How Gen Z Navajo weaver Naiomi Glasses's collaboration with Ralph Lauren is boosting Native American representation

In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, Ralph Lauren this month announced its partnership with Diné (Navajo) textile artist Naiomi Glasses. The seventh-generation weaver became the brand’s inaugural artist-in-residence and debuted a collection that reflects her Native American roots.

With her first of three capsule collections within the Polo Ralph Lauren x Naiomi Glasses label, the 26-year-old designer offers an arguably youthful take on traditional design. The designs incorporate Diné symbols such as four-directional crosses and Spider Woman crosses into luxe garments including sweaters, wool wraps and embroidered jeans.

“It’s something that I’ve dreamed of since I was a teenager — to one day work with Ralph Lauren,” Glasses, who’s based in Arizona on the Navajo Nation, told Yahoo News. “To see those dreams come to fruition, it just feels so unreal, especially given where I’m located. I’m located in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near New York. And I'm like, how did this happen?”

Indigenous representation

While brands partnering with artists is hardly new, what’s groundbreaking about this particular collaboration is that the campaign is infused with Native representation throughout. Per Glasses’s request, in addition to her designs, the modeling talent, photographers, filmmakers, stylists and writers behind the promotion of the campaign are Native.

“When I was approached two years ago, I already had the dream of exactly how I wanted everything to be represented,” Glasses said. “I told them, I think it’d be really cool if everything that I did with this collection had Indigenous representation throughout.”

The team at Ralph Lauren was receptive, according to Glasses, which was something the designer said she’d never experienced before at that level with another brand.

“The closest I’ve gotten to it was one other campaign,” she said, adding that in that instance there had been only a single Indigenous photographer — not an entire squad of Native faces and names.

“An important part of our Artist in Residence program is making sure the communities we are collaborating with are meaningfully involved in telling the stories of their heritage,” David Lauren, chief branding and innovation officer, told Yahoo News via email. “The first drop of this collaboration is a love letter to Naiomi’s home on Navajo Nation. We all agreed that working with Native talent in front of and behind the camera would be an important way to honor and bring that inspiration to life. We were also supported by our external Native and Indigenous Advisory Council, with members from a range of fields and tribal affiliations, who advised us along the way on the campaign.”

For a truly IYKYK (if you know, you know) experience, the campaign features many familiar faces in the Indigenous creative community. Those include model Quannah Chasinghorse (Hän Gwich’in/Oglala Lakota), Prey producer Jhane Myers (Comanche/Blackfeet), Myers’s son Phillip Bread (Comanche/Kiowa), Here’s to You creative director Hud Oberly (Osage), along with Glasses, her brother Tyler and her parents, to name a few.

And that’s just in front of the camera. Ryan RedCorn (Osage), also a screenwriter on Reservation Dogs, served as a photographer along with Daryn Sells (Diné), with behind-the-scenes footage from Lonnie Begaye (Diné), while filmmaker Shaandiin Tome (Diné) shot the promotional short film and Cece Meadows (Yoeme/Nʉmʉnʉ) from Prados Beauty handled makeup.

“There’s just an element of having Indigenous people behind the scenes and in front of the camera that makes people feel comfortable,” Glasses said. “We’re all able to joke in this way that we all just understood, and it just felt really special to be able to share “auntie” laughs behind the scenes, basically joking about things, and it was just this great sense of community.”

‘From inspiration to collaboration’

For Native designers, whose artistry has often been appropriated by prominent fashion houses, this collaboration represents a noticeable pivot in terms of visibility. Ralph Lauren itself has even acknowledged its need to reexamine who is included in its fashionable vision of Americana, and this program is part of “the Company’s broader efforts to shift from inspiration to collaboration with communities that have inspired Ralph Lauren,” according to press materials.

The company previously collaborated with historically Black colleges Morehouse College and Spelman College for a collegiate-themed collection that launched in 2022 and has committed to working with many diverse creators in its artist-in-residence collaborations to come.

Taking the campaign a step further, Ralph Lauren said it will donate a portion of the proceeds from sales of the first capsule collection to Change Labs, a Native-led organization on the Navajo and Hopi Nations that supports Indigenous small businesses and entrepreneurs.

As a young designer, Glasses understands that other young Indigenous artists are looking to her as a role model and inspiration for what they can also accomplish.

“I’m hoping to show them to follow their dreams, even if it seems wild, because I had these dreams at 16,” she said. “And it’s truly something that dreams are made of.”

While Glasses has two additional capsule drops coming in spring and fall 2024, she’s aware that there will be perhaps many artists-in-residence at Ralph Lauren after her partnership ends. But she also knows the visibility she has already generated for Native people through her collaboration.

“We really showed people that as Indigenous people, we can do this,” Glasses said. “And I’m just really excited to see what possibilities are out there for so many other brilliant Indigenous people.”