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Fashion designers from across North America are bringing together inspiration from their Indigenous heritage, culture and everyday lives to three days of runway modeling that started Friday in a leading creative hub and marketplace for Indigenous art.A fashion show affiliated with the century-old Santa Fe Indian Market is collaborating this year with a counterpart from Vancouver, Canada, in a spirit of Indigenous solidarity and artistic freedom. A second, independent runway show at a rail yard district in the city has nearly doubled the bustle of models, makeup and final fittings.Elements of Friday’s collections from six Native designers ran the gamut from silk parasols to a quilted hoodie, knee-high fur boots and suede leather earrings that dangled to the waist. Models on the Santa Fe catwalks include professionals, dancers and Indigenous celebrities from TV and the political sphere.Clothing and accessories rely on materials ranging from of wool trade cloth to animal hides, featuring traditional beadwork, ribbons and jewelry with some contemporary twists that include digitally rendered designs and urban Native American streetwear from Phoenix.“Native fashion, it’s telling a story about our understanding of who we are individually and then within our communities,” said Taos Pueblo fashion designer Patricia Michaels, of “Project Runway” reality TV fame. “You’re getting designers from North America that are here to express a lot of what inspires them from their own heritage and culture.” Santa Fe style The stand-alone spring fashion week for Indigenous design is a recent outgrowth of haute couture at the summer Santa Fe Indian Market, where teeming crowds flock to outdoor displays by individual sculptors, potters, jewelers and painters.Designer Sage Mountainflower remembers playing in the streets at Indian Market as a child in the 1980s while her artist parents sold paintings and beadwork. She forged a different career in environmental administration, but the world of high fashion called to her as she sewed tribal regalia for her children at home and, eventually, brought international recognition.At age 50, Mountainflower on Friday presented her “Taandi” collection the Tewa word for “Spring” grounded in satin and chiffon fabric that includes embroidery patterns that invoke her personal and family heritage at the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo in the Upper Rio Grande Valley.“I pay attention to trends, but a lot of it’s just what I like,” said Mountainflower, who also traces her heritage to Taos Pueblo and the Navajo Nation. “This year it’s actually just looking at springtime and how it’s evolving. It’s going to be a colorful collection.”More than 20 designers are presenting at the invitation of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts.Fashion plays a prominent part in Santa Fe’s renowned arts ecosystem, with Native American vendors each day selling jewelry in the central plaza, while the Institute for American Indian Arts delivers fashion-related college degrees in May.This week, a gala at the New Mexico governor’s mansion welcomed fashion designers to town, along with social mixers at local galleries and bookstores and plans for pop-up fashion stores to sell clothes fresh off the fashion runway. International vision A full-scale collaboration with Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week is bringing a northern, First Nations flair to the gathering this year with many designers crossing into the U.S. from Canada.Secwépemc artist and fashion designer Randi Nelson traveled to Santa Fe from the city of Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon to present collections forged from fur and traditionally cured hides she uses primarily elk and caribou. The leather is tanned by hand without chemicals using inherited techniques and tools.“We’re all so different,” said Nelson, a member of the Bonaparte/St’uxwtéws First Nation who started her career in jewelry assembled from quills, shells and beads. “There’s not one pan-Indigenous theme or pan-Indigenous look. We’re all taking from our individual nations, our individual teachings, the things from our family, but then also recreating them in a new and modern way.”April Allen, an Inuk designer from the Nunatsiavut community on the Labrador coast of Canada, presented a mesh dress of blue water droplets. Her work delves into themes of nature and social advocacy for access to clean drinking water.Vocal music accompanied the collection layers of wordless, primal sound from musician and runway model Beatrice Deer, who is Inuit and Mohawk. Urban Indian couture Phoenix-based jeweler and designer Jeremy Donavan Arviso said the runway shows in Santa Fe are attempting to break out of the strictly Southwest fashion mold and become a global venue for Native design and collaboration. A panel discussion Thursday dwelled on the threat of new tariffs and prices for fashion supplies and tensions between disposable fast fashion and Indigenous ideals.Arviso is bringing a street-smart aesthetic to two shows at the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts runway and a warehouse venue organized by Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, from the Siksika Nation.“My work is definitely contemporary, I don’t choose a whole lot of ceremonial or ancestral practices in my work,” said Arviso, who is Diné, Hopi, Akimel O’odham and Tohono O’odham, and grew up in Phoenix. “I didn’t grow up like that. I grew up on the streets.”Arviso said his approach to fashion resembles music sampling by early rap musicians as he draws on themes from major fashion brands and elements of his own tribal cultures. He invited Toronto-based ballet dancer Madison Noon for a “beautiful and biting” performance to introduce his collection titled Vision Quest.Santa Fe runway models will include former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland of Laguna Pueblo, adorned with clothing from Michaels and jewelry by Zuni Pueblo silversmith Veronica Poblano. Morgan Lee, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Republicans in Congress are expected this week to reveal whether they are willing to go ahead with President Donald Trump’s suggestion to raise taxes on the rich, which would break with decades of party orthodoxy. After weeks of closed-door talks, the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee is due to unveil full details of tax-cut legislation that would be the centerpiece of a sweeping budget package that also would raise spending on the military and border security. The legislation would build on a measure enacted during Trump’s first presidential term that lowered tax rates, especially for the wealthiest. Late on Friday the panel made some details public, but without providing the outcome on the thorniest matters under debate within Republican ranks. Still unknown is whether the legislation will deliver on Trump’s promises to discontinue taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security retirement benefits, and whether the bill would increase the deduction for state and local taxes. That is an issue particularly important to moderate Republicans, mainly in coastal states, as well as to Democrats. Trump has indicated a willingness to raise taxes on the wealthiest in what would be a stark departure from a red line drawn by Republicans for many years. These questions might be answered as soon as Tuesday, when the House committee plans to debate the complex legislation. Republicans did unveil provisions for increasing the child tax credit to $2,500 through 2028, from $1,000. Trump’s presidential term ends on Jan. 20, 2029. The House Republicans’ bill also would reduce some taxes for multinational companies and unincorporated businesses. Republicans also have been at odds over spending cuts to safety-net programs mainly the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor and disabled to offset some of the costs. Trump has privately urged House Speaker Mike Johnson to raise the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, sources say, though publicly he has been more ambivalent. Some on the party’s right flank have come out in favor of it. Johnson has told some Republicans that he might have to scale back the tax cut package by $500 million to $4 trillion. House fiscal hawks are pushing for deep spending cuts of up to $2 trillion to allow for deeper tax cuts. But some moderates are resisting cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the crucial food assistance program. Democrats are warning that Republicans could put other social service programs on the chopping block. Their legislation feeds corporate and wealthy individuals greed by abandoning vulnerable children, starving seniors, and cutting off families in need,” a group of Democratic senators said in a letter on Friday. Republicans aim to extend Trump’s signature 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Some of its provisions are due to expire at the end of this year. Hes wanting to help the blue-collar worker,” Representative Kevin Hern, a Republican tax writer from Oklahoma, said. So were going to make that happen. “This is where the rubber hits the road for tax writers, who will be challenged to preserve President Trumps first-term legacy at a fiscal cost that is acceptable to the conference,” said Mimi Bair, a former Republican tax staffer now at McGuireWoods Consulting. “Were all eager to see the tax committee shed more light on how they will strike that balance.” Meanwhile, a handful of Republicans from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California are pressing for a higher deduction amount for state and local taxes. The Ways and Means committee is expected to offer a $30,000 limit for these state and local taxes, up from the current $10,000, according to a Republican aide. However, these Republican lawmakers have said that is not enough. Either were going to have a bill that has a fix that assuages the concerns of constituents like mine, or we wont have a bill and the tax cuts will expire, Representative Nick LaLota, a New York Republican, told reporters last week. That could sink the budget bill in the House, which Republicans control by a narrow 220-213 margin. Bo Erickson, Reuters
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E-Commerce
House Republicans unveiled the cost-saving centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” late Sunday, at least $880 billion in cuts largely to Medicaid to help cover the cost of $4.5 trillion in tax breaks.Tallying hundreds of pages, the legislation is touching off the biggest political fight over health care since Republicans tried to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, during Trump’s first term in 2017which ended in failure.While Republicans insist they are simply rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse” to generate savings with new work and eligibility requirements, Democrats warn that millions of Americans will lose coverage. A preliminary estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the proposals would reduce the number of people with health care by 8.6 million over the decade.“Savings like these allow us to use this bill to renew the Trump tax cuts and keep Republicans’ promise to hardworking middle-class families,” said Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, the GOP chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles health care spending.But Democrats said the cuts are “shameful” and essentially amount to another attempt to repeal Obamacare.“In no uncertain terms, millions of Americans will lose their health care coverage,” said Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the panel. He said “hospitals will close, seniors will not be able to access the care they need, and premiums will rise for millions of people if this bill passes.”As Republicans race toward House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline to pass Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, they are preparing to flood the zone with round-the-clock public hearings this week on various sections before they are stitched together in what will become a massive package.The politics ahead are uncertain. More than a dozen House Republicans have told Johnson and GOP leaders they will not support cuts to the health care safety net programs that residents back home depend on. Trump himself has shied away from a repeat of his first term, vowing there will be no cuts to Medicaid.All told, 11 committees in the House have been compiling their sections of the package as Republicans seek at least $1.5 trillion in savings to help cover the cost of preserving the 2017 tax breaks, which were approved during Trump’s first term and are expiring at the end of the year.But the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee has been among the most watched. The committee was instructed to come up with $880 billion in savings and reached that goal, primarily with the health care cuts, but also by rolling back Biden-era green energy programs. The preliminary CBO analysis said the committee’s proposals would reduce the deficit by $912 billion over the decade with at least $715 billion coming from the health provisions.Central to the savings are changes to Medicaid, which provides almost free health care to more than 70 million Americans, and the Affordable Care Act, which has expanded in the 15 years since it was first approved to cover millions more.To be eligible for Medicaid, there would be new “community engagement requirements” of at least 80 hours per month of work, education or service for able-bodied adults without dependents. People would also have to verify their eligibility to be in the program twice a year, rather than just once.This is likely to lead to more churn in the program and present hurdles for people to stay covered, especially if they have to drive far to a local benefits office to verify their income in person. But Republicans say it’ll ensure that the program is administered to those who qualify for it.Many states have expanded their Medicaid rosters thanks to federal incentives, but the legislation would cut a 5% boost that was put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal funding to the states for immigrants who have not shown proof of citizenship would be prohibited.There would be a freeze on the so-called provider tax that some states use to help pay for large portions of their Medicaid programs. The extra tax often leads to higher payments from the federal government, which critics say is a loophole that creates abuse in the system.The energy portions of the legislation run far fewer pages, but include rollbacks of climate-change strategies President Joe Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act.It proposes rescinding funds for a range of energy loans and investment programs while providing expedited permitting for natural gas development and oil pipelines.__ Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz contributed to this report. Lisa Mascaro, AP Congressional Correspondent
Category:
E-Commerce
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