Hunkpapa Lakota designer Kayla Looking Horse weaves the history of her people into every piece she creates. She leans on a visual storytelling alphabet that is part of a long legacy that she and Native American families have used for centuries and includes her signature Kapemni design, an hourglass shape created by two reflecting tipi forms and that represent the concept, “As it is above, as it is below,” or the mirrored relation between the Earth and sky.Her debut launch of K.Lookinghorse during 2024 New York Fashion Week enlisted Native American collaborators including fellow Lakota, Quannah Rose Chasinghorse, the first Native American high fashion model, who walked the runway wearing a black and white corset and skirt bedazzled with beads in a collection Looking Horse titled “Written in the Stars.”“I create pieces that share a story, to talk about history and contemporary stories that re-create our narrative and shed a beautiful light on our history,” Looking Horse says.Her pieces are the opposite of fast fashion. The beadwork is impeccable — meticulous and hand-stitched with the help of her relatives and close friends. They tell the story of the individual family along with the larger stories of her Nation.“I was taught that when you are doing beadwork it is a prayer of love and for me the significance of creating a fully beaded corset and a belt was to honor my family’s legacy of beadwork,” says Looking Horse.
A long legacy of storytellers, warriors, diplomats and artists
“I grew up with an aunt who was a master beadworker, so she taught me that when you bead something you are putting all of your love and energy into it,” says Looking Horse, who was 9 when she learned to bead. “You don’t ever consume alcohol or ill will or thoughts when we are working. It’s prayer … honoring what legacy looks like.”Her pieces are history books read through textile. Families and Native American nations distinguish each other with the beads, color, materials, style, symbols and techniques they choose. Looking Horse says that her family’s style of beading is done in the same way a typewriter works, hand stitching one by one, from left to right.In her designs, she features triangles that represent rolling hills and stars that resemble crosses, always in threes to represent past, present and future. In her Tipi Dress, the 28 straps on the dress represent the number of poles that are used to construct a traditional Lakota tipi and the cycle of a woman’s menstruation. The use of red in her signature monochromatic line is Looking Horse’s way of bringing attention to the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. One of her aunts has been missing for 17 years.Horses also play a fundamental role in her pieces. “I grew up riding horses and my family are horse people. My Uncle Arvol (the Chief of the Sioux nation) still has a lot of wild horses that he takes care of and so I wanted to have that kind of structure when I made the belt piece (worn by Quannah during the fashion show) .”For her upcoming collection “The Great Plains,” she includes archival and museum quality pieces. One corset is made with 24-karat gold-plated cut-glass beads individually strung together — $10,000 worth of materials — that Looking Horse says is another way to share the story of her home in the Dakotas. Her aunt Billy helped her bead it, and it took them 400 hours.“It’s a remembrance that we come from the Black Hills,” says Looking Horse, who grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation. “We never sold our land, and we never will. There is gold in the hills and that is why they moved everyone and put us in reservations and in uninhabitable lands in North and South Dakota. The gold made people crazy!”“My pieces come in dreams,” the married mom of four says. “But also, once I start working the pieces shape themselves.”
A modern take on the ribbon skirt
“My rendition (of the ribbon skirt) is very long, it has a cascading train and is made with French silk ribbon,” she says. “The ribbon skirt has been a symbol of matriarchal honoring, the more decorated your skirt was the more you were honored in a community because you had people that cared for you,” she says.Three years ago Veronica Huerta, an Indigenous visual storyteller from the Yaqui Nation, teamed up with Looking Horse to photograph her process and runway shows.“It’s been amazing to elevate these designs,” Huerta says.“I am just proud that I get to share stories of my people,” Looking Horse says.Looking Horse sells ready-to-wear pieces on her site, klookinghorse.com and at select boutiques.
