Renowned for her ability to blend culture and craft, designer of label MumRed, Samala Thakialee Cronin, caught up with Style Up behind the scenes at First Nations Fashion Design, Reclamation runway this week.

Selected as one of the six designers featured on the Reclamation runway, the proud Butchulla and Woppaburra woman was thrilled to showcase MumRed's designs on a catwalk powered by Blak determination and excellence.

Marking the return of Grace Lillian Lee Couture following its international tour, Reclamation was presented as an independent, First Nations-led platform created by mob, for mob.

Fresh off the back of winning the 2025 Gold International Design Award in the Fashion Design category for Cultural/Traditional Attire, Cronin mentioned how, since winning the award, MumRed has been jumping from one project to the next.

"It's been a bit of a buzz since I came back, definitely, and things have just been moving so fast and have this runway, which is straight off the back of that award," she said.

"I've kind of been hitting the ground running at home, doing my thing, and I've produced eight new looks as a part of my first instalment of Flowstate, which is going to be a four-part series, and that four-part series actually correlates to our Sacred Cycles, which is also the other side of my business.

"So I am the first... MumRed is the very first 100 per cent Aboriginal and female-owned period care company in Australia. And so, I provide 100 per cent organic bamboo period underwear, which are sustainable, reusable and more culturally appropriate.

"I supply these to women for free who sign up on my register, which is available at www.mumred.com."

Launching MumRed following the Voice referendum after reassessing how Aboriginal women are seen and represented in Australia, Cronin said the moment reshaped her purpose in fashion.

"I initially launched my fashion label off the back of the voice referendum because I've realised that this country didn't want to hear us," Cronin told Style Up earlier this year.

"I realised that if we're not seen, we're not heard, and they don't see us. They don't see us for the kaleidoscope of culture and colour that we possess."

After losing some of her Seven Sisters Dreaming collection to Cyclone damage, this year Cronin wanted to recreate and rebirth pieces from that collection for the Reclamation runway.

"Well, as you know, I won the International Design Award for the Seven Sisters Dreaming installation, which I had. But unfortunately, after CIAF, it was very expensive for me to ship the collection all the way back down to Melbourne, where I live, and so I left it at my auntie's house, which was very safe, and unfortunately the cyclone caused water damage in her roof earlier this year, and it actually really badly damaged those pieces."

"I was devastated because so much work went into them, and they're also now kind of connected to this award. And so I wanted to rebirth them, and bring them back onto the runway."

"And so I have reclaimed parts of that collection, I have incorporated those into these eight new looks on this runway tonight, which I have made in the last 14 days."

"This collection is the Seven Sisters Reborn, and it's the first instalment of the Flow State."

"Flow State is my overall collection that I will be dropping in installments over this year. And each one will be very, very different."

"Each one will be nothing like what anybody has seen from me before. And there will be a few commercial pieces available that I'm going to have put out that I've never done before, because everything I do is handmade."

Cronin expressed how she wants consumers to feel comfortable and confident wearing MumRed garments.

"I believe that our fashion, the way that we would have adorned ourselves prior to colonisation, influencing the way that we dress, the way that we viewed ourselves, the way that we viewed each other," she said.

"Our bodies are sacred. They are life-giving. We actually quite enjoyed making ourselves look good and feel good, and colonisation tried to destroy that.

"In fact, they very much took our rights of self-determination and autonomy away from the way that we expressed ourselves. And we are very expressive people.

"For me, I grew up with my father's family, travelling the country and performing traditional song and dance for the Mornington Island Dance Troupe, and we made our dance gear. It was part of what we had to do, and when we put that on, my whole life, I've always felt like I'm wearing armour..like it protects me. And so I try to put that into the work because that is part of who we are."

"That's culture and that's continuing it because I try to incorporate those techniques and the materials into the work so that it speaks of country and it speaks of us."

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