Christian Allaire used to steal his mom's copies of Vogue — now he works there

31:01He used to steal his mom’s copies of Vogue — now he works there

As a kid, Christian Allaire felt the only interesting part about the powwows his parents forced him to go to was the fashion.

His sister was a jingle dress dancer and he saw the hours of work that went into crafting the regalia she wore and how much thought went into every detail — even those as seemingly insignificant as the colours of ribbons.

"I saw fashion being used in a really interesting way," Allaire tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "That, to me, was my introduction into that world without me even really realizing it."

Growing up on a reserve in Nipissing, Ont., Allaire dreamed of being part of the glamorous world that he saw in the pages of his mother's Vogue magazines. To this day, a stack of the magazine's iconic '90s issues sit in a closet in his childhood home.

By 27, Allaire managed to secure a job at Vogue in New York. He's currently the magazine's senior fashion and style writer and he recently published a new memoir, From the Rez to the Runway, which traces his journey as a person of Ojibwe descent navigating the cutthroat fashion industry.

When he first discovered Vogue, Allaire says he thought the world of fashion seemed inclusive. It featured queer people and styles and models from a variety of cultures — but he never saw his own culture represented.

In his memoir, he recalls a conversation he had with his aunt at a powwow. As he sat off to the side, his aunt urged him to dance, telling him it's an honour to wear regalia. He writes that there was a part of him that wondered "if it's so great … why have I never seen our powwow regalia in the pages of Vogue or on FashionTelevision?"

For a long time, Allaire refused to wear anything that reflected his Indigeneity — he loved the pieces, but was convinced that no one that he looked up to in fashion thought the same.

"I was just like, 'I think our beadwork is beautiful. But if it's not in Vogue, maybe it's just not beautiful to anyone else,'" he says.

After moving from Nipissing to Toronto, Allaire worked for a few different magazines, including Footwear News, where he wrote a profile on Jamie Okuma, a fashion designer who incorporates her Indigeneity into her designs by adding hand-beaded elements to Western-style shoes.

It was one of Allaire's first stories on an Indigenous artist — and a major turning point in his journalism career.

"Fashion's a very crowded space and we see a lot of the same," he says. "When you see the work of an Indigenous artist, it's unlike anything you've ever seen before. And I think anyone who loves fashion is looking for that newness and that originality…. It's not only beautiful to look at, but you can tell the power and the knowledge behind some of these pieces outweighs, for me, the aesthetics."

The world of contemporary Indigenous fashion was a niche that needed to be filled. This interest in Indigeneity wasn't always there — surely not when Allaire was a kid, and not even at the beginning of his career, when a lot of his pitches would get rejected. But he kept covering these stories anyways. Eventually, his Indigeneity — which was once something that magazines made him doubt — started to get his writing noticed, including by Vogue.

"I had imposter syndrome for sure at the beginning, but what I quickly realized at Vogue is they look for people with an 'it' factor and an originality to them. I brought that with my Native fashion focus," he says.

"At the end of the day, your superpower is your original story and your original background, and you need to use that to your advantage. Whatever industry you're in — whether it's film, writing, fashion — your Indigenous knowledge is a superpower.… Be proud and go for it."

The full interview with Christian Allaire is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Christian Allaire produced by Cora Nijhawan.