Trends in Fashion

Native American Print

"Many of today's 'native' patterns are drawn from Navajo blankets. Go back in time, and those blankets were influenced by 17th-century Pueblo weavers, who in turn were influenced by Spanish weavers. (The Spanish, in fact, brought sheep to the New World.) Over the intervening centuries, the Navajo and other Southwestern tribes took that tradition and made it their own, developing their own distinctive patterns and colors.

Then, in the twentieth century, white Americans entered the conversation: Pendleton Woolen Mills, which was founded in Oregon around the turn of the twentieth century, sent its head loom artisan, a man named Joe Rawnsley, to live with Native Americans so that he could design blankets specifically for the Native American market. When his early blankets were well-received, Nix writes, "the company sent him on a six-month tour of the Southwest, where he lived with Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi to find out what blanket designs those tribes would prefer. He returned with hundreds of ideas," drawn from a wide range of Native crafts. The designs freely mixed patterns, colors, and shapes from all over the Southwest."

"But many Native Americans are less than thrilled that this so-called “native look” is trendy right now. The company that’s stirred up the most controversy so far is Urban Outfitters, which offered a “Navajo” line this fall (items included the “Navajo Hipster Panty” and “Navajo Print Fabric Wrapped Flask”) before the Navajo Nation sent the company a cease and desist order that forced it to rename its products. Forever 21 and designer Isabel Marant also missed the memo that the tribe has a trademark on its name; thanks to the Federal Indian Arts and Crafts act of 1990, it’s illegal to claim a product is made by a Native American when it is not."

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