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Helen Oro

Background

Helen Oro is a Plains Cree (people) from Pelican Lake First Nation, located in the village of Leoville, which is in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. Leonville is where the administrative headquarters of Pelican Lake are located. Now residing explicitly in Saskatoon, Oro focuses on allowing her immense passion for jewelry and the intricateness of her pieces. Oro is family based, being raised by her grandparents and always having her own children come to her shows. The artist’s grandmother, whom she referred to as her kokum, made moccasins and mukluks and sold them to a variety of stores. Oro’s father also made star blankets, for she mentions in an interview that “artists are in her family”. Oro saw the joy that this creativity gave her kokum, and decided to pick it up herself with her own personal twist on it.

Recent Work

In her early 20’s, she became interested in entrepreneurship after her first child named Markel was born. It is easy for Native Americans to lose touch of their culture as they grow older and start their own lives, and Oro certainly felt this. Beading became Oro’s way of reconnecting with her culture, and it also taught her patience. After making a few pairs of sunglasses to give explicitly to her family, Oro would post photos of them and they began to get a lot of praise. This is when Oro started to become less interested in making traditional styles, but rather to make pieces that all of society would be drawn to wearing. The expansion started to include many pieces such as heels, headbands necklaces and earrings. Oro began to work at fashion shows, giving her a chance to show the world her products.

After her business began to grow, she started to have more legitimate deals with major companies, such as NativeMax magazine inviting her to their showcase in Colorado. This opportunity allowed her to accessorize other designers’ collections. There was another business opportunity that opened up in Montana, where Oro had the opportunity to explicitly have an area to showcase her work. With little business background, Oro created t-shirts and clutch purses for her models to wear, and it was this point when she realized how this was becoming a lifestyle for her. The designers’ Kokum passed down many beads to her which she keeps in an old cookie tin, all mixed together with an array of every color. A lot of desingers separate their beads and draw out their patterns, but Oro creates her designs on the spot. Oro refers to her cookie tin as "beautiful chaos", it comes with her wherever she travels. Oro comes up with designs in her head and translates it onto whatever shes working with, picking out random colors from her array of beads.

Oro made the decision to make designing her full-time job, because it was now such a passion for her. The designer had her next big break at New York Fashion Week in 2014, bringing a few Saskatchewan models with her and meeting designers from worldwide. Oro continued to make her native routes her priority, becoming the first Native person from Canada to have a showcase in Melbourne, Australia, continuing to use the Saskatoon models. This was beneficial for the models from her home land because she helped them get a jump start to an exciting line of work that they were all interested in, but were not quite sure how to begin. In August of 2017, Oro brought the Indigenous Runway Project to Saskatoon, bringing more praise to her empire.

Upcoming

Oro’s goal is to sell her work at kiosks at malls throughout Canada and the United States. This would make her work more accessible and affordable for the public to purchase. This goal is being helped by celebrities wearing her jewelry, such as the star of television series Wentworth, Shareena Clanton, and the first American indigenous model on America’s Next top model, Mariah Watchman. These are huge steps in Oro’s success because with famous faces wearing her work, the more it will be seen, therefore the more people will want to purchase it. All of the work Oro has done with showcasing and presenting has also made way for her to want to help mentor young women in these parts of the industry. This is also beneficial for her image and will help her gain more followers, once people realize she is progressive and passionate about more than making a profit.

 References 

 External Links 

Saskatchewan Fashion Week Interview with Helen Oro

Purse Fiction Interview with Helen Oro

Helen Oro Designs Home Page