Model Quannah Chasinghorse walked the runway with the renowned designer Ralph Lauren during New York Fashion Week on a windy September evening. She wasn’t even sure she could look him in the eye earlier that year.
Chasinghorse, 22, is an Indigenous American who was born on the Navajo Nation reservation in Arizona and is a member of the Oglala Lakota and Hän Gwich’in tribes. She was upset by what she saw after seeing some of Ralph Lauren’s previous ads and designs that she thought were clear imitations of Indigenous patterns. Ralph Lauren first issued an apology for their Native American-themed ads in 2014, and they did it again in 2022 for their designs that referenced Native Mexican elements.
