Quandamooka artist Delvene Cockatoo-Collins won fashion designer of the year at the seventh annual National Indigenous Fashion Awards, held in Darwin.
The annual National Indigenous Fashion Awards gathered designers, artists, and community leaders in Darwin to celebrate garments that function as living archives of kinship and memory. Seven makers received recognition across categories spanning fashion, traditional adornment, textile design, and business during the ceremony held at Deckchair Cinema.
Delvene Cockatoo-Collins Wins Top Designer Honor for Minjerribah Work
Delvene Cockatoo-Collins claimed the fashion designer of the year award at the seventh annual National Indigenous Fashion awards (Nifas), working from her studio on Minjerribah, also known as North Stradbroke Island. Her creative practice relies on locally harvested materials, with her three sons gathering and processing plant fibres such as tulipwood and cotton tree to keep batch sizes controlled. Cockatoo-Collins files down shells into pearlescent adornments and executes hand-dyeing and screen-printing techniques.
Her winning work draws on a foundational philosophy shared through her family: Take only what you need.
During her acceptance speech, Cockatoo-Collins spoke about a story passed down through the Nunukul, Ngugi, and Goenpul peoples of Minjerribah, which was published by her grandmother in 1974. The narrative recounts two people who gathered too much native honey without considering their community, leading to a high tide sweeping them into the ocean and transforming them into dugongs.
Cockatoo-Collins added during her speech: We are the answer to that.
Spotting an attendee in the gathering crowd wearing one of her black and white jumpsuits purchased in 2024—a piece based on her grandmother’s 120-year-old basket—she reflected on her lineage: I look at each piece and I know that I’m still part of that.
Textile Design and Wearable Art Honored at Darwin Ceremony
Achieving the texture of tree bark required 12 separate dye batches. Briggs-Houston traced her textile roots to her grandmother, who sewed during the servitude era before becoming a teacher in the 1960s.
Briggs-Houston added: Fashion and textiles can be used as a catalyst for change. Being able to create these garments reflects the storytelling embedded in us and that legacy that connects with Country.
Meanwhile, Yuwaalaraay designer Lucy Simpson captured the wearable art award with a glass river-mussel shell necklace. The piece was created in response to grief she experienced while walking the dry bed of the Murray-Darling River during severe drought in 2009, when over two million freshwater mussels perished.
“To see the deepest part of the river completely dry and over 2 million of our freshwater river mussels … perished in that period. As a freshwater woman, I have no right to say I belong to a place unless I’m giving back. The idea is to create something beautiful that can gently tell a story we have a responsibility to tell.”
Lucy Simpson, Wearable Art Award Winner
Country to Couture Showcases National Collaborations and Debuts
The celebrations extended to the Country to Couture runway, which featured cross-cultural partnerships, debut collections, and sustainable labels. The National Indigenous Fashion award’s Community Collaboration prize celebrated a printing partnership between the Bábbarra Women’s Centre from Maningrida and Bengaluru’s Tharangini Studio, where artists traveled to India to translate ancestral lino-cut designs into woodblocks.
Other runway highlights included the Madhan (Tree) collection by Corella & Crow, which utilized upclaimed materials like reclaimed curtains alongside beading and embroidery to emphasize tree conservation. A three-way collaboration titled the Mermaid Collective—produced by Bobbi Lockyer, Skye Lockyer, and Mali Isabel—blended streetwear with hand-crafted embroidery and featured a Save Lee Point
T-shirt protesting a defense housing expansion.
Young talent also took center stage as 21-year-old Bardi, Yawuru, and Kija man Jake Powers was named the Cecilia Cubillo Young Achiever at the awards ceremony. Powers also showcased an ensemble designed by Lucas Schober, featuring hand-stitched gakinga (magpie goose) feathers on a linen cape celebrating the wet season.
Worth a look