A former Dauphin resident now going to school in the United Kingdom is making her mark in the fashion world.
Amelia Rempel is originally from Portage and moved to Dauphin, last year.
When she was 15, Rempel entered the cosplay community, meeting a lot of people who are creative in that industry. One friend she met attends the University of the Arts London (UAL).
“So I did some research on the University of the Arts London and found out it’s the top art school in the world for undergraduates, so for bachelor degrees. And for something that I want to get into, I thought that was perfect,” she said.
About three years ago, Rempel moved to London with her mother for business.
“And when I was out there, just the atmosphere and the people and how they prioritize creativity a lot, which is something you don’t really see here in Canada. The museums are free, there’s more creative expression out there rather than here in Canada,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I love Canada, but it’s moreso forests and wilderness rather than architecture and museums.”
While doing her research into UAL, Rempel decided to apply to the school, never thinking she would get accepted.
“I just did it for fun. But I ended up getting in. They only have a 22 per cent acceptance rate, so I’m really, really lucky to have been accepted into their courses,” she said, adding she is currently studying costume design, having just completed her foundation year at UAL at Camberwell College. “That’s basically like University 1. And then I applied to Wimbledon, which is the top costume design school in England. So I applied and I got in,” Rempel said.
Using missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada as her inspiration, Rempel designed a dress called The Wanderer, which was on display in Dauphin at a Meet the Artist event, Aug. 24, at the Métis Community Centre.
The Wanderer, Rempel said, was based off the myth of Melmoth, a character created by author Sarah Perry.
“It’s a myth about a person who is cursed by immortality and is cursed to forever walk the earth alone. And so The Wanderer I based off of that is an Indigenous woman who wears the dress,” she said. “And the dress is covered in articles that I found off the Internet of women that have gone missing and has their names and their ages and their stories and who they wanted to be. The Wanderer witnesses these tragedies of these women that are murdered or killed and raped and she takes on their stories, so they can pass on into their second life, essentially, without the burden of that. And her dress, as she walks across Canada, her dress gets heavier and heavier, because even as we speak, there are women going missing. There are women being taken. We, as a country, need to stand up against this.”
For their final major project, Rempel said, students were encouraged to push themselves out of their comfort zones.
“And I don’t like speaking about politics. It makes me very, very nervous. But it was an issue close to my heart because I grew up around an Indigenous tribe back in Portage, the Ojibwe, and we were close friends with the Chief, Donny Smoke,” she said.
So as she grew up, Rempel was invited to powwows and being around the Ojibwe culture.
“I thought it was so beautiful and I wanted to introduce that culture to the people in London. But as I delved deeper, I found out a lot of people didn’t know about residential schools,” she said. “They didn’t even know they existed. Didn’t know that the last one didn’t close until 1996. Didn’t know that women are still going missing to this day just because of their skin colour. And this was an issue I need to talk about, because I didn’t even know about missing women until last year.”
As someone who grew up in Canada who did not know about the missing women, Rempel feels it is important that people speak about the tragedies that are still ongoing.
So Rempel designed the dress, which drew rave reviews from people in London, many of whom thought Canada was a sort of utopia, a perfect place where nothing goes wrong.
“They don’t know the mass cultural genocide that happened just a couple decades ago. They didn’t know that people are still recovering from that. It didn’t happen a long time ago,” she said. “There are still residential school survivors that can share their story, that lived through that trauma. And to find out that they’re still trying to find all of their children now. It really changed their view of Canada. Not in a bad way, but it’s like, I guess every country has it’s flaws.”
But the issue needs to be talked about, Rempel said, adding what has happened needs to be acknowledged and we need to heal as a country, rather than just ignoring it.
The dress was on display at the Camberwell College of Arts at Wilson Road, which is the foundation school, for about a week.
Rempel was then one of eight students chosen to present her final major project on display at the Camberwell College of the Arts with other all the bachelor students.
“So it was on display for about a month, there. So about two million people would have seen it, because if you look at the statistics, lots of people go because UAL is a top art school. So you have producers and you have different companies coming in to scout out students,” she said.
To have that many people view her dress was a big surprise for Rempel. She knew it would be on display at her school, but she originally wanted to give the dress as a gift.
“Because I knew that an issue like this, a movement like this was so important to the Indigenous and Métis people. And so I wanted to give it as a gift,” she said. “And for them to give me gifts like this in return, too, to put it on display and to speak at conferences about gender-based violence, I am so grateful that they’re giving me this opportunity to speak about it. I just felt like I’ve been welcomed into the Métis community with open arms, because I am Métis myself, but when I was making the dress, a lot of people told me that I was white passing. They continuously reminded me that I looked white, so therefore I am white.”
But when she returned to Canada, Rempel was told that it doesn’t matter that she looked white, she was Métis by blood.
“And to be welcomed like that, it was really heartwarming,” she said.
The dress was purchased by the Manitoba Métis Federation, and itwill be on display at the Heritage Museum in Winnipeg next summer.
Rempel has returned to London for her second year, her first towards her bachelor degree. Her goal for this year is to push herself out of her comfort zone even more.
“This project, when I did push myself out of my comfort zone, it did cause me a lot of anxiety. But the end result was beautiful. And to see how it brought the community here in Dauphin, they invited me in like that, I want to do that more. I don’t want to be scared to do what my heart tells me to do, because this entire project, it was something that was close to my heart and I wanted to speak about it, but I was told not to. But I’m glad that I didn’t listen” she said.
