Clothing can hold knowledge that is difficult to express in words. A material, a technique, or the movement of a hand may carry relationships to place, ancestry, and community. The Maayama-li Dress, created by First Nations designer Julie Shaw of Maara Collective in collaboration with weavers from Bula’bula Arts in Arnhem Land, makes that continuity central to its design.
The dress brings together practices that are often separated by the language of the fashion industry. Its bodice uses plant materials harvested from Country and traditional Yolngu weaving techniques. The skirt, made with deadstock fabric, introduces couture draping through the work of seamstress and draper Alice Cliff.
The result is neither a simple fusion of old and new nor a decorative reference to heritage. It is a collaboration in which distinct forms of expertise remain visible. The weavers—Mary Dhapalany, Evonne Munuyngu, Lisa Gurrulpa, Serena Gubuyani, and Margaret Malibirr—are essential to the project’s making and meaning.
That acknowledgment matters. Fashion coverage too often celebrates a single creative name while obscuring the networks of skill and cultural knowledge behind a finished garment. Here, the story is inseparable from the people who contributed to it.
The use of deadstock material adds another dimension, suggesting that contemporary fashion can rethink both what it makes and what it chooses to value.
Maayama-li offers a vision of design in which beauty is not detached from responsibility. Its power lies in the relationships it makes visible: between materials and land, makers and traditions, and fashion’s present and the knowledge that precedes it.
International Design Awards 2023 — Fashion Design of the Year
