From fire to renewal: Meet the Yellowknife fashion designer who made a birch bark dress

A dress that flies first class — kind of. 

Yellowknife fashion designer Cheryl Fennell had planned for weeks about how she would transport her delicate birch bark dress from Yellowknife to Vancouver for last month's Indigenous Fashion Week. 

Air Canada had promised to hang the dress, which can't be folded or crumpled, in the plane's business class section.

Those plans all fell apart when her flight was cancelled. She was rebooked on Canadian North, but the flight was full and there was no where to hang her dress.

"I was like, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?" Fennell said.

"And then they came out and they said the pilot's in a good mood, he's going to put it in the cockpit. And so he hung it up in his closet."

Then, after landing in Edmonton, she had to go through security again. But the dress wouldn't fit in the scanner. 

The airport brought over their "lead security people," she said, and a crowd gathered to watch them carefully scan the garment. 

"They were very understanding," she said. "A whole bunch of other people would come around to see what this crazy thing was I was bringing. And they all loved it," she said. 

The dress, which was one of the final pieces in Fennell's collection for Indigenous Fashion Week, is made of individual birch bark squares sewn together with sinew.

Fennell said it took her about two months to make, using an awl to poke holes in the bark and sewing each piece individually by hand. 

"There must be over 150 pieces, front and back, and it's just like a slip dress but made with birch bark."

The look also features long, birch bark earrings designed by Laura Vittrekwa. 

The theme of this year's Indigenous Fashion Week was fire. While Fennell's first pieces featured fire and flames, she said she wanted to make her final pieces ones that conveyed renewal. 

"Birch bark is always there and you see it, you see it burn. But you also know that ... everything that's renewed has medicinal properties," she said. "So that's what inspired me to use those things that are very important, were important to help our ancestors survive." 

Fennell said her dress received attention everywhere she went. 

"I think because it's different, like using things from nature. I think that's why it was nice. And I had people coming up to me at the after-party saying, you know, 'I came here just to see your collection.'"

She said the entire week was a celebration of Indigenous fashion and art. 

"It's a time now for celebration when in the past people were repressed and couldn't show —  they couldn't wear their outfits," she said. 

"They got it taken away. My mother was in a residential school. But you know, the thing is, is that now they're showing their beauty and they're researching their culture and they're going back to nature," she added. 

"And if you think about it, nature is where we should all be."