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Lillardia Briggs-Houston creates her award-winning designs on Country

The National Indigenous Fashion Awards have seen the best and brightest threads rewarded.

Lillardia Briggs-Houston (center), winner of the Fashion Designer Award at the 2023 National Indigenous Fashion Awards, flanked by models wearing her designs. Source: Marley Morgan Photography

Lillardia Briggs-Houston was taught by her grandmother, passing on years of knowledge and stories in her designs.

So it comes as no surprise that, on the night she wins Fashion Designer of the Year at the one of the nation's premier award ceremonies, she's thinking of her grandparents.

"Everything I am and do is because of them," she told AAP after receiving her gong at the National Indigenous Fashion Awards.

The Wiradjuri, Gangulu and Yorta Yorta designer creates all of her work on Country as a way of staying connected to them.

"Being able to be on Country and see that inspiration every single day, whether it be a tree of my grandfather's or stories from my grandmother, that's pretty amazing," she told AAP.

Her garments are made using traditional south-east cultural practices of carving, bush dyeing and weaving.

Country to Couture: Record number of collections to hit the runway at the National Indigenous Fashion Awards

Designer Lillardia Briggs-Houston was awarded the Fashion Design Award. Source: Phoebe Blogg

Growing up in a small community, the designer couldn't imagine that she'd be on the covers of Vogue and Marie Claire.

"I was scoffed at for even considering wanting to be a fashion designer as a young Aboriginal girl in a small community," she said.

"I come from a very small country town and we don't have a lot of opportunity, particularly in fashion and textiles."

The Indigenous Fashion Projects Manager Michelle Maynard attributes the record number of entries and shortlists for this year's NIFA's to a rise in Indigenous leadership in fashion and textiles.