Buffalo woman was conceptualized during the Indigenous Haute Couture Residency at the Banff Centre in 2022.

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While buffalo woman's robe-skirts look like a buffalo robe, they are made instead from Canadian bred Icelandic sheep. This type of sheep has both wool and guard hairs which have been bleached by the sun over time. The sheep wool was painstakingly washed and picked clean and then felted into large sheets and sewn into the correct shape.

Buffalo woman's legs were an exploration into urban and disconnected Indigeneity, specifically from the perspective of foster care survivors and adoptees. Regardless of cultural disconnection or lack of cultural role models, our bodies still feel a connection to our homelands and ache for kinship and tradition. How can tradition and culture be approximated with what one has available to them in an urban centre surrounded by western culture? Sheeps wool becomes a buffalo robe, canvas becomes a hide, plastic straws as quills.

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