Indigenous New York Fashion Week (INYFW) returns September 10–15, 2026, and it’s bringing a milestone with it. For the first time ever, INYFW’s designers and showcases will land on the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s official NYFW calendar, proof that the industry’s biggest gatekeepers are finally catching up to what this community has known all along, that fashion is political. The runway takes over New York’s Garment District at the American Indian Community House (AICH), which is breaking in its brand-new home right alongside the shows.
*Photographer: Shayla Blatchford @sidesqash
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This year’s roster is stacked with 30 Indigenous designers, 120 Indigenous models, and a fully Indigenous-led team running hair, makeup, styling, and production from top to bottom. Showcases move through themes of emerging voices and thought leaders. On the lineup: Relative Arts, Copper Canoe Woman, Hakhu, Josh Tafoya, Kené Kaya, Mobilize waskawewin, and more names to watch.
Beyond the runway, expect pop-up markets, a kickoff concert, and livestreams hosted by INYFW online and presented by the CFDA at Rockefeller Center. Doors open Friday, September 11 at 2:00 PM EST with a performance from Indigenous Enterprise.
*Photographer: Shayla Blatchford @sidesqash
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Behind it all is Relative Arts co-founder Korina Emmerich (Puyallup), who’s been building toward this moment for years. Emmerich founded her own label, EMME Studio, in 2015 and shares the belief that fashion should be made slowly and intentionally, without waste or shortcuts. For Emmerich, fashion is never just fashion. Her work, along with that of other Indigenous designers, highlights colonialism’s more obvious fingerprints on the industry, from pieces referencing the Hudson’s Bay Company and the fur trade’s role in decimating Indigenous land and animal populations, to designs raising awareness around Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, often centering the color red as a visual call to action. Red has become the defining color of the MMIW movement, worn and displayed across North America to represent the women, girls, and Two-Spirit people who have gone missing or been killed, cases that have historically been underreported or ignored by media and law enforcement. Handprints painted across mouths, empty red dresses hung in public spaces, and red ribbons on regalia have all become recognizable symbols of this crisis. When that color shows up on an INYFW runway, it’s a demand for justice, clothes as commentary, beautiful on the runway and even more beautiful in its message. Rounding out the partner list: Decolonizing Wealth Project, The Scherman Foundation, Made In NYC, Urban Indigenous Collective, Indigiqueer Creative Alliance, Teton Trade Cloth, Mr. Smith, and AICH.
*Photographer: Shayla Blatchford @sidesqash
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Indigenous New York Fashion Week (INYFW)’s rise is part of a bigger wave. From Native Fashion Week Santa Fe to Australia’s National Indigenous Fashion Awards, Indigenous-led fashion weeks worldwide are using couture to control how their cultures are represented, turning traditional techniques and made-to-order production into a form of pushback as much as a style statement. Fashion is political, and indigenous fashion especially, is the future just as much as it is the past.
Apply for a media pass here: https://www.indigenousnyfw.com/media-pass. For more information, tickets, and the full schedule (https://www.indigenousnyfw.com/events), please visit: https://www.indigenousnyfw.com/. Requests for interviews with producers or designers can be submitted to: mailto:media@relativeartsnyc.com