One of the greatest pleasures of owning a Labubu, the massively popular and elusively obtainable line of toy monsters designed by Kasing Lung and sold by Pop Mart, is customizing it. Labubus have been adorned with gel tips, dressed in Prada, and topped with the Puerto Rican straw hats known as pavas (effectively creating a jíbabubu) and pretend Louis Vuitton. Textile-savvy Labubu owners have dressed their cunicular trolls as Totoro, Sailor Moon, and, at Singapore’s Nine Emperor Gods Festival, religious devotees.
Given this recent history, multidisciplinary artist, performer, educator, and mother Lily Hope’s Labubus are part of a growing lineage. But hers are especially unique. The Tlingit artist, born and based in Juneau, Alaska, is trained in both Ravenstail and Chilkat weaving practices. She learned the art forms from her ancestors and elders, including her late mother, Clarissa Rizal — one of the last living apprentices of Master Chilkat Weaver Jennie Thlunaut — and weaver Kay Field Parker. Hope’s Labubus are dressed in traditional Ravenstail regalia, woven robes, and headdresses made of Merino wool.
“They’re actually repurposed dance cuffs,” Hope told Hyperallergic, describing the process as “Indigenizing the Labubus.”
Hope planned to sell the regalia at the Santa Fe Indian Market during her recent trip to New Mexico, but after posting a Ravenstail Labubu on her Instagram on August 5, the clothes almost completely sold out within days. At the market, she gifted one to a tourist from Trinidad, who planned to give it to his father. “So the regalia has made its way down to the Caribbean,” she said.
Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, curator of Northwest Native Art at Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, also acquired two outfits via Facebook messenger, initially purchasing a Tlingit outfit beaded by Hope’s Aunt Deanna. Bunn-Marcuse was excited to add multiple artists to the collection; the second acquisition will be woven by Hope, contributing more mini Ravenstail attire “to represent the regalia that we love and share on the northwest coast of Alaska and Canada,” in the artist’s words.
Emphasis on we: For Hope, one of the most important components of her practice is sharing. She began teaching public weaving workshops in the early aughts with her mother. “I loved the community that was being built and expanded,” she said, “and the feeling of creating work that’s bigger than any one of us. Sitting in a quiet space alone — that’s a disservice to my weaving community, to my Native community. If I do that, the work is not serving its highest good.” Hope added online classes to her repertoire at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now has Labubu regalia materials available for purchase on her website, in preparation for a public virtual course.
Even if participants have no weaving experience, the kit “is a very beginner-accessible project,” Hope added. It includes a pre-drilled header bar, the initial band that spreads out a loom’s warp threads. “People who’ve never done this before can get to work right away. You can just snap the header bar on a basket or toilet paper roll.”
And the workshop is truly for everyone, Hope emphasized. “Ravenstail geometric weaving has been in the hands of many nations for 40 years,” the artist said, “so I don’t pause to share the knowledge with people of any nationality.”
To those who are curious: The kit doesn’t include Labubus themselves; any dolls that don’t become models are given to her children, who adore them. “My children help me unbox them,” Hope said. “For every six or 12 that I buy, they each get to keep one.”