Fashion Finds in Alaska Reinvent the Traditional

An Athabascan designer's fish-skin garments push fashion forward in Alaska. Plus a mask carver designs fashion-statement pieces and another artist creates sealskin slippers, jackets and skirts.

By Jourdan Bennett-Begaye (Diné)

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Drew Michael (left) is found among his art work in a courtesy photo by friend of the artist Douglas Reynolds.

No Longer Masking a Culture

The Alaskan Native culture’s roots in large part can be found in fashion and mask carving. Drew Michael (Inupiat/Yup’ik) has been carving masks out of bask wood for years and extended his artistic talent into the fashion industry

“Some people are mask carving, but it doesn’t happen a whole bunch,” says Michael, who uses the traditional act of burning a mask by burning the nose and eyebrows with a flame, which solidifies a ceremony in the Yup’ik culture.

Back when the Russian missionaries came to Alaska, they discouraged indigenous tribes from living their traditional ways, he says. “Now we are being revived and proud of who we are,” the multi-talented designer says. “We want to tell a story and share the culture.”

When asked how he went from mask carving to designing fashion-statement pieces, he says with a laugh, “I can’t do mask-making forever or I’ll go crazy.”

His fashion talents began when he played around with a sewing machine, then he went on to create modernized versions of the kuspuk—a traditional Yup’ik hooded garment with long sleeves and large front pocket—for a couple of years, with acrylic designs painted on them by his friend Elizabeth Ellis (Alutiiq).

The 30-year-old showcased his mask carving and fashion talent at the “Wear Art, Thou?” fashion show in 2013 in Anchorage. For the Indigenous Renaissance–themed fashion show, Michael integrated the culture by playing with masculinity and femininity while connecting the human and land elements with the animal spirits. It made a man and a woman an animal at the same time, he says. The spirits are one in the same.

“There’s a respect for another being and a sharing that happens automatically,” he says. “This shows our relationship to the world around us.”

With the revival of the culture, this relationship with the land and animals is going back into the clothing, Michael says.

“People are proud of their culture, and young people are learning their language,” he says. “I think we lost identity for so long, and it’s cool going back to our roots of tradition but expressing it in contemporary ways.”

—Jourdan Bennett-Begaye

Passing Down the Sealskin Tradition

Sealskin slippers, sealskin skirts, sealskin jackets sealskin toys. You name it, and Chris Alowa (St. Lawrence Island Yup’ik) can make it.

Alowa grew up around seals on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea and learned how to sew the skin from her two grandmothers and her mother, Annie Alowa.

Relatives and her brother bring the seals they harvest to the 66-year-old after going out into the ocean 4 or 5 miles in a boat. Then, Alowa processes the abundant resource herself, using the meat for food and the skin for clothing.

The self-employed designer showcased her sealskin work at the 2013 Clare to Clare Fashion Show in downtown Anchorage, where Trina Landlord, executive director of the Alaska Native Arts Foundation, took strong notice of Alowa’s sealskin bubble skirt.

As many art forms are being lost, and with skin-sewing a valuable skill, Alowa tries her best to pass the skill down to young people. She wants this traditional material to be used, rather than store-bought material.

—Jourdan Bennett-Begaye

(A model wears a seal-skin bubble skirt during a 2013 Anchorage fashion show. Image courtesy of Alaska Native Arts Foundation).