On a gusty night in September, model Quannah Chasinghorse joined the legendary designer Ralph Lauren on his New York Fashion Week catwalk. Earlier that year, she wasn’t even sure she could look him in the eye.
Chasinghorse admits she had to “really wrestle” with whether to work with the fashion mega-brand, or tell them to buzz off. In fact, the Alaska native used a harsher word than “buzz” that cannot be printed here. Still, she ultimately took the job.
“I guess I could have slammed the door on them instead of asking to have a real conversation with them,” she tells the BBC. “But then, you know, nothing changes. And that’s the opposite of how I want to live.”
Chasinghorse is currently in Los Angeles working on a script for a feature film. She has acted in the hit TV comedy Reservation Dogs,and produced the 2024 documentary Bad River, which she co-narrated with actor Edward Norton.“The fashion industry has been a tool and a resource for me to enter all these other spaces,” she says. “My goal is to open up a bigger worldview for people, in lots of different areas.”
Twenty-two-year-old ChasingHorse is an Indigenous American who is a member of the Oglala Lakota and Hän Gwich’in tribes, and was born on the Navajo Nation reservation in Arizona.
It is amazing that she has such a personal connection to so many different indigenous groups.
I really need to watch Reservation Dogs. Everyone who has seen it tells me how terrific it is.
