As the founder of Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto (IFWTO) and a thought leader in Canada’s style space, Sage Paul has made great strides for Indigenous representation within fashion: She facilitated an
unprecedented capsule collection featuring eight Indigenous labels in partnership with Quebec retailer Simons that launched this past spring; she’s a member of the Program Advisory Council for Toronto’s Ryerson School of Fashion; and she teaches an Indigenous fashion course, which she created, at George Brown College (also in Toronto), where she studied fashion design.
As is the case for many groundbreakers, it took time for Paul to find her way. “I didn’t really see myself in the industry — not because I felt excluded but because I felt that it was unattainable,” she says. “I didn’t have the financial resources to pursue design, for example. And culturally there was a disconnect.”
Paul’s perspective began to shift after she became involved with the imagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival; she designed costumes for works that were screened between 2005 and 2008. “I saw Indigenous people creating films with our stories,” she says. “It really transformed my understanding of how a medium that so often misrepresents us could be used as our lens.”