Pasifika Fashion Council aims to serve as a central movement to address decolonizing design so Pasifika creatives can (re) dress the world. Educational resources, training, and support for Pasifika designers are imperative to protect intellectual property and misuse/misinterpretation of our cultural symbols outside of the context of which those designs/stories were born. Designers are wild creatives at heart. They want to design. Protecting their designs may be an afterthought until it is taken and re-interpreted for them and done so without them. When this happens, our designers and creatives need an advocacy space and place for their voice.

Elena is not fashionable, but she’s obsessed with indigenous fashion advocacy. So much so, in 2018 she wrote legislation that became a Hawaiʻi Senate Resolution No. 164 calling for a Native Hawaiian intellectual property task force to develop a sui generis system to recognize and protect cultural IP. Since then, she’s learned legislation is one way, but a bigger and more impactful way is always community.