New threads

In 1993 Elaine George made history as Australia's first Indigenous cover star. Thirty years later she's back in front of the camera with her daughter, Taylor, to showcase First Nations designers and artists.

- GENEVIEVE GANNON

On the hottest day of the year Arakwal woman Elaine George and her daughter, Taylor Tanaka, are in the Palm House in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens as the fierce sun beats through the ceiling. Elaine gaily declares she can easily handle the heat as she flips through a rack of clothes in bright yellows, soft corals, and scorching reds created by First Nations designers. Taylor is more tentative, on the set of a fashion shoot for the first time ever.

Elaine gently encourages 25-year-old Taylor while joking with The Weekly team. She has a maternal aura and the sort of disarming beauty that would compel a talent scout to approach her in the street and say: “You could be a model.”

It’s how she got her start in 1993, when she became the first Indigenous Australian to feature on the cover of a glossy magazine. Racism, isolation, and falling in love caused her to give it all away 30 years later, however. And though she’s back modelling, and mentoring First Nations creators, for many years her two children had no idea that their mother had been a history-making cover star and international catwalk model.

“I think I was around seven or eight,” Taylor says thoughtfully. “We used to go to my great-grandmother’s after school. I must have been walking around the house one day. She had this massive Vogue cover, laminated, on the wall. I was looking at it and I was like: What’s this?”

Elaine chuckles. “Most people expect [children] to take after their parents. I didn’t want that for Taylor and [my son] Dremayne. I wanted them to grow up and be safe and be whoever they want.”