Indigenous Fashion Showcase 'Country to Couture' Celebrates Culture and Growth in Darwin

Australia's largest showcase of Indigenous fashion, Country to Couture, has hit the runway in Darwin, marking a new decade for the blossoming event.

The event celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander textiles, fashion, culture and knowledge with this year's event featuring 21 meticulously crafted collections from Indigenous artists and designers across the country.

To accommodate the growing number of spectators and designers, the event is taking place over two shows under the stars at the newly built Charles Darwin University campus in the Darwin CBD before a sold-out crowd, with the first held on Sunday.

Indigenous Fashion Projects manager Michelle Maynard said the event provided pathways for Indigenous creatives including designers, models, stylists and hair and make-up artists.

"The opportunities people have here can really set them up … they build their networks to be able to access other opportunities," she said.

"It empowers people, it potentially changes people's lives."

Claire Summers, executive director of the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair Foundation, which established Country to Couture, said the event had gone from strength to strength, with spectators travelling from across the country and even overseas to attend.

"Our greatest strength is our ability to bring communities together," she said.

"In a country that is a nation of nations, that celebrates over 250 language groups, what we do is offer a place to belong, and to bring First Nations people to celebrate each other, to elevate voices and hear and celebrate stories of First Nations people."

'People have to see us'

Natisha Tabua, the designer behind fashion label Off the Plantation, said despite having shown her work at some of Australia's biggest fashion events including Sydney and Melbourne fashion weeks, Country to Couture was the most important.

"When we're in those spaces [major Australian fashion weeks] we're ticking boxes. We're not validated for a full runway, we're a feature," she said.

Bobbi Lockyer, a Ngarluma, Kariyarra, Nyulnyul and Yawuru woman and one-half of the duo behind The Mermaid Collection, said the event was "particularly special".

"It's all about all the Indigenous talent that brings this together, from the designers, the artists, the photographers, the stylists and it's just a beautiful celebration of culture," she said.

Women's power and knowledge centre stage

The opening show was themed Carried by Our Matriarchs, with the collections celebrating the knowledge, stories and voices of women.

Ms Lockyer said her connection to fashion and design was born out of her relationship with her mother, grandmother and aunties.

"The reason I'm a designer is because of my mum," Ms Lockyer said.

"She taught me how to sew when I was four years old.

"She always told me stories about how she created things, how my nanna created dresses out of old flour sacks."

Ms Tabua said fashion was a form of empowerment for Indigenous women.

"Sewing was taught to my great grandmother or my great great grandmother, all the way down to my mother, as a skill set you can have because that's all [women] were valued for," she said.

The second Country to Couture show is on tonight.