Fashion Forward

A look at the latest offerings from Indigenous designers shaping the future of fashion.

OXDX is a Diné-owned fashion label founded by artist Jared Yazzie in Tempe, Arizona. Blending bold digital art, cut-and-sew apparel and powerful storytelling, OXDX challenges the erasure of Indigenous voices while celebrating Native identity and resistance. The name is an acronym for the word “overdose,” and urges reflection on consumption, responsibility and connection to land and culture. Since 2009, Yazzie and his team have used fashion to confront social issues, honor ancestral knowledge and amplify Indigenous visibility. Known for high-profile collaborations with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Hundreds and the NFL, OXDX continues to push boundaries through art, activism and community-driven design.

OXDX Four Directions Skirt, Model: Jaylin Tochoney, Photographer: Cheyenne Weston

Yazzie’s favorite things to design are T-shirt graphics. “I find that something as simple as a staple T-shirt provides so much power to those wearing it, and I’ve created a career designing bold graphics to become timeless pieces in your closet,” he says.

The designer recently created a runway collection that showcased this past August at the Sovereignly Fit fashion show in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “This line was titled ‘Turtle Island Allegiance’ and introduced three new graphic tees that supported the tag line, ‘Allegiance to the Land, not to a Flag,’” Yazzie explains. “I included details of turtle island imagery, creating the North American landmass silhouette underneath an image of a turtle with flowers growing from it. The idea of Turtle Island is an accepted term to reference Mother Earth in North American tribes, and I used its reference here to break down borders, subvert the idea of nationalism, and remind people that Indigenous knowledge acts in unison with the land, not exploiting it.” —