Nathan McGuire: The Future of Indigenous Fashion

In the bustling backstage area of Afterpay Australian Fashion Week, Nathan McGuire is cool, calm and collected. Dubbed the “face of the future” by GQ, Nathan is about to step out on the Indigenous Fashion Projects runway in front of hundreds of eager fashion aficionados.

When asked about walking the runway, Nathan tells Façon: “I feel amazing... It's nice to be around other mobs and I'm really excited for all the designers to showcase their new collections.”

Nathan is walking for designer and Yuwaalaraay woman Julie Shaw and her brand Maara Collective.

“The designer is a friend of mine and she’s just starting to release some menswear and asked if I would walk,” he says, “and I thought, yeah, I'd love to walk! I’m just excited about sharing our different cultures and mobs with the industry. It’s an exciting space to me.”

Being featured in campaigns for iconic brands such as GQ, David Jones and Country Road, Nathan is no stranger to the modelling world. With such huge success of his own, he is now looking to the future of First Nations people in the modelling industry.

“I don’t walk runways as much anymore,” he says. “I get to attend a lot of shows now, and it’s really exciting to see all the young new models come in and showcase our beauty and how diverse we are. That’s why it’s important for the sustainability and longevity of our industry to have that First Nations presence.”

This year, the Indigenous Fashion Projects runway is supported by David Jones. Working with this iconic Australian brand has meant a lot to Nathan.

“David Jones is a brand I’ve worked with many times over the years and throughout my career,” he says. “They’re one of the biggest brands in Australia, so to have their support and that kind of backing, it just shows how our industry can really work together to make everything powerful and impactful when you support the designers to be able to sell their clothes, and just have another way for the designers to be able to have another outlet to have their market.”

And as if all of his modelling success wasn’t enough, Nathan has also been busy working on his own fashion line, Solid Ochre. The brand was shown for the first time at Melbourne Fashion Festival earlier this year to much acclaim.

“I guess it was a semi debut because the brand isn’t very old, it’s about six months old,” Nathan says. “So it was basically getting a feel for what Solid Ochre looks like going forward. I learned a lot from that experience and I can see where the brand is going. And then watching Australian Fashion Week, I’m looking at it from a different perspective. I’m looking at it as like, what’s the show look like as a designer… What kind of story do I want to tell?”

So what is next for Nathan? His plan involves continuing to help First Nations people fly high in the fashion industry and beyond.

“I’ve got a lot of cool things on the horizon, but one thing I’m really excited about is a program I've developed called Mob in Fashion,” he says. “It’s about placing First Nation creatives into behind-the-scenes roles, such as photographers, stylists, makeup artists, hair stylists, events and journalism. All different sorts of facets of the industry, but behind the scenes so we can broaden that spectrum of representation for our First Nations community and provide meaningful career opportunities that people can add to their portfolio.”

Nathan’s passion for this program and creating jobs for First Nations people comes across in the way he speaks about his work: “They’re networking at industry level events. That’s what creates sustainable careers. That’s what gets that creative to the next meeting, to the next job, and on bigger campaigns and forging careers.”

Sitting on the sidelines as Nathan walked the runway at Afterpay Australian Fashion Week, it becomes evident that he will keep soaring. Watch this space, because even after so much success, there is still plenty more on the horizon.

Written by JACK BAILEY