Inuvialuk designer looks back proudly on Project Runway Canada experience

An Inuvialuk designer says her time on Project Runway Canada was a "career highlight" and an opportunity to showcase some of her culture.

Taalrumiq, an Inuvialuk and Gwich'in designer from Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T. now living in Vancouver, fell to a double elimination in a team challenge on the third episode, airing last Friday. 

"It’s so much more than just me as a designer," she said.

"This is going to have impact for my nation, the Inuvialuit and the Gwich’in, my community and beyond."

The rebooted Canadian adaptation of the popular fashion competition show premiered mid-November on Crave. Designers compete for $100,000 and a feature in Elle Canada magazine.

The judges include Canadian supermodel Coco Rocha, fashion journalist Jeanne Beker and fashion designer Spencer Badu.

Outside the show she continues to create Inuvialuit-inspired designs under her label, Taalrumiq. Sewing, she said, is just a way of life in her culture, a necessity for survival in Arctic weather and a skill passed down through generations.

She learned to sew as a child, surrounded by her mother's work and surrounded by cousins in her late grandmother’s sewing room after she died. 

"In my designs, there's always that cultural flair and influence because that's my way of being," she said.

That influence was clear in her debut look in Episode 1, where designers were challenged to create a denim look entirely from old jeans.

Her look included red detailing, inspired by ptarmigan plumage, and a hood inspired by those worn by Inuvialuit elders.

"I learned to do that hood by studying my great-anaanak’s [great-grandmother's] garments,” said Taalrumiq.

"That was a design that I saw all of our elders wearing when I was a little girl in Tuktoyaktuk."

Taalrumiq isn't the only Indigenous designer chosen to compete this season. Anishinaabe designer Little Feather Migwans, from M’chigeeng First Nation and Wiikwemikong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island is also on the show.