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By Alice Birrell

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To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.

Elaine George is learning how to post on TikTok. “It doesn't matter who you are, or what you believe in, or what ethnic background you are. You can post whoever you are,” the Bundjalung and Arakwal woman says. She’s fresh off brushing up on Instagram as well, where the social worker and first ever Indigenous Australian to appear on the cover of Vogue has been posting some of her modeling work in the 1990s.  “Back when I was modeling in ’93, we didn't have any of these,” she says of posting unseen pictures from her time in the industry on her new account.

Part of the reason behind her social media upskilling is her return, of sorts, to fashion. She was photographed for the current cover of Vogue Australia alongside fellow First Nations models Charlee Fraser, Magnolia Maymuru, and Cindy Rostron in partnership with First Nations Fashion + Design (FNFD), the not-for-profit organization championing Indigenous people in fashion. She also, momentously, walked the runway at Afterpay Australian Fashion Week for FNFD’s second ever showcase of Indigenous fashion, the closing show of the week.

Elaine George on the cover of Vogue Australia September 1993

It’s not because she imagines a second coming specifically—George left the industry disillusioned with the lack of representation—but because she has also discovered a role as mentor, passing down her knowledge and hard-learned lessons from a time when there was little to no cultural understanding of being an Indigenous woman in a predominately white industry. “I had no one else that was First Nations, so I didn’t feel culturally safe. I couldn’t express myself the way I thought I should be able to, because they wouldn’t understand where I’m coming from,” she remembers.