The seventh-generation Diné weaver and first-ever Ralph Lauren artist-in-residence talks tradition, creativity, and big dreams.
C&I: Can you paint a picture of your life on the Navajo Nation?
Naiomi Glasses: I’ll try my best to do it justice. We live on the edge of Rock Point Chapter, which has this community area with a chapter house, a school, a gas station, and a post office. We live so far off the highway that in order to get to the highway, you have to drive 10 miles one way then 20 miles another way. You need gas to get gas, because the closest gas station is 20 miles away. The nearest grocery store is 45 minutes away. I live in an area where we still have to haul in our water, so I’m really big on water and our relation to it as people. I guess the best way to describe it is in the middle of nowhere. [laugh]
I love it out where we live; it’s beautiful living on this land that our family has been on for generations. You feel this connectivity even with family members who are no longer with us, because you know they walked these same lands. It’s a big juxtaposition compared to Phoenix, Arizona, where I was born and raised for part of my childhood. When I was 12, our family made the decision to move to where we were originally from. It was a big culture shock at that time, but I wouldn’t trade this life for anything. I’m constantly inspired by the land and the beauty that surrounds us.
When people visit us, they think where we live is just flat since we’re in this high-desert grassland area, but the views around us are really beautiful. To the west of us, there’s a small white mesa and this volcanic rock that we call Tse’ Zhin, which was a big part of the third [Ralph Lauren] collection drop, where we put Tse’ Zhin on the back of the denim jackets.
To the east, to the immediate eye, it might not look like much, but it’s so beautiful because you can see the Chuska Mountains off in the distance. Then to the south of us, there’s this really big, beautiful black mesa. If you look to the northwest, you can sort of see Monument Valley. There’s so much to take in from these different angles, and it’s really beautiful being surrounded by all these natural wonders.
C&I: What does a perfect day look like for you?
Glasses: I wish I had more of these days! A perfect day would start with a slow, intentional morning enjoying a home-cooked breakfast — bacon, hash browns, over-easy eggs with fresh Navajo tortillas, and some coffee. Then I’d make my way out to do the morning chores, so feeding our horse, Peppy, and the sheepdogs.
Then I’d come in and just get lost in weaving, without thinking about my to-do list or the meetings on my schedule. I’d probably weave until lunchtime, because of course you’ve got to eat. A perfect lunch would be some roast mutton on a Navajo tortilla with green chili. Then I’d get back to weaving, maybe work on some necklaces, too, since that’s so meditative.
In the evening, I’d have a nice hot bowl of neeshjizhii, or steamed corn stew with mutton, with some hot, fresh fry bread, because calories don’t count on the perfect day. [laugh] At the end of the day, I’d watch a comfort show that just makes me laugh, like Rez Dogs. People are going to read this and think, “She’s so Native,” but Rez Dogs really is one of my comfort shows.
C&I: What does it mean to you to carry on your family’s weaving tradition?
Glasses: I feel so honored to be able to carry this on, because not a lot of people know how to weave. I feel truly blessed to know how to shear the sheep, card the wool, spin the wool — all of those bits and pieces. Weaving is such a beautiful connection to our way of life as Diné people. To know how to weave is not just to know how to weave, because there are so many cultural teachings embedded in weaving. When I first started weaving, I just thought, “This is so cool that I’m doing exactly what Grandma has done all her life.” Plus she told us we can make money weaving, which got us excited.
As you get into it and get older, you realize it’s a very meditative practice. It’s very intentional, because you have to come with a positive mindset. There have been times when I admittedly am kind of in a funk, and when I try to weave, it doesn’t go well. So I have to step back and get into the right headspace. It teaches you to pay attention to your mental health.
Like I said, weaving has all these teachings that come along with it. For example, if you’re someone who raises your own sheep, you’re learning those pastoral lifeways that we, as Navajos, have practiced for centuries. So you’re caring for the sheep, but then you start realizing how that impacts the land, and everything comes together in this really beautifully connected way. I’m so grateful to be able to weave, and I can’t wait to pass it on to my children one day, because there’s so much they’ll learn from it. I hope this tradition will be carried on for many generations to come.
C&I: What was it like being the inaugural Ralph Lauren artist-in-residence?
Glasses: It was really a dream of mine to work with Ralph Lauren one day. When I was 18, I told my parents I didn’t want to go to college and instead wanted to take a gap year to focus on weaving and see where it could go. My parents were really understanding, and we all figured I’d be ready to go to college after a year. Then a year came up, and I realized I wanted to stick with weaving because it worked out for my grandma. But my parents reminded me that my grandma was weaving one rug a month and selling it wholesale at the trading post, so she wasn’t able to make much of a livelihood from it. My mom asked me how I planned to make a career out of it, and I explained I wanted to design floor rugs, blankets, maybe clothing one day—and that I wanted to work with Ralph Lauren.
This was in 2016, and my mom had me write this list of what I hoped to accomplish. Working with Ralph Lauren was at the very top of that list. We prayed over it as a family, then I left it in God’s hands. I just kept weaving and believing that maybe one day it would happen, even though I’m this girl who lives in the middle of nowhere with no connections to New York. [laugh]
Then in 2021, I was part of this program called Creative Futures Collective, and I had been telling anyone who would willingly listen about my dream of working with Ralph Lauren. The Creative Futures Collective founder sat me down to learn more about what I wanted to do, and I told him I wanted to work in fashion. Somehow he was able to get a connection to Gabriela Hearst so I could do my internship with them.
Throughout the program, we had these assignments where we’d pitch ourselves to our dream company for our dream job, and of course I always wrote to Mr. Lauren. I’d be like, “I would be the perfect person to work with your company because I understand what it’s like to actually be a weaver and an artist who makes these designs that your company has been inspired by for all these years.” It was just completely outlandish dreaming at that point. Then after my Gabriela Hearst internship, I got connected with someone on the Ralph Lauren Design with Intent team who had been trying to get in touch with me because they wanted to work with me. It all happened so serendipitously, and I really can’t explain it. It was just beautiful how it came together.
Because I was the first artist-in-residence, we were just figuring it all out, like how to get weaving designs onto clothing. It was so interesting seeing how different weaving is from fashion. Like with weaving, I set up my loom, I have just an idea of what I’m going to weave, then I try to make it come out onto the rug. But with fashion, you have to be so intentional about it from initial concept to final design, and you have to make a whole collection that looks cohesive so it all sits together just right.
It was so beautiful bringing the collection to life, and so many great people helped me along the way. I’m really grateful to have been the inaugural artist-in-residence, because we really just had fun with it. There are so many people within the design team and the entire Ralph Lauren company who have become my family.
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C&I: What’s next for you? Any other big dreams to put out into the universe?
Glasses: I’m looking forward to focusing more on my weaving right now. After Santa Fe Indian Market, you have to start getting ready for Heard Market in March, especially as a weaver because our weavings take so long. Then of course working on any other collaborations that may come my way. [laugh]
I definitely want to continue exploring clothing design, because I’ve really found a passion for that. I’d love to have my own clothing brand one day, and I want to continue working with artists, which was always part of the dream. I was really fortunate to be in this program and have this big platform with Ralph Lauren, but I didn’t want to walk in that alone. I thought it’d feel really authentic to the story if we could dress the models in jewelry and pieces by artists whose work I wear all the time. I’m really grateful we were able to do that with each of the collection drops. Whatever I do from here, I want to continue amplifying more artists’ work.
Learn the full backstory behind Naiomi Glasses’ Ralph Lauren artist-in-residency.
From our January 2025 issue.
ILLUSTRATION: Raúl Arias
