Fashioning Fiji: Reflections on Culture and Collaboration
AAPS is delighted to announce “Fashioning Fiji”, one of our keynote panels for the Pacific Discourses and Destinies AAPS 2025 biennial conference at the University of Sydney, 3-6 June 2025. To attend this event, register here via the USYD conference webpage.
Fashioning Fiji: Reflections on Culture and Collaboration
A creative keynote organised by Heather Horst and Hupfeld Hoerder.
Over the past two decades the Fiji fashion scene has transitioned from replicating international clothing designs to becoming a hub for the design, production, and distribution of fashion. How do designers draw upon their cultural heritage in the production of fashion and clothing? How are different designers navigating the economic, social, educational and other demands associated with producing fashion and clothing? What roles do fashion shows such as Fiji Fashion Week, Wearing Fiji and other shows play in this process? To what extent can it be argued that fashion and design is now recognised as an established creative industry?
Drawing upon findings from a multi-year study with designers and leaders in the Fiji fashion industry, this panel will examine the practices involved in the production, circulation and consumption of contemporary fashion. We will begin with an overview of the Fashioning Fiji project, an ARC Discovery Project focused upon the development of fashion and design as a creative industry. After highlighting a number of key findings from the study, we will shift the focus to two creative elements of the project: a commissioned film led by Rako Pasefika, a collective of Pacific and Rotuman artists that focuses on integrity and respect for their culture, and a sustainable fashion collection by DCA candidate Hupfeld Hoerder.
We will begin with a discussion between Rako Pasefika’s Creative Director Dr. Letila Mitchell, artist Zelda Rafai, documentary filmmaker Professor Juan Francisco Salazar and lead cinematographer Iane Tavo, followed by illustrative clips from the film. We will then turn to fashion designer Hupfeld Hoerder’s Doctor of Creative Arts project that explores fashion, storytelling and the relationship between environmental and cultural sustainability in his practice. The panel will conclude with a fashion show by Hupfeld Hoerder featuring members of AAPS and the Pacific community as models for his sustainable collection.
Heather A. Horst is Professor of Design Anthropology at the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Digital Anthropology at University College London, an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. A sociocultural anthropologist by training, she researches material culture, mobility, and the mediation of social relations, through the study of homes, clothing, and technology. Her publications include The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication; Digital Anthropology; Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices; The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Island Perspectives; and Digital Media Practices in Households. Horst is also the Executive Producer of documentary films including “Smartphones and Parenting: Fijian Perspectives” with Robert J. Foster, Romitesh Kant, Eliki Drugunalevu and the University of the South Pacific, and “Mobail Goroka” on mobile phone infrastructures in Papua New Guinea with Robert J. Foster, Verena Thomas, Jackie Kauli and the University of Goroka.
Hupfeld Hoerder is an internationally acclaimed fashion designer and a Doctor of Creative Arts candidate at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Born and raised in Fiji, the Rotuman designer has worked in the fashion industry for over twenty-five years. His designs have inspired by fibres and natural resources from the Pacific, an inspiration that he brings to his doctoral work exploring different forms of sustainability in his practice. His many accolades include Fiji Fashion Week’s Textile Design Award and the Established Design Award, an invited designer for the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange featured in an exhibition at the Australian High Commission in London, designer for the 2022 Pacific Islands Forum, Artist-in-Residence at the Powerhouse Museum, and many others. Hoerder holds a BA in Economics and Management from the University of the South Pacific, a MA in Business in International Tourism and Hospitality Management from Griffith University and a Diploma in Apparel and Textiles from Donghua University. Prior to completing his doctorate, he was an Assistant Lecturer with Tourism and Hospitality Management School at the University of the South Pacific.
