Indigenous New York Fashion Week Grounds Its Second Year in Community

For Indigenous New York Fashion Week’s second year, Korina Emmerich (Puyallup) and Liana Shewey (Mvskoke) needed a larger venue. The event had outgrown its first home, and the team had looked at theaters costing about $10,000 a day. Instead, they brought the shows to the American Indian Community House’s new space in Manhattan’s Garment District.

AICH has served Native New Yorkers since 1969. It is also where Emmerich and Shewey met in 2019, before they became the co-founders and executive directors of Relative Arts NYC, the East Village shop and community space behind Indigenous New York Fashion Week.

Ten percent of the week’s ticket sales went back to AICH. “So all of the money stayed within community, and I think that’s incredibly important,” Emmerich said.

The week ran Sept. 10 to 15 during New York Fashion Week. It brought together more than 100 Nations, from Central and South America to Fiji and Australia, with 30 Indigenous designers and 120 models. Around 200 people worked on the event.

The co-founders’ photo from the first day of runway shows places them backstage in front of a community-made mural. Their host organization had recently moved into a space where it could settle “after decades of uncertainty and displacement,” Shewey said.

Making Year Two Happen

The first INYFW, in September 2025, was built from the ground up. “It was something that we knew needed to happen,” Emmerich said. “So we just had to prove that we could do it.”

Shewey said the team went ahead with the second year without raising everything it needed.

“There’s no putting the lid back on after what we had created last year,” Shewey said. “We had to create it because the people wanted it.”

That, she said, is how Relative Arts works: it “is whatever community needs it to be at any given moment.”

Nearly the whole team returned from Year One. “It’s a family affair,” Shewey said. “We really do get all of our relatives back.”

Several volunteers came through the Newark Film Works PA and Grip & Electric Training Program, which Stina Thomas Hamlin manages. One of them, Angelo, will take over lighting next year.

Shewey said the hair and makeup was “actually next level this year.” Having someone from community do that close, hands-on work, she said, “makes all the difference.”

A Place on the Calendar

Year Two also brought a partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), which keeps the official New York Fashion Week calendar. All 30 designers were listed by name.

“I insisted that the designers be listed by name and that it not be listed as just an event,” Emmerich said.

The listings appeared on the subscriber calendar sent to industry professionals, including press, buyers, manufacturers and department stores. Emmerich distinguished it from the shorter public calendar, where INYFW still hopes to appear. She said the CFDA’s involvement was the calendar listing, without financial support.

“New York City is still Native land and we deserve to have the recognition and identity there,” Emmerich said.

Welcoming the People Who Came

The week opened with performances by Indigenous Enterprise, Elisa Harkins (Cherokee and Muscogee) and Acosia Red Elk (Umatilla). With international guests and non-Native people in the audience, the organizers wanted “to welcome and ground the events,” Emmerich said.

Designers chose their own music and projected their own video. Josh Tafoya (Genízaro, Spanish and Chicano) opened the couture showcase with a dance performance alongside his new collection.

“It wasn’t just about clothes,” Emmerich said. “It was about, like, almost an immersive experience.”

Model casting director Thómas Lopez Jr. cast models across ages, sizes and heights, Emmerich said.

Himikalas Pam Baker (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Kwakiutl and Tlingit), who has worked in Indigenous fashion for decades, showed this year. Emmerich called her “a legend.”

An Exchange Across an Ocean

For Shewey, the arrival of two Aboriginal Australian designers showed how far INYFW’s relationships had reached.

Relative Arts won a 2026 Indigenous Arts Grant from the American Australian Association for a cultural exchange with Quandamooka artist and designer Delvene Cockatoo-Collins, whom Emmerich and Shewey met in November 2025. Trade & Investment Queensland, in partnership with the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) and Arts Queensland, then invited them to join the Queensland Indigenous Art Delegation.

They visited Cockatoo-Collins’ studio on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) and met artists and curators in Brisbane. At CIAF, they saw the runway work of Nicole Enoch-Chatfield (Yirrganydji and Nughi), who designs as Goompi’s Girl. She applied to INYFW soon after.

Shewey said they invited Cockatoo-Collins to New York “as an active reciprocity for true cultural exchange.”

Cockatoo-Collins, who won the Fashion Designer Award at this year’s National Indigenous Fashion Awards, opened her show with all three of her sons walking in it. One recited a poem about their Country. Enoch-Chatfield showed her Saltwoven collection. A designer from Fiji opened with a dance.

Building a Sustainable Third Year

Planning for Year Three began as soon as Year Two ended. INYFW plans to become its own 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with Relative Arts moving to a hybrid model. The co-founders are assembling a board to “build more accountability, equity,” Shewey said, and share the weight of the work.

“This isn’t the Korina and Liana show, you know, this is the community show,” she said.

Shewey wants INYFW to be sustainable, pay the people who make it what they’re worth and avoid extracting from the community. She wants a mentorship track for first-time designers, more support for the crew and the means to fund designers as they create their collections.

Emmerich wants INYFW to promote every Indigenous designer showing during New York Fashion Week, whether or not they are part of its production. She envisions satellite events, concerts and music across the city. Holding the week alongside New York Fashion Week also means many Indigenous models are already in town for bookings and do not need separate flights and lodging.

“It is not about us,” Shewey said. “We are just here to hold the elevator door open and to bring as many people up as we can.”

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Year Two’s team included Amy Farid (Osage), beauty director; Deyah Cassadore (White Mountain and San Carlos Apache), key hairstylist; Britta Ruona (Anishinabe and Chemehuevi), key makeup artist; Davy Tiger-Cortes (Mvskoke), producer and set director; Henu Josephine Tarrant (Rappahannock, Kuna and Ho-Chunk), volunteer coordinator; Steve Peace Smith (Lumbee and Eastern Band Cherokee), livestream videographer and director; and Stina Thomas Hamlin, media manager.