Narrandera’s talented fashion designer Lillardia Briggs-Houston has been named fashion designer of the year at Australia’s fourth annual National Indigenous Fashion Awards.

These awards recognise excellence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fashion and textile design.

Her award recognised Lillardia as a designer who has excelled both creatively and commercially. She will receive a 12-month business mentorship with Country Road, an iconic Australian fashion lifestyle brand.

The prize is designed to be a rich two-way learning experience for both the winner and the Country Road mentorship team and is tailored to the needs and focus areas defined by the mentee, covering areas such as marketing, product development, sales and finance and sustainability.

It will support Lillardia to further build her business and career.

The mentorship can be delivered in person and online, with Country Road supporting travel expenses up to $5000.Lillardia is a Wiradjuri, Gangulu, Yorta Yorta multidisciplinary artist and fashion designer based in Narrungdera/Narrandera, Wiradjuri Country. She produces all her textiles works and garments herself on country adapting traditional Southeast Aboriginal cultural practices like carving, bush dying and weaving into her work.

Lillardia studied fashion at TAFE NSW and has a long history with garment production being taught by her trained Wiradjuri grandmother from a young age.

In 2017, she merged her own storytelling through Aboriginal art with her skills in fashion and has continued to create First Nations textiles and garments that merge her love of culture and fashion ever since.

Her label was established in 2019 and her work has since been showcased at Australian Fashion Week and Melbourne Fashion Week, featured in publications such as Vogue Australia, Marie Claire, The Australian, Wild Wellbeing and Peppermint magazine. She was a nominee for the inaugural 2021 ‘Indigenous designer of the year’ at the Australian Fashion Laureate, dual nominee at the National Indigenous Fashion Awards for three consecutive years and recently in 2022 won the ‘Wearable art’ category.

Through her culturally and environmentally sustainable textile and garments, she highlights the strength, pride and connection that she feels as a First Nations woman with the aim to use fashion as a catalyst for change.

The NIFA 2023 ceremony took place at a sold-out event last Wednesday under the stars on Larrakia Country at the Deckchair Cinema in Darwin. 

This article appeared in the Narrandera Argus, 17 August 2023.