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Growing up on the Pigeon Lake reservation in Alberta, Canada, Indigenous designer Osamuskwasis Roan often saw beautiful things being created (by hand) around the house. Roan—who is Cree and Dene, and an enrolled member of Ermineskin Cree Nation—comes from a long lineage of beadwork artists in her family, so it didn’t take long for her to begin admiring her culture’s intricate approach to craftwork. Shortly after, she started to create her own pieces as well. “I got into design through generational teachings that were passed down to me,” Roan tells Vogue. “I was taught how to design and do beadwork by my mother, Bear Roan, and great grandmother, Sarah Meguinis, at the age of seven.”
The art of beadwork was Roan’s foray into the world of design—a natural step for her, given she’s always had a love of fashion in general. “As a young girl, I would dig through my grandmother’s and aunties’s scrap fabrics to make dresses and let my imagination run wild,” says Roan. “I would dress up my cousins and make them walk the ‘runway’—a bridge—outside my house.” While she started out with beadwork jewelry, Roan eventually learned how to sew and design apparel too; Her love of creating has since evolved into her own fashion line, Osamuskwasis, launched in 2020. The collection is built around the idea of producing joyful, colorful clothes—all of which are heavy on exuberant prints and floral motifs. “I love to use a lot of color because it makes me happy,” says Roan. “Color is a form of expression, and I have never felt sad when I’ve seen a rainbow.”
Pieces in Osamuskwasis’s latest winter collection—titled Wâsikonâskaw—include printed turtleneck dresses, and pastel blue skirts with multicolored ribbons along the hemline. For the guys, there’s printed spandex shirts, and athletic-style joggers. (She’s even had rising Native stars, such as supermodel Quannah Chasinghorse and Prey star Amber Midthunder, model them.) The designer sees her work as a fusion of traditional references with contemporary finishes. “I use traditional art forms and techniques such as beadwork, quillwork, and painting,” says Roan. Her traditional design cues especially shine through her references to nature and wildlife. “I like to relate my collections based on our oral history, creation stories, the land, animals, nature, and Cree/Dene languages,” says Roan. “The landscapes that surround me, such as the plains in Alberta, have the most beautiful wild flowers.
Even better than her sprightly aesthetic, however, is what Roan hopes to achieve with her work. The designer—who has showcased on platforms such as Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week—sees fashion as a way to empower Indigenous people to embrace their cultural heritage. She also sees her collections as a teaching tool to introduce non-Indigenous people to her people’s design heritage. “I hope to offer education, storytelling, and authenticity,” says Roan. “It’s important to take up space authentically in fashion, especially since a lot of non-Indigenous folks tend to appropriate our designs and artwork. I hope to bring recognition of my tribal and family designs in fashion, to educate through storytelling, and to let the people know that we are still here and thriving.”
The designer has plans to expand that poignant vision even further in the near future. “My next line will have more beadwork-oriented prints, which I am super-excited about,” teases Roan, marking a return to what got her interested in fashion in the first place. Roan also has special plans for an upcoming campaign photo shoot for it, too. “I'm hoping to include my grandparents, who are residential school survivors, so this upcoming campaign will be really special to me!”
