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by Matteo Simellaro
Local journalism initiative reporter
Warning: This story contains sad details.
Marta Kiak has seen her fashion designs in many places but one of the most powerful was on stage next to the Prime Minister.
In the year In 2019, when the final report of Justin Trudeau’s National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Women and Girls (MMIWG) was presented, a red amouti was seen at his side.
Kiak built an amauti, or traditional Inuit women’s park, to honor her slain sister. Kayak, the designer behind Inukchic, a fashion company whose name played on Inukshuk, had a very emotional moment.
“My sister was standing there,” she told Canada’s National Observer.
Sewing Amouti’s clothes was a healing process, she says, a way to honor and let go of her sister. But it was emotional work.
Still, Kayak felt that showing off his clothes that day would be comforting to those watching.
“It was like she was speaking to all the women and men out there,” Kayak says.
Inukchik got her start in 2010 when she kayaked south to Ottawa. She was already sewing parkas, dresses and other clothing for a retail store in her home of Pond Inlet, Nunavut. The move comes while she is going through a divorce.
“It was a sudden estrangement from the family,” Kayak said. “It was another thing not to be with people and struggling with money.”
To cope with the changes, Kayak did her best: she started sewing mostly parkas and posted her work on Facebook. Suddenly, her designs began to gain attention, and Kiak was asked to participate in an indigenous fashion show. After that first performance, Kayak was the proudest she had ever felt.
“That’s how it started; It just happened,” she says.
When she started working on the runways, Kayak began supporting Inuit design with a style that blends modern and glamorous fashion.
It was an exaggerated style that allowed her to push her creativity. Those clothes hit runways across the country. But it was at her first solo show that Kayak brought a deeper message to fashion.
Paktutit invited Kayak, an Inuit women’s organization based in Ottawa, to do a fashion show. Half an hour is long for a single scene.
“I was wondering what to do,” she says. “The first part was very casual clothes and then glamor.”
Kiak says she made her statement during the last episode of the show. Models walked the runway in red dresses, some with red palm prints on their faces, and Alan Walker’s hit song played. The chorus of the song repeats, “Where are you now?”
After that first show, she presented her MMIWG work at the Kikiqtani Corporation Northern Lights trade show in 2020.
She says it’s always emotional when the women start walking the runway. But it is also powerful.
Women came to Kayak after the event, thanked her and shared their experiences of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
“It’s always a positive experience.”
Now, her designs are gaining attention elsewhere, including a recent stop at Vancouver Fashion Week. Enukchic fashion made its way into the pages of Vogue and other magazines.
Lately, Kayak has been unable to do custom orders as she juggles a day job alongside her fashion and art work. But Kayak is now being sold wholesale at stores in Nunavut, as well as the Ottawa Art Gallery and Textile Museum in Toronto.
Her biggest hope is to take InukChic International.
“If there are invitations, I’ll go right away,” she says, especially if it’s her dream show in New York City.
Matteo Cimellaro / Environmental Journalism Initiative / National Observer of Canada
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