Bridging cultural identity through Textile Design

By Issabelle To-Eagle Speaker • May 2026

I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a Designer. I fell into fashion because I had no idea what to do post-high school. I tried a summer program at Emily Carr, loved being creative, and then I moved into the two-year program at VCC. I completed VCC in the fall of 2019, then the pandemic hit and everything went quiet; I felt like everyone was questioning their own paths, including me. When schools opened again, I applied to KPU’s advanced entry, hoping that I’d find my path.

And I did, but not as I expected.

While at KPU, I had my first textile class, and I fell headfirst into natural dyes and all things textiles. There’s something about the slow, organized chaos, and rhythm of it; It’s physical and unpredictable. Intentionally stained hands felt grounded. Dyes didn’t just interest me, they claimed me. With dyes, there’s this dialogue with time, the land and memory.

A year later, I joined a field school in the Amazon rainforest in Colombia. These experiences incited a profoundly emotional response. Being immersed in Indigenous knowledge, listening and learning about their cultural practices was extremely empowering, and retrospective.  Seeing how design is woven into language, society and ecology, it rearranged how I saw myself and how I move through life. It pushed me towards my own heritage and the parts of myself I have ignored. Instead, it replaced my shame with pride.

Since then, my design work has become a way of honouring my ancestors while creating living archives, textiles that tell stories through colour, shape and intention. My goal is to weave both my Indigenous and Vietnamese heritages into one practice, because that’s the truth of who I am; living in two worlds, learning how they overlap.

My design process:

Textile and fashion are labours of love. They’re slow, messy and deeply manual, which is something I love. My ideas usually show up like dreams or visions; I can see things very clearly in my mind. Getting these ideas into the physical world takes patience. My process is full of sampling, mock-ups, swatches, over-dye tests, failures, surprises and small breakthroughs.

In the future, I hope to work with knowledge keepers from both Vietnam and my reserve to explore traditional dye practices. My long-term goals are to merge cultural methods with modern, colour-fast techniques so these teachings can continue evolving and stay alive.

Design thinking:

I describe my work as wearable art, but I don’t think design needs to be intimidating, precious or gate-kept. The industry can feel cliquey, and I’ve always gravitated towards the people who create with their hands; the ones who care about the process, not the performance.

Design should feel joyful. Yes, school can make it feel rigid and focused on trends or speed, but the real magic lives in following the thing you love, even when it’s slow, even when it doesn’t make sense yet, even when you must start over.

For me, the magic is storytelling through textiles and building bridges between the cultures that made me, to creating living achievements.