HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Oahu-based designer Lydia Querian is debuting her latest collection in a sold-out show on Saturday during New York Fashion Week.
“This is a cotton inaul, gold trimming and embroidery. This is made in Sultan Cudarat in southern Philippines made by indigenous Iranun weavers,” Querian says, as she holds up a flowy, red dress that is part of the show. “This is Rocaya. Rocaya is one of the funniest weavers I know.”
Querian tells a story with each hand-woven piece from her fashion house Elle Karayan, named after beauty and the Ilocano term for “river.”
“I work with a lot of indigenous communities that are living right by the river,” she said. “For about 5 to 10 yards, it’ll take them about a week.”
From a loom in a rural Philippine village — to her studio in Manila or Kapolei — to a runway in New York or Paris — Querian says a $500 work of art benefits many working mothers.
“Trying to work with them so that they can keep on perpetuating the culture that they already have and make them realize how beautiful it is and bring it over here and tell them, ‘Hey, you know, this is beautiful. People can appreciate it somewhere else too,’” she explained.
One challenge is changing the mindset around what defines high fashion.
“When you say it’s just made in the Philippines and you’re basically saying my country is cheap, and the goal here is to really uplift it and bring it to the forefront and put more value on it because it has been devalued for many centuries,” Querian said.
That’s the mission for Elle Karayan’s “Maximalism Is Indigenous” show at Asian New York Fashion Week, which includes her new line of jewelry.
“A lot of these communities, they’re fighting for land back, their lands are being overdeveloped, they’re being displaced from their own ancestral lands,” she added. “If we support these land caretakers by buying their weaving, supporting their music, reviving things that we kind of buried and forgotten, they can actually bring back the wisdom that their elders have taught them and be able to use that to help solve climate change and other societal issues that we have right now.”
Querian immigrated from the Philippines more than 20 years ago and traces her roots to Filipino plantation workers on Hawaii Island — the sakadas.
She says the current anti-immigrant climate provided some inspiration for her new collection, including a merino jacket with shiny pockets with geometrical patterns.
“When I started seeing all of these ICE raids in the news, I was observing what they were wearing and they’re usually in all these pocketed jackets and I was like, ‘how do we reclaim that fashion without scaring people,’” she said.
It’s one of many fashion statements Querian plans to make for a global audience.
For more information, visit ellekarayan.com.
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