Christian Allaire at the Met Gala 2024, wearing custom outfit by Jamie Okuma.

Allaire, a fashion writer at US Vogue, is Ojibwe, and a member of the Nipissing First Nation, Ontario. Okuma is a Luiseno, Shoshone-Bannock, Wailaki, and Okinawan who is also an enrolled member of the La Jolla band of Indians in Southern California where she lives and works.

Allaire: 'I knew I wanted to wear an Indigenous designer to the Met this year. When I heard this year’s theme—“Sleeping Beauties”—and dress code—“The Garden of Time”—I was instantly struck by a few concepts: That our Indigenous designs & craftwork have persisted FOREVER, and that many of our traditional garments have always beautifully reflected the natural world that surrounds us.

I am certain of your last thoughts

As mine may be the same as I say

good-bye to the world of pain I created

Speaking to you like Neruda speaks

To his mother would not be possible

I am tired beyond those black years

When I constantly cared for you

I did tell you I loved you as I put

My flabby arm around you that you

Could not put around me like your sister

Who showed me affection I missed

Your mother's words came to me

In missed caresses as you explained

Her cold Norwegian upbringing

And the distance between you and her

What did you get from her in those

Years of vocalizing in Dakota's enclaves

As I remember her in her last year's

I felt little warmth in my failed heart

These vacancies have passed down

To my children and to me doubly

In these years of distance and emptiness

That have been left to me unpolished

Behold! Oh stop with the religious angelisms.

To the future I listen from rhombic speakers.

I float in the air like Caesar's thirty molecules

Brushing through your veoli in search

Of mushroom seeds and rabbit turds.

I am still a being in the time of solar dawns

That tear at atoms releasing their contents,

A bag corn chips scattered on pavement

Trampled by oxen that pull covered wagons

Made of glass and unknown metals.

My descendants settle in cracks

In the concrete of black holes and super giants.

I disturb all conventions with a dedicated thought.

Monster of Motion, be not still at the end.

Your fight against the calm goes on

As it screams for me to hear its familiar octaves.

Barry G. Wick

Part of nearly 500 poems at https://agereasonmistake.blogspot.com