Grace Lillian Lee Is the First Indigenous Australian Designer To Show at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week

It’s been a history-making month for Grace Lillian Lee. The Meriam Mir fashion designer has become the first First Nations Australian to hold an independent show at Haute Couture Fashion Week in Paris.

“It just reminded me of when I was a child, doing little presentations for my parents,” Lee tells Broadsheet. She’s no stranger to fashion runways, having been part of a myriad of local and international shows before. In lieu of the “big monitors and headsets and talking to AV and lighting” that usually comes with runways, this intimate showcase had Lee directing models by peeking out from behind doors and following music cues.

In an apartment opposite Tuileries Garden, in front of an audience of about 80, Lee showcased her collection The Guardians, an extension of her The Dream Weaver: Guardians of Grace exhibition.

All nine looks featured her signature sculptural elements made from woven, hand-dyed cotton. Each took at least 150 hours to create. Taught by her mentor Uncle Ken Thaiday, the grasshopper weaving technique (reminiscent of the belly of a grasshopper) has been a distinct part of Lee’s fashion and art practice over the last 15 years.

“I felt really calm, to be honest, [it] just was really special,” she says. It’s not what you’d expect to hear after presenting a high-fashion collection in the fashion capital of the world. Especially when you can count Jean Paul Gaultier as one of your attendees. Lee became acquainted with Gaultier last year, travelling to Paris to meet him ahead of their collaboration for Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show performance in Brisbane.

Also in attendance was Andrew Bolton, the head curator of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Australian fashion designer Toni Matičevski. “Having Toni Matičevski there was my little girl dream come true, because I remember studying at RMIT and just being like, ‘Toni is the bee’s knees’,” she says.

Everything was made back in Cairns by Lee, her lead technician Ash Kok and a small team of Cairns locals. “I don’t think any of them could have imagined that we’d be making something for couture,” she says. “I’m very proud of the fact that we could make something in Far North Queensland and travel it to Paris.”

A team of mostly First Nations creatives travelled to France with Lee. For some of them, it was their first time overseas. “We had a debrief and [being in Paris] broadened their mindset to what is possible for our culture to be on such a global platform,” she says.

“In Paris, it’s been so touching to see generations of culture being celebrated and having so much time to establish that,” hair stylist and production coordinator Djahmu Amini told Style Up. “Then to compare that to back home, there’s been a lot, lot less in comparison.”

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” one of Lee’s models, Worrora surgical doctor Vinka Barunga, told Style Up. “Young mob and old mob and everyone can look and see this Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander woman has done this amazing showcase.”

“To be a part of Couture Fashion Week – off[-schedule] and independent – to be the first Indigenous woman to do that, that’s crazy,” Lee says. “I feel very proud that we have done that and done it as a community. But we want to see more, obviously.”

Lee plans to hold biannual exhibitions, followed by complementary couture collections. “This is the beginning of it. Next year, I’ll do a new exhibition of work, which I’m starting to develop now. And then I’ll respond to that and hopefully return in 2027.”