Entertainment
25 March, 2023
Woven message revealed
TEENAGE fashion designer and Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) first-timer Holly McInnes is one of the 15 designers selected for CIAF’s 10th-anniversary fashion show in July under the theme ‘woven’.
The 18-year-old will be working in partnership with auntie and multidisciplinary artist and proud Gunggandji woman, Simone Arnol, to create a collection of eight pieces (four pieces each).
The collaborative collection is called Guyu lemon and rice, which materialises their woven interpretation.
After graduating from St Mary’s College in 2022, Ms McInnes wants to travel to Brisbane in 2024 to study fashion design.
She said she was very excited to have been selected to present a collaborative collection next to her aunt and mentor, Ms Arnol, on CIAF’s fashion show’s 10th anniversary.
“This year is my first time during CIAF as a fashion designer, I went to the fashion show last year, so I wanted to go up a level and collaborate with my auntie,” she said.
“As the theme for this year’s CIAF is woven, we have chosen to call our collection Guyu (fish) lemon and rice.
“We chose to call it this way because, across all of our Indigenous communities, we all eat fish, lemon and rice, so this meal weaves us together, weaves families together during dinner time through hunting and storytelling.
“Working with my auntie has been amazing; she has supported me so much through this, and she’s given me so many opportunities, so I’m extremely grateful for that.”
Experience multidisciplinary artist and fashion designer and Ms McInnes mentor Ms Arnol said it was an honour to showcase such a meaningful collection with her niece.
“This is a huge year for CIAF, and we’re lucky to be a part of it,” she said.
“For Guyu lemon and rice, we’re using bright yellow for the lemon, we’ve got textile prints on the yellow fabric in fish print, and we’ve got all the details in white so you can see the fishbone.
“We’ll also use other fabric to represent our theme, so we’ll have material with white speckles on them that look like rice and grey that looks like fish scales, so that’ll bring everything together,” Ms McInnes said.
CIAF’s fashion performance curator Lynelle Flinders said the organisation had received an unprecedented response from Indigenous fashion designers following a call-out issued in January 2023.
“We had a record number of over 21 fashion designer submissions, but we had to narrow it down, so this year we’ve got 15 designers, and I thank everyone who applied,” she said.
“From Quandamooka Country in southeast Queensland to the Cape and Torres Strait, we are pleased to announce a stellar lineup of designers who will individually express the ‘woven’ theme.”
CIAF has issued an EOI to select 18 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander models for the fashion show; submissions close on April 24.
To apply, visit CIAF’s website or https://bit.ly/3ndgXvn
