Jill Setah's clothing line will be appearing at Los Angele's Fashion Week thanks to a $10,000 donation from a local charity.
Image Credit: Contributed
October 13, 2015 - 9:00 PM
WEST KELOWNA - A First Nations clothing designer from Westbank who was invited to take part in Style Fashion Week in Los Angeles this week thought she had missed her opportunity, but a last minute sponsorship from a new Kelowna charity has her packing her bags.
“I leave tomorrow afternoon,” Jill Setah says. “I am freaking out right now.”
Setah, a member of the Chilcotin First Nation, has lived in Kelowna for the past ten years. Her clothing has been featured in a New York fashion show but she thought her dream of seeing her line on a runway at one of L.A.’s leading fashion shows might not happen.
“I was sitting home Sunday and I was sewing and thinking ‘I feel so disappointed in myself,’” she says. “Then I get a call from a lady… and she started asking me questions and I told her how I wasn’t able to raise enough money to go. She said, ‘We want to send you to LA.’”
The call was from Roxanne Lindley, who started the John Norman Lindley Foundation to honour her father after he passed.
“He was the kind of person who would help anyone,” Setah says.
The show starts this week and the deadline for registration had passed. With the $10,000 sponsorship promised Setah called up the organizers to see if there was still a way.
“They said, ‘We’ve got 45 designers, it’s not going to happen this year.' I was so disappointed.”
Setah refused to take no for an answer and he eventually told her he would see what he could do. On Monday, Oct. 12, Setah’s phone rang.
“He said he could squeeze me in this Sunday at 6 p.m. I didn’t know what to say,” she says. “I’m so grateful. This isn’t just a couple hundred dollars.”
For more information on Setah’s designs visit her GoFundMe page.
Westbank mother Jill Setah is going to Fashion Week in Los Angeles this week.
Image Credit: Contributed
To contact the reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw at aproskiw@infonews.ca or call 250-718-0428. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
News from © iNFOnews, 2015