“When I found out that I was the only [Indigenous designer], my immediate reaction was not excitement, I called my sister — I was devastated,” says Korina Emmerich
Photo: Courtesy of Korina Emmerich This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.
But she still didn’t understand, why her, and only her? “I’m half-white and urban — I didn’t grow up on the reservation. I know I’m more palatable in situations like this,” she says from her Flatbush apartment, which also serves as the atelier for Emme Studios, the clothing and accessory brand she founded in 2015.
“It’s a symbol of colonialism,” Emmerich says, gesturing to a swath of fabric bearing the print next to us. “The Hudson’s Bay Company print is a symbol of genocide and colonialism for Indigenous people.” From the beginning, part of the point of “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” was inclusivity. Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute, “isn’t just trying to change the stereotype of American fashion or counter predictions of its demise,” wrote the New York Times in April, when the exhibition was announced. “He’s trying to expand our understanding of what it means by telling stories of designers that have often been overlooked and forgotten.
She requested the Met include an artist’s statement explaining everything, and was unsettled when the curatorial team asked for bullet points instead. “It felt a bit like an afterthought,” she muses, “and also like, How do we fit an Indigenous designer in without making a big statement?” “A symbol of genocide and colonialism, not warmth and comfort,” reads one comment. Others simply referred to it as “the smallpox blanket.”
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