Yellowknife (Dec 05/03) - Jamie Look spent four years travelling through Europe, but found her fashion inspiration in Yellowknife.

"There's a certain element of satisfaction in returning to my roots," Look says.

Designer Jamie Look poses with one of Karen Wright-Fraser's dresses at Whispering Willows. - Jennifer Geens/NNSL photo

After three years of fashion school in Montreal and a year as head designer for a small leather and fur company, Look works for Karen Wright-Fraser at Whispering Willows, learning to work with traditional materials like hide, beads, fur and quills.

"I'm really honoured to learn it," said Look.

Look was born and raised in Yellowknife. In fact she's a third generation Northerner. Her family has lived up here for more than 75 years.

After high school she spent four years in Europe, waitressing and helping out in small businesses.

Look speaks French fluently, understands Spanish ("on good days") and gets by with words and short phrases in a few other European languages . She's now learning Dogrib.

In 1999 Look enroled in LaSalle college's three-year fashion design program.

"If you're studying fashion in Canada, Montreal has the artistic edge, or anywhere in Quebec for that matter," said Look of the Montreal-based college.

"Toronto is sort of concrete and business suits, where Montreal is more fun, like loving life and drinking wine and wearing fabulous scarves," Look said.

"That's what fashion is all about. It's about fun and playing."

But she also found LaSalle was geared to mainstream, saleable clothing. Her instructors kept asking her to tone down her designs.

"They'd say 'That's too wild,'" said Look.

"So I just made my own stuff and sold it on the side to all my friends."

Limited selection

Look describes her designs as very raw, very tribal, and always with an element of hard core punk. She prefers to work with natural materials like wools, cottons, silks, leather, fur.

"I like the way it falls," she said.

She also likes the challenge of using what's available in the North. Up here there's a limited selection of materials.

"You have this small selection of material to choose from and you just keep reworking and reworking and reworking it.

"I mean, the fabric store is Wal-mart," she said.

Eventually Look would like to found her own company and make accessories, but accessories so large they could be considered clothing.

"I always envision it as wearing old jeans, a white T-shirt and just having this big choker that has tons and tons of gold beads that come down to here," said Look, gesturing beneath her breastbone.

Look and Wright-Fraser are planning a fashion show next March for both of them to showcase their designs.