Fashion trends come and go, but like the little black dress some garb never goes out of style. For decades, footwear, jewelry, purses and clothing with Native American influences have surfaced as fashion staples, cycling in and out of designer collections in any given year. But is this cultural appropriation or high fashion’s attempt to salute indigenous cultures? Clothing chains such as Urban Outfitters have come under fire for labeling their goods “Navajo” with reportedly no input from the Navajo Nation. To boot, bloggers are increasingly taking to task non-Natives who wear headdresses and other indigenous apparel to play a cross-cultural game of dress up of sorts. By supporting indigenous designers and learning more about the missteps the fashion world has made in regards to Native dress, you can avoid making the ultimate fashion faux pas—cultural insensitivity. Read More
