Formal dress adorned with smoked hide and dakota floral designs | Accessories: Dakota floral beadwork on smoked hide bracelet and earrings | Model: Marion Hugs (Crow) | Photographer: Levi Black Eagle (Crow)
“My name is Red Berry Woman, [and this is] my Native given name that I have named my fashion business,” says Norma Baker Flying Horse, an enrolled member of the Hidatsa people, member of the Dakota Sioux and Assiniboine tribes and creator of the fashion line Red Berry Woman. Growing up, she was taught both the Hidatsa and Dakota Sioux ways, which included dancing, singing, beading and sewing, with her grandmother of the Fort Peck Sioux Reservation having taught her how to bead and incorporate tribal Sioux designs. “It’s my Sioux designs that are found predominantly throughout my cultural creations and contemporary fashion designs. My mother taught me to sew my own traditional dresses, which has helped me to sew the formal gowns I’m now known for today,” says Flying Horse.
Her current formal wear collection is called the Cameron Collection. “It is a memorial collection honoring my late daughter, Cameron Sarai Flying Horse, who we lost at only four weeks old to a condition known as trisomy...The collection consists of pink upcycled dresses designed to represent my tribal people of the Dakota Sioux and Hidatsa. Each dress was pre-owned and either donated to me or purchased to help charity,” says Flying Horse. “Upcycling a garment is an effort to help reduce the waste created by the fashion industry. A lot of unused clothing ends up in landfills and takes a toll on our natural resources, so repurposing gowns for the Cameron Collection was my way of not only helping that effort of saving our environment but giving a beautiful garment life again. Upcycling this collection has now inspired me to become an upcycling designer when it comes to my formal attire.”
“Native Fashion not only shows the world the balance we have learned of the past and the present, but it also reminds the world that we are still here and we will remain here.”
- Norma Baker Flying Horse
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