Dorothy Grant: An Endless Thread

"An Endless Thread serves as a long-overdue celebration of Grant, who has long advocated for the intersection of cultural pride, style, and a maintaining of tradition.”
—Vogue

Part look-book, part memoir, and part history, this beautifully illustrated monument to a singular designer who helped inspire the growing Indigenous fashion movement is also a powerful demonstration of the enduring resonance and possibilities of Haida art.

Inspired by a discussion with celebrated Haida artist Bill Reid, Haida designer Dorothy Grant made it her life’s mission to bring her culture’s traditional art into contemporary fashion while adhering to the principle of Yaguudang, or respect for oneself and others. The 1989 launch of her Feastwear collection, featuring modern silhouettes hand-appliquéd with Northwest Coast formline, immediately established her at the forefront of Indigenous fashion in North America, and she has since hosted runway shows and trunk sales from Paris to Vancouver to Tokyo. Her clients include Indigenous leaders, national politicians, and global celebrities, and her garments can be found in museums and galleries around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dorothy Grant: An Endless Thread is the first monograph to celebrate her trailblazing career. It features new photography of dozens of garments spanning the past four decades, modeled in studio and natural settings in Vancouver and Haida Gwaii, alongside sketches, traditional button robes and spruce-root weaving, and personal stories and reflections from Grant. Essays by Haida repatriation specialist and museologist Sdahl Ḵ’awaas Lucy Bell and curator India Rael Young place Grant in the long continuum of Haida fashion and trace the many innovations and accomplishments of her journey, and Haida curator and artist Kwiaahwah Jones, a longtime assistant to Grant, shares behind-the-scenes insights and memories. An associated exhibition, Dorothy Grant: Raven Comes Full Circle, opens at Haida Gwaii Museum in July 2024.

Dorothy Grant was born into the Raven Clan of the Kaigani Haida in Hydaburg, Alaska, in 1955. She began sewing at age thirteen and learned traditional Haida arts in the early 1980s from Florence Edenshaw Davidson of Masset, Haida Gwaii. After graduating from the Helen Lefeaux School of Fashion Design in Vancouver she launched Feastwear, a fusion of traditional Haida art and haute couture, in 1989, and continues to produce bespoke garments for clients as well as wholesale and retail clothing lines. Her work has appeared in exhibitions around the world and is held in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, the National Gallery of Canada, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the American Museum of Natural History. Her many awards and honours include the Order of Canada (2015) and an Honourary Doctorate of Arts from Simon Fraser University (2017). Recently Grant has been visiting Indigenous communities to mentor young entrepreneurs and teach the art of fur-felted ceremonial hats.

Sdahl Ḵ'awaas Lucy Bell, a member of the Tsiits G’itanee Eagle clan of the Haida Nation, is a museologist and repatriation specialist with thirty years of heritage sector experience. As the co-founder of the Haida Repatriation Committee, she has visited many Haida belongings in global museums and repatriated over five hundred ancestral remains. Lucy is proud to witness Haida artists drawing inspiration from the Haida ancestral creations they visit in museum collections. In 2021, Lucy was honored with the Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy, which she accepted while proudly wearing a silk kimono crafted by Dorothy Grant.

India Rael Young is the Curator of Art and Images at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia. Her scholarship centers on multiples and Indigenous arts. Young graduated in 2017 with a doctorate in art history from the University of New Mexico. She went on to Princeton University Art Museum as the Andrew W. Mellon Research Specialist in Native American Art. Young curates exhibitions internationally and has written for BlackFlash, Canadian Art, and First American Art. Young also consults on inclusive collection strategies and institutional decolonizing methodologies.

Kwiaahwah Jones is part of the Naasagas Xaaydagaay clan on the Haida side of her family and the Ganada clan on the Nisga'a side, and in her dedication to her culture and community is involved with both art production and curatorial projects. She studied button blanket-making under Josie Vanderweide and fashion design at the Touch of Culture Native Training Institute, and in 2005 won the Vancouver International Airport Art Foundation Scholarship for young Northwest Coast artists. She has worked as a curator at the Haida Gwaii Museum and the Bill Reid Gallery, and guest-curated Haida Now: A Visual Feast of Innovation and Tradition (Museum of Vancouver, 2018–21). She has worked with Dorothy Grant since 2010.

Taa.uu ’Yuuwans Nika Collison belongs to the Ḵaay’ahl Laanas of the Haida Nation. A singer, drummer, speaker, and scholar, she serves as Executive Director and Curator of the Haida Gwaii Museum at Ḵay Llnagaay and has worked in the field of Haida language, arts, and culture for more than two decades. As a senior repatriation negotiator for the Haida Nation, she pursues reparation and relationships with museums across Canada and internationally.