tell you how to design Native attire, and yet they’re not Native nor are they designing professionally. “There weren’t a lot of examples of ‘how to’ or a source I could look to for tools on what helps you earn your space in the competitive fashion industry. My name itself has taught me to realize our voice has been muffled, because it hasn’t been our voice for so long.”Īlthough creating a label seems like the most logical step to take, she said, it took a while “to stumble your way in that direction.” No medicine man or woman is around to know how it was used. Unfortunately, we don’t know how we used it as a medicine. People would come to our village to trade. Our trade routes went down into Mexico all the way to Canada. She explains that the plant, “was a medicinal trade pre-Columbus.
The label combines her initials and her native name Waterlily. Her textile designing flourished and, four years ago, she set up a company, PM Waterlily LLC. She then followed the example of her mentor Lloyd Kiva New and enrolled in the Chicago Art Institute.
She studied design at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, which then had a flourishing program in fashion design. She is proud to be “a person who would change things around when I couldn’t be a part of it from the beginning.” “Everyone loved it! I found a way to be up there,” she said. She found a way to be a part of scholastic success by drawing or painting beautiful borders around the container where her fellow classmates’ golden star papers would go on the chalkboard. She struggled in her studies because of dyslexia but excelled in her creativity and artistic abilities. She visited the art galleries there while attending parochial school and became inspired by the paintings. Michaels grew up near Canyon Road in Santa Fe, N.M. She follows the trail of the major figures Lloyd Kiva New and Wendy Ponca, and her current generation is blossoming with new talents. As Michaels noted, mainstream fashion thought “that a roach meant a cockroach.” But she was working within a 70-year tradition of famed Indian designers bringing a Native vision, without compromise, to the commercial mainstream.
Michaels’ performance was a revelation for a national audience deeply ignorant about contemporary Native fashion. Judge Zac Posen, the noted designer, called it “techno powwow.” In the end Michaels came within a horsehair of winning, a showing that in itself became a rallying cry for Indian fashion. In the final episode, timed for New York’s Fashion Week, Michaels startled the runway audience with a blue dress covered, elk-tooth fashion, with handcrafted mica pendants and an undulating head piece whose filaments veiled the model’s face. Surviving week after week in the often-catty competition, Michaels frequently drew the judges’ praise for producing “something we’ve never seen before.” One other contestant complained that for host Heidi Klum, the famed model and entrepreneur, Michaels “could do no wrong.” In its recently completed 11th season, the show invited Michaels to be its first contestant of American Indian descent.
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Her listing on a website for booking fashion models brought her to the attention of the producers of the influential cable TV competition Project Runway.
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