Re-stitching the Mackinaw Jacket
Re-stitching the Mackinaw Jacket is an on-going body of work emerging out of my PhD research and practice-based doctoral dissertation. Situating the Mackinaw jacket as a garment-based inquiry, this body of work explores place-based fashion knowledges by re-stitching the Mackinaw jacket back to Mitchimakinak[1] and its birthplace of Anipich.[2] Foregrounded by re-stitching (Woods, 2022; 2025) as methodology and centring land as creative collaborator (Woods, forthcoming), the material emergences of this research constitute a series of re-stitched Mackinaw jackets honouring the jacket's existence through time and space as a product of Wiisaakodewikweg[3] design brilliance. The design and construction of each garment work includes gestures of un-stitching a thrifted collection of commercially manufactured Mackinaw jackets produced between the 1940s and 1960s, and re-stitching their material memory into alternative and expansive imaginaries in deep relation to place. The full body of work will be shared in a forthcoming exhibition with more details to come.
Sharing two of my re-stitched garment works-in-progress with land during my second visit to Anipich (St. Joseph’s Island, Ontario, Canada) in December 2025.
[1] The name given to present-day Mackinac Island, Michigan by the Ojibwe. Mitchimakinak translate to “Great Turtle."
[2] The name for St. Joseph’s Island (Ontario, Canada) in Anishinaabemowin. Anipich translates to “place of the hardwood trees.”
[3] Wiisaakodewikweg is plural for Wiisaakodewikwe, the Anishinaabemowin word for an Indigenous woman of mixed ancestry. Wiisaakodewikweg translates to a group of Indigenous women of mixed ancestry.