Loren Aragon is a Native American fashion designer from Acoma Pueblo whose work is inspired by Acoma pottery and culture. His ACONAV couture brand is known for its asymetrical designs, patterns and materials such as silk and leather that blend cultural ideas with modern silhouettes.
In 1998, Aragon moved to Arizona to attend Arizona State University; in 2004 he received a BSE degree in mechanical engineering. [1] [2] [3] While working as an engineer in Phoenix, [3] he taught himself garment construction and fashion design by deconstructing and reverse-engineering dresses. [2] He worked as an engineer for 13 years before becoming a fashion designer. [4]
Aragon grew up observing his mother and aunt create traditional Acoma garments. He began making jewelry, but later, after researching traditional Pueblo designs at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, decided to pursue a career in fabric and fashion design. His garments often incorporate traditional Pueblo elements such as red sashes, manta, and single-shouldered black sash dresses worn at coming of age cultural events when girls are elevated to womenhood. [5]
Aragon's first full collection of 20 pieces premiered in December 2014. He cites Virgil Ortiz and Alexander McQueen as his creative influences. [3] In addition to the runway Aragon has exhibited his fashion designs in art venues including the National Museum of the American Indian, [6] Poeh Museum at Pojoaque Pueblo, [2] the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, [7] the Phoenix Indian Center, [8] Epcot Center, [9] and other venues.
His wife, Valentina, is Diné and is the business partner and operations manager of ACONAV. [5] [2]
Aragon's work is in the permanent collection of the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico [13] [14] and the Museum of Indian Arts + Culture. [15]
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Before 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of Nuevo México's Pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.
The Zuni are Native American Pueblo peoples native to the Zuni River valley. The Zuni people today are federally recognized as the Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico, and most live in the Pueblo of Zuni on the Zuni River, a tributary of the Little Colorado River, in western New Mexico, United States. The Pueblo of Zuni is 55 km (34 mi) south of Gallup, New Mexico. The Zuni tribe lived in multi level adobe houses. In addition to the reservation, the tribe owns trust lands in Catron County, New Mexico, and Apache County, Arizona. The Zuni call their homeland Halona Idiwan’a or Middle Place. The word Zuni is believed to derive from the Western Keres language (Acoma) word sɨ̂‧ni, or a cognate thereof.
Pueblo refers to the settlements and to the Native American tribes of the Pueblo peoples in the Southwestern United States, currently in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The permanent communities, including some of the oldest continually occupied settlements in the United States, are called pueblos (lowercased).
Acoma Pueblo is a Native American pueblo approximately 60 miles (97 km) west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States.
Lucy Martin Lewis was a Native American potter from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. She is known for her black-on-white decorative ceramics made using traditional techniques.
Marie Zieu Chino (1907–1982) was a Native American potter from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. Marie and her friends Lucy M. Lewis and Jessie Garcia are recognized as the three most important Acoma potters during the 1950s. Along with Juana Leno, they have been called "The Four Matriarchs" who "revived the ancient style of Acoma pottery." The inspiration for many designs used on their pottery were found on old potsherds gathered to use for temper. Together they led the revival of ancient pottery forms including the Mimbres, Tularosa and other various cultures in the Anasazi region. This revival spread to other potters who also accepted the old styles, which led to new innovative designs and variations of style and form.
Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. He or she can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."
Teri Greeves is a Native American beadwork artist, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is enrolled in the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma.
Dorothy Grant is an Indigenous fashion designer whose works have gained public recognition as expressions of living Haida culture.
Art of the American Southwest is the visual arts of the Southwestern United States. This region encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of California, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Utah. These arts include architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, and other media, ranging from the ancient past to the contemporary arts of the present day.
Lloyd Henri Kiva New was a pioneer of modern Native American fashion design and a cofounder and president emeritus of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Wendy Ponca is an Osage artist, educator, and fashion designer noted for her Native American fashion creations. From 1982 to 1993, she taught design and Fiber Arts courses at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) of Santa Fe and later taught at the University of Las Vegas. She won first place awards for her contemporary Native American fashion from the Santa Fe Indian Market each year between 1982 and 1987. Her artwork is on display at IAIA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philbrook Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.
Native American fashion is the design and creation of high-fashion clothing and fashion accessories by Native Americans in the United States. This is a part of a larger movement of Indigenous fashion of the Americas.
Indigenous fashion of the Americas is the design and creation of high-fashion clothing and fashion accessories by Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Dolores Lewis Garcia is a Native American potter from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, US. She is known for her traditional style. She continues to work at the Acoma Pueblo, producing pottery including the heart-line deer, hoof prints, and other abstract patterns.
Margaret Wood is a Navajo-Seminole fiber artist, fashion designer, and quilt maker. Though she began her career as a teacher and librarian, Wood switched to fiber arts to allow her to express her creativity. She published Native American Fashion: Modern Adaptations of Traditional Designs, which for four decades was the only book focused on traditional native clothing and how it was modified in contemporary design. From 1990, Wood primarily became a quilter, displaying her works at numerous featured exhibitions throughout the United States, including such venues as the American Craft Museum in Manhattan; the Heard Museum of Phoenix, Arizona; the Riverside Metropolitan Museum of Riverside, California and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian of Santa Fe, New Mexico, among many others.
Pueblo pottery are ceramic objects made by the Indigenous Pueblo people and their antecedents, the Ancestral Puebloans and Mogollon cultures in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. For centuries, pottery has been central to pueblo life as a feature of ceremonial and utilitarian usage. The clay is locally sourced, most frequently handmade, and fired traditionally in an earthen pit. These items take the form of storage jars, canteens, serving bowls, seed jars, and ladles. Some utility wares were undecorated except from simple corrugations or marks made with a stick or fingernail, however many examples for centuries were painted with abstract or representational motifs. Some pueblos made effigy vessels, fetishes or figurines. During modern times, pueblo pottery was produced specifically as an art form to serve an economic function. This role is not dissimilar to prehistoric times when pottery was traded throughout the Southwest, and in historic times after contact with the Spanish colonialists.
Rachel Concho is a Native American artist and potter of the Acoma Pueblo. She is best known for her painted seed jars: small circular pots, nearly closed except for a small hole at the top, used for storing seeds from one harvest for planting in the next. She draws inspiration from ancient designs of the Acoma Pueblo including from shards associated with the Mimbres culture, which flourished in what is now New Mexico and Arizona from about 200 CE to the Spanish conquests of the sixteenth century. Concho has won many prizes for her work, including "Best in Show" at the Santa Fe Indian Market of 2000. Her seed jars have entered the permanent collections of several museums, including the Smithsonian Institution.
Orlando Dugi is a Diné (Navajo) fashion designer. He is a member of the Navajo Nation, and currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Patricia Michaels is a Native American fashion designer who works under the fashion label PM Waterlily. She is a citizen of the Pueblo of Taos.