Colorado River

This story in 1970 featured the work of Italian designer Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo. The Grand Canyon was used as the setting for Giorgio’s collection of Native American inspired fashions. Read more.

 

A dramatic look based on traditional Indian body paintings, with matching face and feathers.

One of Giorgio di Sant' Angelo's "Indian Maidens" wears a knitted leotard inspired by the painted body patterns of the Mandans of the Northern plains. The ceremonial apron was modeled after a bull dancer's.

Ornate, feathered headdresses are one of the most distinct contributions of Native American wear. This wool pullover was based on body-painting.

A Navajo pretender appears ten miles below the Havasupai Canyon reservation, where Havasu Creek rushes into the Colorado. She wears her best dress, of challis and ribbons. Her hat is from a brother Navajo.

Under the limestone ledges, a summoner of the spirits wears a ceremonial dress of velvet, trimmed with ribbons and maribou. Designs and symbols are adapted from Eskimos.

The wood gatherer is super-dressed for her job in Giorgio di Sant' Angelo's rayon-velvet, patterned after the pullover blouses of Navajo women.

A traditional pose is struck on a woven rug in front of the Deer Creek Falls.

The original Americans, from the Alaskan Eskimos to the Amazonian Caribs, were wildly creative with what the gods provided. The American Indian's inventive artistry, with paint and with feathers, furs and skins, triggered designer Giorgio di Sant' Angelo's fall 1970 collection.

 

Indian Fashions in The Grand Canyon - 1970

"In 1970 the Italian designer Giorgio di Sant' Angelo designed a collection of fashions inspired by American Indian body painting. A year earlier I had been on a raft trip down the Colorado River with the then Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, and his family. We had shot 125 rapids, and when I wasn't being scared out of my wits, I was being overwhelmed by the spectacular scenery. It struck me as the perfect setting for photographing fashions, and I suggested the idea to the editors of LOOK Magazine. Jo Segal, the fashion editor, liked the idea and suggested using Giorgio's fashions. She arranged for Giorgio and his assistant to accompany us on the trip. 

As we made our way down the river by raft, shooting increasingly challenging rapids, I would scan the banks for possible locations where we could camp and get two photographs - one in the evening and another the next morning. This was not as easy as it sounds, as decisions had to be made quickly and were usually irreversible; you don't make many U-turns on a raft on the Colorado River. After we beached our raft each day, the boatman and his wife would make camp and start to prepare a meal, while Giorgio and Jo Segal got the model ready for the first shot.

From where we put in to where we were lifted out, the Colorado River slices through solid rock, one mile deep, in what we were told is the deepest penetration of the surface of the earth anywhere in the world. No matter how many paintings or photographs you may have seen, you are never prepared for the reality of the Grand Canyon. I remember reading an English journalist's description of seeing it for the first time. He was simply overwhelmed, and summoning up all the richness available to him in the language of Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats, he cried out "Holy shit!" The colors of the walls of the canyon change constantly - reds, oranges, browns and golds. In places a black rock called schist is exposed; it retains heat so efficiently that our poor model almost fainted and fell straight into the river when we had her stand up against an outcropping of schist for a photograph. It all added up to the perfect backdrop for Giorgio's Indian designs; as wild as they were, they looked quite at home in this wilderness.

Giorgio, for his part, was captivated. He would gesture expansively at the towering walls of the canyon surrounding us, and exclaim to one and all: 'Look at this place! You can take all of Europe, with its palaces and cathedrals, put them all together, and it cannot compare with what God has created here!"