Fashion designer Patricia Michaels, of Taos Pueblo, has been awarded the annual Living Treasure Award by the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.
The nature of northern New Mexico and the traditions she grew up with shimmer in velvet and silk haute couture gowns in an exhibition to celebrate her award.
"One of my favorite pieces is a golden chamisa dress," she said, adding that she is in fact extremely allergic to the yellow blossoms which set so many people sneezing, but she goes walking among them nonetheless.
The dress's silk is hand-painted in gold and green, with forms of flowers and leaves made from felt, which requires a different process.
"I do some music that I can dance to," she said. "Because I have to dance on the rolled up piece, back and forth and back and forth, 800 times in four directions."
Another dress of fawn fabric skims a mannequin and cascades with pottery shards made from leather and painted to look like the fragments Michaels said can be found in and around Taos Pueblo, but which came from Indigenous groups all over the continent when Taos was a center of trade.
"One of my main inspirations to become a designer is because of the trade that came in from such a long way," Michaels said. "When people are conquered and colonized then all of that is taken away."
Pottery holds a special power for her.
"My mind gets very colorful and textured," she said. "Sometimes I have to go sit in front of pottery to calm it down. The shape and the form is something that helps me edit."
Michaels has been working for decades, but her work reached a much wider audience in 2012 when she participated in Project Runway.
Last year, actress Tantoo Cardinal wore one of her designs to the premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon at the Cannes Film Festival. It was an extravagant, swirling gown with eagle feathers painted on white silk, a motif in Michaels' work that recalls her traditions.
"Every time when I stepped out of Taos Pueblo, and we would leave my grandparents house, my grandfather would bless us with the eagle feather, from the oldest to the youngest," she said.
That gown has been bought by the Institute of American Indian Arts, but the golden chamisa gown is for sale. She says it's expensive, in case you're wondering.
Michaels will also have pieces in next week's inaugural Santa Fe Native Fashion Week. She said attitudes to Native fashion have transformed since the days when people criticized her at Santa Fe's annual Indian Market for straying too far from tradition.
"I couldn't pay anybody to go into my studio," she said. "Now we're in a wonderful pinnacle of the trajectory changing."
The exhibition opens on Sunday, May 5.
