Yellowknife fashion designer Cheryl Fennell had spent weeks carefully planning how to transport her delicate birch bark dress to Vancouver for last month’s Indigenous Fashion Week. The dress, which cannot be folded or crumpled, was supposed to be placed in the business class section of her Air Canada flight.
However, when her flight was cancelled, Fennell’s plans quickly unraveled. Rebooked on a Canadian North flight, she found herself in a dilemma—there was no space to hang her dress.
“I was like, what am I going to do?” Fennell recalled. But then, a surprising solution emerged. “They said the pilot was in a good mood and would hang it in the cockpit,” she said. And so, her birch bark dress found a temporary home in the pilot’s closet during the flight.
Upon arriving in Edmonton, Fennell faced another challenge: the dress didn’t fit into the airport security scanner. A team of senior security staff was called in to scan the garment manually. Fennell described the scene as a curious crowd gathered around, admiring the unique piece. “They were very understanding,” she said, adding that the onlookers were fascinated by the dress.
The intricate dress, which was the final piece in Fennell’s collection for Indigenous Fashion Week, is crafted from individual birch bark squares sewn together with sinew. Fennell spent about two months making the dress by hand, using an awl to create holes in the bark and stitching each piece together. The final design consists of over 150 pieces, front and back.
The dress also features long birch bark earrings designed by Laura Vittrekwa, complementing the natural aesthetic.
This year’s Indigenous Fashion Week centered on the theme of fire, symbolizing destruction and renewal. While earlier pieces in Fennell’s collection highlighted fire and flames, her final dress symbolized rejuvenation. “Birch bark is always there. You see it burn, but you also know that it has medicinal properties,” Fennell explained. “It was used by our ancestors to survive, and that’s what inspired this piece.”
Fennell’s dress attracted attention wherever she went. “I think because it’s different—using natural materials—that’s why people were drawn to it,” she said. At an after-party, several attendees told her they came specifically to see her collection.
The dress was showcased on the runway at Indigenous Fashion Week, a celebration of Indigenous culture and art. For Fennell, the event marked a powerful moment of reclaiming tradition. “It’s a time for celebration,” she said. “In the past, people weren’t able to wear these outfits. They were taken away. My mother was in a residential school, but now we’re seeing the beauty of our culture being celebrated and returned to nature.”
“Nature is where we should all be,” she added, emphasizing the importance of reconnecting with the earth.
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